It's the West that's afraid of Sino-Russian rapprochement. The West is displacing their feelings to the Russians going back to Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon. Back then it was the Russians that were trying to push the Chinese to help sink the dollar because of all the treasuries China held. China didn't go along because the Chinese don't like instability. Do you see the West rewarding China for not going along? No, because as usual, the Chinese think they'll be humbly rewarded and recognized for it later. Relations have gone the opposite direction, the worst since the darkest days of the Cold War, so anyone holding out thinking the same way is the best way has got it wrong. Abusing China and expecting China not to fight back is what they want to see. That's the test of how they know they're the ones in power so you better believe they'll keep exercising it to know.
As usual the US is trying to get others to do their dirty work because they fear the repercussions if this was just a US operation. This way the US can preserve what relations it has with China in case their patsies lose to China doing the US's bidding. The US's tactic is centering on appealing to white supremacist Russian nationalists. Look at it this way... they could easily appeal to Russian racists if they didn't bother with Putin. It is they that won't give up their problem with Putin and the oligarchs that's holding back a US-West united front against China. It's funny because it was back in July one of those international pew polls I believe was conducted saying that the Russian people had a more positive view of China than they did for any Western country. So now all of the sudden it's the Russian government that has a problem with China when they've been going by how it's the Russian people who don't like China before this? The fact is whether it's Russia or China that falls first because of the West, each country knows they're next. China isn't preventing a US-Russian rapprochement. It's the US. That alone tells you they will work to undermine Russia no matter what. The US has a problem with how blatantly racist Russian nationalists were towards Obama. Now they're appealing to those same Russian nationalists.