Demand 10km strip of land from North Korea to access Sea of Japan as compensation for Korean War debt?
??? Trans-Amur Baikal is former Qing Chinese territory, so China isn't interested in any Russian territory, it's interested in originally Chinese territory.
Like I said, this applied to Sino-Soviet relationship between 1949-1960. Things can change.
Wow, all of 11 years. If we only count Putin's tenure, the current relationship is already twice that age and growing stronger by the day. In truth, all through the '90s China worked on rebuilding its relationship with Russia during Jiang's tenure, so add another 10 years on top of that.
Agreed though I don't think Russia is worried about a surge of Chinese population, since the northeast is bleeding people.
Actually, they do. What China and Russia are is what was historically called "allies." What's called allies today in the US context is what used to be called vassals. What China and Russia mean when they say they have no "alliance" is that there's no vassalage in their relationship.
That's a ridiculous platitude and it's also demonstrably false. The Anglo world so reviled here sure seems something like permanent friends. If what you said was true then Australia would align with China and not America.
While we're bouncing around "who knows" possibilities we pulled from the aether, I'd like to propose that Russia and China will be the closest besties there ever were. Way closer than the US and Britain because hey, who knows what the future can bring.
Why haven't you learned from Qing-era unequal treaties and Sino-Soviet Split? The concept of "No permanent friends, only permanent interests" is demonstrately proven throughout the Sino-Russia relationship spanning centuries, much more than merely since 1989.
Like I said, China and Russia is an "Axis of Convenience" because of a mutual enemy (US). There is no ideological commonality, shared language/culture, or shared history as the basis of an "Alliance". We tried "anti-Americanism"-based alliance and it ended horribly.
Identifying Trans-Amur Baikal as a basis for future frictions and barriers for the sustainability of future alliance is pretty reasonable. I don't see how any geopolitical analyst can selectively cherry-pick the good moments but ignore the underlying bad moments.
Only two-digit IQ people will dismiss the possibility of "Reverse Nixon" strategy against China. Just hating US isn't enough, Sino-Soviet split demonstrated this.
There's an obvious counterexample to your hypothesis: Canada and the US. It's very similar: Canada has plenty of land and natural resources for the taking, shares a long border, has a vast economic and military power disparity, yet relations have been friendly for nearly a century, the US is content to access Canada's resources peacefully through trade, and there's virtually no threat perception. The main differences with the China-Russia case would be that they obviously share a much greater degree of cultural and racial homogeneity, and the US has a much lower population than China (will have) and more land/resources of its own, so it has less need (actual and perceived) to encroach on Canada. Therefore, I think your scenario is not inevitable, because I don't see why the Sino-Russian relationship couldn't turn out much like the Canadian-US one, but it developing more towards your scenario is indeed a very real possibility too. Though I think even if the Russians become uncomfortable with and feel threatened by China, if the power disparity is sufficiently large, they might have no choice but to pursue friendly relations anyway, just as Mexico and Canada have no option but to be amicable with the US.