The American and European sanctions against Russia prompted Russian president Vladimir Putin to direct his attention to Russia’s relationship with China. The possible consequences are actively discussed on Russian Internet.
The Russian government is now replacing European food sources with Chinese. There are a lot of questions about quality of food produced in China. Many Russian health specialists show their worries about such possibility.
Russians are more optimistic about Putin’s new agreements with China for development of joint ventures and selling Russian gas to China. But even in those areas one can hear some very worried voices.
China has agreed to make an advance payment for gas in the amount of $25 billion to Russia. At present, Russians are just beginning to build the pipeline connection to China. Two new fields in Chayandinsk and Kovyktinsk from which the bulk of the gas is expected to be delivered are just in the planning stage.
Given the difficulties of attracting investments for the development and the almost sanctions on the supply of modern equipment and technologies for oil and gas production, it is doubtful that Russia can fulfill its obligations to China.
What would happen if Russia fails to start gas deliveries to China by 2018 according to contract?
Even back in the 1950s China claimed on their maps parts of Russian territory as their own. The number of army units of China is 2.5 times greater than the number of army units of the Russian Federation. The military budget of China is also 2.5 times more than that of Russia.
China has significantly increased the presence of its troops on the border with Russia. It has accelerated pace of building modern roads near the Russian border. China needs them for rapid deployment of troops in the event of armed conflict with Russia.
Here is the evaluation of other Russian – Chinese business relationships made by an expert on China Alexander Aladin in the web site http://svpressa.ru/:
“Russia provides to Chinese a raw material base of the Far East and Eastern Siberia. The agreement provides for the joint development of Russian oil fields, but the processing enterprises will be built on Chinese territory.
“Chinese will build ‘for us’ bridges, roads to the fields; they’ll take care of building brick factories and housing. This is all being done to export our raw materials to China for processing them over there.
“From a military point of view all this is what is necessary for the occupation of the territory, for the delivery of troops and military equipment to the interior of Russia.
“We are enabling China to exploit our gold and silver deposits, strategic raw materials of tungsten, molybdenum, copper and vanadium. It’s all will come back to Russia in the form of tanks, planes, missiles. The housing built by Chinese in Siberia will be used in future by Chinese citizens. Because China comes here strong and forever.”
The head of the analytical department of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis Alexander Khramchikhin agrees with this statement of Alexander Aladin.
Here is the first paragraph of a publication in a Russian web site :
“The question is not whether China will attack Russia or not, in fact the question is when? Alexander Khramchikhin, deputy director of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, says: ‘if a large-scale military aggression against Russia will ever be accomplished, the aggressor will be China with probability of 95% (if not 99.99%).’ ”
