Just 50 years ago, when they were supposedly "communist brothers" Russia/The Soviets fought a border with with China. Chinese officials later admitted they were prepared for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Yes, good oriental friends!
Russia gave up Communism. China has not. Russia, whether cynical or not, is embracing Christianity. China certainly won't. Since Peter the Great, it has always looked towards Europe and the West. China never has and never will.
The DC neocons psychotic obsession with neutering and controlling Russia, a country with 14% the population of USA+EU, and economy 6% of USA+EU, is sheer insanity. They have most definitely pushed resource-rich Russia into the arms of a resource-hungry China. Its total idiocy.
Russian defectors actually claim the Sino-Soviet split was staged. And that Russian and Chinese officials made it a habit to constantly tell their western counterparts that the relationship between China and Russia was bad.
Whatever the case, they’ve obviously made up.
Re: Russian Christianity.
Only 7% of the population there attends church once a month. The ROC is promoted over all the other denominations. All other denominations face discrimination from building to evangelization. The ROC archbishop Kirill is a known KGB agent tasked with spreading Liberation Theology. This information was confirmed from the KGB archives in Estonia. Today, Kirill receives medals for his service on behalf of the faithful instead of being shot like he deserves.
You say, “Russia gave up Communism. China has not. Russia, whether cynical or not, is embracing Christianity. China certainly won’t. Since Peter the Great, it has always looked towards Europe and the West. China never has and never will.”
Russia may have given up Communism but it has adopted an oriental kleptocracy which is at variance with Western thinking. You are correct in your comment on Christianity and Russian cynicism. As for China not adopting Christianity, there are probably more practicing Christians in the above ground and underground Church than there are in Russia. As for Peter the Great (1672-1723), he attempted the modernization, not the Westernization of Russia. Catherine the Great was as failure at Westernization. Following the Napoleonic wars the great intellectual battle between liberals (Turgenev) and Slavophiles (Dostoesky) was fought out and the latter thinking won out. The feeble efforts to effect a change in the terrible landholding problem, and the land slave, the muzjik, failed prior to the Soviet revolution. And they have been emancipated on paper, but not in fact. Economically, present day Russia takes a back seat to California. And why is that? The Russsian economy has more similarity to the kleptocracy that exists in Turkey than it does to, say, the economy of the Netherlands. Finally, Russia only rarely has looked to the West for anything aside from those things it can copy or steal. An Oriental Despotism it has been, and an Oriental Despotism it remains.