quote “There’s no reason to try to invade when Russia will happily sell them all the raw materials the want, and the Russians will happily buy all the Chinese products they can sell”
the same could have been said about Ukraine, and yet here we are
Not really. Nothing at all close. Ukraine went nazi banderist, banned the Russian language, forbade even laying flowers at WWII Russian army graves, and pounded the Donbass with artillery. Their government stole gas from the transiting pipelines and was pushing to bring in NATO.
The coup government in Kiev was not an honest trading partner.
With a little intelligence, the Ukes could have been one of the great middleman nations of history, trading with both the EU and Russia. But they chose Bandera, Nazism and violence.