Vlad, call me Junior.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... o-beijing/The hands-down winner of Russia’s ugly struggle over Ukraine’s future is China.
There was a lot of crowing in Moscow on Wednesday over the $400-billion gas deal that Vladimir Putin signed in Beijing. It was, or so Russian thinking goes, a magnificent rebuke to the West over its rather timid sanctions against a few of Putin’s billionaire cronies for seizing Crimea, threatening eastern Ukraine and terrifying hundreds of millions of people in Central Europe who want nothing to do with their former master’s irredentism.
As this was a deal between Russia and China, it is no surprise there was scant information from either side about the price for gas set in the 11th-hour talks. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that the terms greatly favour China because Putin was so desperate after his Ukrainian adventure to suddenly get a deal done that he left tens of billions of dollars on the table rather than admit he had come up with nothing in his face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Western countries have had their own problems doing business with China. Like Russia, they have often been so eager to get a slice of the Chinese pie, they settle for less money than they should from Beijing’s notoriously hard-nosed negotiators. But not tens of billions of dollars at one sitting.
Moreover, the West is much stronger economically than Russia, which is a one trick energy pony further hobbled by corruption on a colossal scale. China could devour Russia economically long before it may be able to do that to the West.
Another problem for Russia is that it shares a long border with China. People in cities such as Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk are already deeply concerned about how dependent they have become on China and are increasingly anxious over the large numbers of Chinese who now live, work and own businesses in their midst.If Russia ever tries to wield gas prices and supply as a weapon against China, as it routinely does with Ukraine and almost every other country in Europe, China has plenty of new sources of gas to choose from such as Kazakhstan, Australia, Timor and, yes, Canada.
With fantastically deep pockets and a society that is unlikely to be as appeasing as western Europeans have been about Russia’s bullying of Ukraine, China is far less likely to tolerate Russia’s tantrums.
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to a posture that looks more like:
