Russia - threadbanned users in OP

China is out for China. That's it. There's bugger all love lost between the Chinese and Russians. Russia is worth about the same as Thailand to China. Their business connections and exports to the US and the EU utterly dwarf their connections and exports to Russia. The Chinese are neither stupid nor prone to kneejerk reactions and know they're way too exposed to the Western economies compared to the backwater that is Russia. The only thing Russia has is oil, gas and mineral resources. Oh they'll take Russian those resources at massively discounted rates and using the dollar with it under more "creative" accounting.

India has always played both the West and Russia and did so throughout the Cold War and are doing it now. Russia tried to get into a currency paring with India, but the Indians knowing this was for show and pointless for them have mediated it with trade in dirhams and dollars under the surface.

Russia is no more at the apex of that alliance than the dogs in the street. The only giant in that room is China. The three giants on the planet are the US, the EU and China. The Middle East, Taiwan, Japan, Korea etc and India come in behind them. Africa and South America have a long way to go. China became a great by being the production centre of US and EU goods and sales to same. Certainly not Mother Russia, who pretty much completely missed out on the IT revolution and the very device you're typing your posts out on.

To be fair to the Soviets, they did indeed grab some nazi scientists, pumped them for info, but then put them on trial for war crimes, threw them in gaol and later threw them out of the country. After that things like the Soviet space programme were local and Soviet.

They certainly didn't make one of those nazis head of their space programme. Unlike the Americans who went out of their way to "rehabilitate" their nazis and make them "good Americans". Werner Von Braun, a card carrying nazi party member who oversaw horrific slave labour to build his wonder weapons for Hitler even got his own Disney series.

On this score the Soviets/Russians win the moral high ground such as it was.

And yet Apple are moving a quarter of their phone production to India and 20% of their pad and watch production to Vietnam. India is also getting google, foxconn and other tech giants to produce their stuff there. India is heavily invested in getting production of western goods increased in India and you'll note a distinct lack of Russian brands... China is seeking to move in on areas like Africa looking for their offshore labour and resources. Note again, not Russia, which is right beside them, chock full of resources and a fair number of people whose wages are low especially outside the cities like Moscow and St Petes.

Funny that.

Never mind that both India and China have been expressing "concerns" over this Russian invasion of Ukraine, that putin himself spoke about. Cut price oil is one thing, hitting everyone's wider market economic margins is quite another.

As for America not being able to handle anyone else being in charge, true and just like Russia back in the day when they had the clout, but at the same time they stupidly offshored manufacturing to cheap labour markets when it suited. Well stupidly for the average American if the average Chinese is getting more of a cut. However it also means China is very much in thrall to the soft power of economics and they're heavily exposed to both the US and the wider Western economies that provide the blueprints and licenced machinery to make the stuff they sell back to the same US and West that is measured as a trillion per year. Russia's biggest export to China? Oil and now at knock down prices. How's that for "necessity and circumstance"?