This is in reference to the article ‘Anatomy of China-Russia alliance,’ by Shah Mohammed Saifuddin (April 19).
   In his long article, the writer seems to have missed the real picture of the threat Russia faces from the emergence of China as a superpower. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, China has not only replaced it as a rising superpower, but the Chinese influence is also spreading in Central Asian countries which were once a part of the Soviet empire.
   During the Cold War, China changed side from being the ally of the Soviet Union despite both were communist countries. China’s normalisation of relations with the United States stemmed from the realisation that the Soviet Union had become a threat to its own security. In fact, Sino-Soviet friendship was based on a shallow ground. China and the Soviet Union had long border disputes and China always considered that vast parts of Eastern Siberia historically belonged to China and the Tsarist Russia annexed them in the 19th century when China was weak and could not defend its interests.
   Collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a much weaker Russia must have raised China’s aspirations to recover lost territories now occupied by Russia. In this context, it may be pointed out that the biggest expansion of the Chinese military forces is directed toward modernisation of the army. With ten million in uniform, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is by far the largest in the world and although China is trying to develop a blue-water navy, the modernisation of the PLA has been on a much larger scale. This expansion of the land forces clearly demonstrates that China’s strategic policy is directed against Russia.
   This is why most analysts believe that today’s Sino-Russian alliance is as shallow as the Sino-Soviet alliance of the earlier era. With most of Russia’s oil and gas fields located in Siberia, China must be eyeing to control these veritable sources of energy. Moreover, over-populated China, with a billion-plus population, looks towards vast near empty Siberia as a space next-door for its land-hungry population. In fact, a de facto Chinese invasion of Siberia is already under way. All reports suggest that local economies in bordering regions of Siberia is now totally dependent on China and Chinese demand for its resources has led to an influx of Chinese workers and entrepreneurs, creating a racial backlash among White Russian population. But with a tiny and declining Russian population of 20 million, it is only a matter of time before the Chinese outnumber the Russians in these remote regions.
   China is increasingly flexing double muscles — economic muscle against the West and demographic and military muscle against Russia. As China surveys the world with the West in financial turmoil and its leaders desperate for cash-rich China to come to its rescue, it sees strategic opportunities. A battered West presents an inviting target for pent-up Chinese anger for being treated as inferior for long. For Russia, with barely 130 million people and the world’s largest territory, China’s meteoric rise must be its greatest fear. With world’s largest army at its disposal, China will be able to dictate Russia in the same way Tsarist Russia dictated to China when it was weak and powerless. Now a weak Russia presents an equally gratifying target for China’s contempt. Historically, China considered as the Middle Kingdom to which everyone outside must pay tribute and China is now poised to extract tribute from both weaker West and weakling Russia. Saifuddin missed the real picture in which Russia must play a subordinate role to China’s great power ambitions.
   Mahmood Elahi
   Ottawa, Canada