Russia, China, and the changing Eurasian balance - and what does it mean for Ukraine?

As 2026 draws to a close, the international system is deeply unsettled. The war in Ukraine is entering its fifth year, Russia remains committed to it, the United States is confronting Iran, and relations between Washington and Beijing alternate between rivalry and accommodation. Meanwhile, China continues to expand its economic, technological and military influence across Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific.

These developments can look like a set of separate crises. They are not. They are increasingly connected parts of a much larger shift in the distribution of global power.

The central question is no longer only whether Russia can defeat Ukraine, whether Ukraine can recover its occupied territory, or whether China might one day attack Taiwan. A broader question is emerging: what happens to the Eurasian balance of power if Russia emerges from the Ukraine war substantially weakened while China continues to grow in economic, technological and strategic importance? The question deserves attention because the usual Western focus on Taiwan may obscure a slower-moving development to China's north: the growing imbalance between China and Russia in their economic relationship, especially in Siberia, the Russian Far East and the Arctic.

The weakening of Russia

Russia should not be described as weak in absolute terms. It remains a nuclear superpower with immense territory and resources, a large military and considerable diplomatic influence. Yet it is becoming weaker relative to China and the United States, and the war has imposed heavy military, economic and demographic costs. Russia has devoted extraordinary resources to the fighting, while its relationship with Europe has shifted from economic interdependence to strategic hostility. With European energy markets closed to it, Moscow has increasingly turned toward Beijing.

China is now a major buyer of Russian energy. Its purchases of Russian oil and gas have grown since the invasion, while Chinese companies have assumed a larger role in Russian and Arctic projects. The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that Russia is China's largest source of imported natural gas and that Chinese companies have acquired significant interests in Arctic energy development.

The result is a remarkable reversal. For much of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union was the dominant political and military power across northern Eurasia. Today Russia remains geographically enormous, but its economic relationship with China is increasingly lopsided. Russia needs Chinese markets, technology, manufactured goods and diplomatic support. China, by contrast, can obtain resources elsewhere and cooperate with Russia while preserving relationships with the United States, Europe and the developing world. The longer the war continues, the more Russia's strategic independence may erode, turning China from a partner of convenience into the dominant power in the relationship.

China and the Russian Far East

This raises a broader question: why should China's present principal territorial concern necessarily be Taiwan? Taiwan is unquestionably important to Beijing. Chinese leaders regard it as a core sovereignty issue and insist that reunification must eventually occur, although they say peaceful reunification is preferable. Taiwan is a self-governing democracy that rejects Beijing's sovereignty claim. A military assault would be extraordinarily dangerous: an invasion across the Taiwan Strait would be one of the most demanding operations imaginable, exposing China to severe losses, economic disruption, sanctions and possible social instability.

China may therefore gain increasing influence over the Russian Far East without attempting to conquer it. The region possesses immense natural resources, Pacific ports and access to the Arctic, yet is sparsely populated compared with the Chinese provinces immediately to the south. China has capital, industrial capacity, infrastructure-building expertise and a vast population; Russia has immense territory but limited population and capital in its eastern regions. Beijing can exploit this imbalance without changing the border by building transport links, buying energy, investing in infrastructure, expanding trade and participating in Arctic development. It could become indispensable to the region economically without acquiring Russian territory.

A National Bureau of Asian Research analysis notes that Vladivostok has become a transit hub for Chinese domestic cargo and argues that China's objectives, resources, transport corridors, Arctic access and economic development, can largely be achieved without territorial revisionism. This frames the Russian Far East as "low-hanging fruit": the economic opportunities created by Russian weakness may matter more to China than the territory itself.

The historical question

The argument nevertheless has a historical dimension. In the nineteenth century, Imperial Russia acquired substantial territories from Qing China through agreements often regarded in Chinese historical memory as unequal. The Amur and Ussuri regions and the area around present-day Vladivostok therefore remain associated with a significant chapter of territorial loss.

History, however, should not be confused with current policy. China and Russia spent decades settling their border dispute. In 2004 they declared that the remaining disputed sections of their more than 4,300-kilometre border had been resolved, and Beijing presented the settlement as a model for peaceful dispute resolution. Later arrangements formalised it, and both governments have repeatedly affirmed the frontier's stability. A Chinese military attempt to recover nineteenth-century territories would reverse, rather than continue, this diplomacy. Russia's nuclear arsenal makes such an attack even more dangerous. The more plausible Chinese strategy is leverage, not conquest.

Why Taiwan remains different

Taiwan cannot be dismissed. For the Chinese Communist Party, it has ideological and historical significance that the Russian Far East lacks. It is tied to national rejuvenation and the unfinished legacy of the Chinese civil war, so Beijing's calculations are not purely economic.