Vladimir Putin is exhausting his country’s fortune and reputation on Ukraine, fixated on the concept of Russia as a great world power. But Putin’s view of power, as well as his view of the neighborhood he lives in, skirts the reality of the 21st century. Whether on account of poor leadership, or the curse of being blessed with extraordinary energy resources, modern Russia has for now lost the only power game that really counts in this day and age: the game of globalization.

China — Russia’s former student in autocracy — is not only a winner in that game, but is now trying to master the difficult steps of reordering its economy to succeed in a new generation of globalization. Putin, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to realize that a Westernized Ukraine is the least of Moscow’s problems.

From the beginning of their experiments with capitalism, these two former ignoble giants of communist tyranny acted differently, with China being the more prudent. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia followed the “shock theory” in switching immediately from a communist economy to a mostly capitalist economy, a top down approach that led to economic anarchy. China under Deng Xiaoping followed a more judicious bottom up approach, experimenting with capitalist reforms in various zones before integrating a Chinese form of Capitalism throughout the country.