The "strength" of Vladimir Putin

Strong leaders do not leave their nations vulnerable to the fluctuations of a single commodity market. The Gulf emirs got that message long ago, and principalities such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai (which was, in a sense, blessed by having oil but not too much of it) have done far more to diversify their economies than has Putin’s Russia, with far less to work with in the way of natural resources, arable land, and human capital.

Russia is a much bigger ship to turn around than is an oil emirate. But China, too, has pursued diversification and reforms that are in many ways more intelligent than what has been managed by Putin — and China is one damned big boat to turn.

That fact has not been lost on the gentlemen in Beijing, which is why they keep slapping around the Russian strongman like a welterweight who has wandered into the heavyweight tournament, which is what he is. In the matter of the dispute over Yinlong and Heixiazi islands, China seems to have got the better of Russia, and Moscow’s concession of a symbolic two square miles of land to China provoked such an angry reaction among Russian nationalists that Moscow was obliged to claim that no such thing had happened.

But what is truly worrying the Russians is the steady flow of Chinese illegal immigrants — some call them “colonizers” — into the Russian Far East, which has some Russia watchers concluding that Beijing’s asserting effective control over those areas is a question of when rather than if. As Richard Rousseau puts it in Harvard International Review: “China has allocated a definite place for Russia in its policies: It is primarily a source of raw materials and an outlet for goods not suitable for what they consider more discriminating markets.”