Keep pulling the thread on Sarah Paine.
Neither China nor Russia has reliable egress to the open ocean by sea, as their navies can be easily blockaded in narrow, island-clustered seas during wartime.
The Uyghur population in China is currently slated for genocide.
The primary mission of China's People's Liberation Army is to keep the Chinese Communist Party in power, not national defense in the Western sense.
Vladimir Putin's geopolitical strategy involves destabilizing neighboring countries, setting them up to fail, ingesting the failing states, and establishing buffer zones.
Despite ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1996, China claims that freedom of navigation does not apply within 200 nautical miles of its coastline, in contradiction to the treaty's 12 nautical mile limit.
China's geography makes it highly vulnerable in a major conflict, as its access to the high seas can be easily blocked at predictable choke points that would become 'kill zones' for its merchant and naval fleets.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un seek to upend the current maritime-based global order and hollow out international institutions to return the world to a system of warring spheres of influence.
China faces a strategic dilemma between the economic benefits of the maritime order and its historical continentalist outlook, which includes ambitions like conquering Taiwan.
China's leader Xi Jinping has been privileging the state-owned crony sector over the private sector, undermining a commerce-driven economy.
When making historical territorial claims, the Chinese government selectively cites the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty or the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, periods when the Han Chinese were a subjugated people.
Russia's strategy includes sowing mutual resentment and spreading fake news among its neighbors to incite them to fight each other, allowing Russia to act as a 'jackal state' and seize territory.
China's Belt and Road Initiative's land route is unlikely to be economically viable because it is not continuous, uses multiple rail gauges requiring costly transfers, and passes through highly unstable regions.