“It is not visible how China’s creeping expansion is slowly alienating Russian territories,” Sergey Aslanyan stressed.

Many years ago, a large number of Russian lands were closed to Russians themselves. Enclaves for timber processing, smuggling poaching – all this was guarded by the Chinese. Even now, some local border regions say that they are afraid to go deep into the territories, because there are Chinese guards around the perimeter. They’re armed.

“If you read the Chinese media outlets, they say that you should not invest in the economy of neighboring territories, but you should allow your locals to assimilate these territories in order to enter them and then begin to develop,” said Aslanyan.