Did anyone ever doubt that Russia and China are here to stay? They have been major powers for hundreds of years.

Thousands of years in the case of China.

China is an economic superpower. Russia is an economic backwater with nukes.

I bet the Russian oligarchs beg to differ.

People from ex-USSR countries do however seem generally have strong math and science skills, and (for some reason) many women end up in software engineering. Western countries can probably learn something from that.

Russia is so economically backwards exactly because those oligarchs siphon most of the wealth created there, and export it.

Isn't that generally what happens in most developing countries regardless, e.g. you put your wealth somewhere where it's safe?

I would assume Swiss and Luxembourg based banks these days have a lot more clients from ex-ussr countries than say the US and EU countries, because there is greater risk of confiscation (in different ways) of assets in those countries.

If you managed to somehow (honestly) make $50m in Russia, would you really keep it in Russia? I think the answer is probably no.

> China is an economic superpower. Russia is an economic backwater with nukes.*

*: figures measured in russia-ostracizing western funny money

Russia's GDP is less than half that of the UK, and 1/10th that of China's.

I'm pretty sure that's scale-invariant.

when your 'GDP' consists largely of imaginary service sector income particularly in financial services, I beg to differ..

use any other currency then, what's the difference?

it's currency?

if you are not the country printing the currency, you are at a disadvantage...

The whole world is measured against USD. Least funny money.

or most funny money, with respect to valuing things not related to things important to the USD

The USD is literally the world's reserve currency, has been for many decades.

Russia has repeatedly claimed this is the reason they're an economic backwater, but they're also an economic backwater in any other currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_by_country ... for starters

Assuming you mean technology: Russia is its backwaters and there's little indication of that changing.

That seems weird to me. They seem to produce a number of first rate mathematicians and engineers, historically. And they have cough Kaspersky. What goes wrong over there?

Durov, the founder of VK once very upbeat about Russian scene, had to flee abroad after hostile takeover by Russian government affiliates. His Telegram is an American company.

Korolev, the champion of Soviet space programme, has died because the doctors could not ventilate his lungs. His jaw, intricately broken by NKVD interrogators in 1930s, blocked the pathway. The Soviet space programme limped ever since.

Names, leaders and technologies change, but certain things there are self perpetuating.

Lulzy rule of law in a kleptomancy ruled by a de facto dictator and his henchmen takes its toll on people.

That's a shame. So much untapped human capital. For every Sergei Brin and Max Levchin that makes it to the US, there are probably 10 others that could have as much a positive impact in the right environment.

You are presuming OP to be correct..

But what do you know!

Even China itself seems to think pairing up with Russia for economic development is a good idea..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS#New_Development_Bank

Gee I wonder why some of these countries are portrayed negatively or suspiciously in the west..

"The CRA is generally seen as a competitor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and along with the New Development Bank is viewed as an example of increasing South-South cooperation."

Since you are tip-toeing around the actual technology part I assume you have little to argue my assessment.

Otherwise, you have a great chance to overwhelm me with a barrage of easy to find counterexamples of Russian ingenious technological innovations and breakthroughs in the last 20 years. Extra points if it's not some weapons system based on 1970s Soviet platform.

the technology part of someone saying 'economic powerhouse'?

excuse me if i'm confused about who is 'tiptoing'

US was still launching satellites in Kazakhstan, last I checked...

Russia occasionally likes to buy seats at the big table to foster the illusion that they're a world economic power.

Note that South Africa also put up $10B, and isn't even remotely considered a world economic superpower.

Russia's GDP is $1.28T. That makes them the second-smallest of those four countries, with only South Africa being smaller.

China is logically interested in Russia's natural resources and military technology. It's not as if they were proposing an equal partnership.

They have some quite funky military technology for example the mach 6 scramjet Zircon missile http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4557934/Russi...

Or we can resort to protectionism.

Protectionism in some areas is fine. I do not know what would be the correct solution though. It is understandable for China to want their local corps to build base in china ( like wechat, baidu and others ). But at some point they should ease the laws for companies like facebook to be able to operate in China as well.

I'm not certain that you understand how China (as in the People's Republic of China) works. They have a completely different tradition of philosophy and ethics from the west.

Yes, from our perspective, they should ease those laws. From their perspective, there is no disadvantage to them in keeping them in place as long as it is possible. It would literally take international pressure similar to the Eight-Nation Alliance, Boxer War, and "century of humiliation" to temporarily stop China from favoring domestic companies with operating restrictions and to stop sweeping it under the rug whenever those companies blatantly cheat, steal from, and infringe upon the imaginary property of foreigners and foreign corporations.

The existing Chinese government sees international trade partners as resources to be exploited for the benefit of China (and also its government officials, naturally).

Foreign companies are cutting their own throats to try to access the billion people of the Chinese domestic marketplace, and the Chinese companies are catching the blood and making sausages from it. People are going in with Adam Smith in mind, and getting Sun Tzu in response.

Facebook should not be operating in China. It shouldn't even be wanting to operate in China. It either gets eaten by Tencent directly, or Tencent copies every last byte of technology Facebook deploys in China, then the government tweaks their Firewall to block Facebook long enough for people to switch to the copy, and Facebook can no longer compete.

If you are not Chinese, there is no long-term future for your business in China. And in China, that is considered virtuous governance. In the west, fair and non-discriminatory dealings are considered virtuous, but China is not the west. They have been their own thing for thousands of years, and their thing is not your thing.

You can make money in China in the short term, but the only way to continue that into the long term is to viciously protect the secrets of your competitive advantage. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks won't help you. Well written contracts won't save you. The only reasonable way to operate in China is to keep all the critical elements of your operation somewhere else. Never give a Chinese company your source code or engineering documents, unless you want to see your work in a competitor's products.

If you want to work with all those brilliant Chinese people, make it easier for entire families to emigrate to your country. As long as they remain in PRC jurisdiction, or have significant ties back to people remaining in it, they will never truly be working for you, or even with you.

Economic sanctions are pretty much the only tool available to countries that want access to Chinese markets. And they are roughly equivalent to protectionism.

"Fair"; all I care about is being offered the best good or service at the lowest cost.