Almost all of those Russian exports go by sea, not land. They’re coming from the wrong end of Russia and the rail links have very limited capacity. China has been trying to get that upgraded as part of belt and a road, but it’s been slow going and far more expensive than they thought and much of the capacity that does exist goes through the stans. A decent capacity gas pipeline only got approved after the Ukraine war and will take a decade or more to get operational.

Drones are too slow and too short range to be anything more than a near coastal threat. China’s sea lane supply routes stretch from south China all the way to the Persian gulf, Suez and round Africa. Only a real global navy can secure shipping across that sort of territory, and only the USA has a real global navy on that scale these days.

Also where are all the Chinese naval bases to support such operations? The US and its allies have naval bases peppered over that whole area. China has one in Djibouti. It’s their only overseas naval base.

> The US and its allies have naval bases peppered over that whole area.

Is this the "Chinese aggression" I’ve been hearing so much about?

The primary mission of the US navy globally is to guarantee freedom of navigation for everyone in international waters. That includes for shipping to and from China. The Chinese know this very well. The truth is Chinese and US commercial and strategic interests align almost completely in practice because their economies complement each other much more than they compete and their strategic dependencies are mostly shared (Gulf oil being a biggie), the problems are political.

They're major political problems for sure and they lead to strong economic rivalry for geopolitical reasons, but take away the political dimension and they'd be natural allies, IMHO. It's the same way that Japan and the USA went from being direct competitors to natural allies after WW2. Before WW2 that would have been unimaginable, after WW2 it became obvious. I think it's the same with China.

Also Russia actually, it's why the Ukraine invasion caught the USA completely by surprise. They just don't see what Russia could possibly gain from it because they view the world in commercial terms. If Russia was a liberal democracy them and the USA would be best friends ever, but authoritarian regimes must have enemies in order to justify their repression.

You cannot speak coherently about geopolitics without discussing currency politics and financial hegemony. What defines US geopolitical relationships is not whether a country is "authoritarian" but how it relates to the petrodollar/IMF/World Bank global financial system. A government can behave however it wants and never be bothered by the US as long as it submits its economy to this system. This explains why some oil-rich countries are sworn enemies of the US and some aren't much better than "freedom and democracy".

What defines China specifically as a malign actor from the US perspective is that it is offering countries outside the West a second choice for how to finance and pursue development. The mere presence of this competition is a mortal threat to the entire established order.

I think you're vastly underestimating the havoc that can be wrought by a single submarine briefly surfacing near a carrier group, belching out a giant swarm of expendable drones and disappearing under the waves again.