“China Isn’t Conquering Russia, It’s Just Leasing It.”

This was said by geopolitical expert Parag Khanna during his spot at TED, July, 2009. Khanna was speaking about sovereign borders and how they evolve.

Now I'm not so sure about the "leasing" theory. Ironically, like the Russians, when the Chinese want something, it's often merely expropriated. I've written before about Russia's dramatic population decline and related headaches with territorial integrity. The Kremlin regularly gets upset about The West not meddling in its so-called Sphere of Influence and having a pathological need for a buffer between it and Europe. But this supposed territorial threat is at least secondary to the one posed by the Chinese in South-East Russia. Putin surely realises now that the Chinese don't play as nice in the sandpit as The West. Alarmingly (for the Russians), Russia desperately lacks the population, (non-nuclear) military, internal infrastructure and other resources to do much about all of this than put on a good show of plugging the holes as they appear. As Khanna says, "independence without infrastructure is futile".

The "lease" he speaks of is much more a very long leasehold. And as any property valuer knows, in practice a very long leasehold is analogous to a freehold.