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Following the recent deterioration of relations between Russia and the West over crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is growing stronger. In 2014, the two nations signed an unprecedented gas deal worth US$400 billion. In May 2015, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed to coordinate the Moscow-led EEU with China’s Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). Following these developments, authors and journalists heralded a new era in Sino-Russian relations in which the two nations would consolidate their forces to counter a US-led unipolar world. However, the nature of the relationship between China and Russia, the prospects for closer cooperation between the two nations, and the feasibility of integrating the two grand Eurasian projects are topics of fierce debate. This article maintains that while a consensus between Moscow and Beijing with regard to post-Cold War US unilateralism and their convergent interests have pushed China and Russia to cooperate on a range of global and regional issues, relations between the two Eurasian neighbours are complex and multi-faceted and are far from forming an anti-US bloc. Furthermore, the abstract nature of China’s Silk Road initiative and a number of significant obstacles make the feasibility of integration between the two projects a complicated task. Issues explored by this article include the development of mechanisms and agreement on a format for cooperation between the nations involved; the solution of practical issues such as rail gauges and corruption in the region; the prospects for an “equal partnership” in Sino-Russian relations and Moscow’s predicament with regards to its position as “junior partner” in Eurasia; and last but not least, the ever-growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism and regional security.

The Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border remains one of the last undefined frontiers in the Commonwealth of Independent States, where the governments are reluctant to act against the wishes of their border communities and force delimitation solutions that may cause social protests. Uncertainty of territorial arrangements persists; however, the era of commonality and interdependence may be at its end due to the establishment of a border as a means of spatial control. Border drawing reflects the divergent development trajectories of the new states, seeking to break out of an interdependence pattern. Borderlands’ interactions become more conflictual. Generation change and a loss of common language work to widen the inter-communal gap. Ethnicity and identity factors grew in significance as association with the nation-states increased, and a border expresses a symbol of nationhood in this paradigm. Crucially, a border justifies a security regime, reinforced by international assistance policies, to project power over the territory. Actions of security structures cause grievances but also signify a protective arm of the state, a role that the border communities appreciate, themselves acting as a collective border guard and projecting their fears of encroachment onto the borders. The expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union became a new factor that could have served to alleviate the pressure to divide territory and assets, but this could work only if two countries joined it at the same period. With this option unavailable, a territorial impasse has been reached.