These images lead them to be willing to defy world opinion, whenever their interests seem to them impinged. It also explains their other national priorities in addition to the maintenance and strengthening of their armed forces. Russia and China are desperately anxious to ensure the integrity of their present national boundaries, and in China's case, to reunify with the major national area still outside, Taiwan. They want serious and rapid improvement in their economic machinery and productivity. And they want to strike strategic bargains with specific other countries to guarantee their world roles.
China seeks to gain a relationship of political parity and comity with Japan and the United States.
It offers the latter economic links, both as producer and consumer. What they hope to get in return is significant improvement in their productive infrastructure plus a long-term reduction in the U.S. military presence in East Asia. China would like in addition some form of reunification of the Korean peninsula, if for no other reason than that it might lead to this reduction of the U.S. military role in East Asia. China is at the moment more self-confident than Russia, but this could be temporary. Russia is hurting badly from the rapidity of the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and from the economic chaos that the unrestrained entry into Russia of world market sctors has wreaked upon it.