China's growing assertiveness has become a concern for its partners, too.

One event last month stood out in the daily drumbeat of arrests of suspected Chinese spies. This did not include the US or another China competitor, but Russia, whose security services have accused a prominent Arctic scientist of selling sensitive data on submarine detection technologies.

Meanwhile, in October, a court in Kazakhstan convicted the influential China spy specialist of the Central Asian country, a development widely interpreted at the time as a warning against increased interference by the next door superpower.

All people maintain their innocence and Moscow will certainly do the same if China spies on Russia. Nonetheless, the fact that the two incidents have been made public suggests that a more assertive China has also become a problem for nations considered their allies.

Countries like Russia, Iran, and Kazakhstan still need investment, trade, and sometimes diplomatic support from Beijing, while retaining some economic independence and following often contradictory foreign-policy goals.

You can verify any detail of Chinese companies here by doing a company search.

“These partnerships are all delicate,” James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said about the network of relations between China, Russia, Iran, plus Turkey. “It was incredibly nice to find common ground and handle disagreements but it is also opportunistic.”

Much of the emphasis has been on China’s economic partners in the so-called Global West — from the US to Europe to Australasia — as they scale back once enthusiastic commitments in the face of the concern at the heavy handed-over response of President Xi Jinping to Covid-19, including the emergence of so-called wolf warrior diplomacy, plus Beijing’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

The K.U. The decision to allow tech giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to develop parts of the nation’s critical 5 G networks has recently been reversed and an extradition deal with Hong Kong has been suspended. France and Germany are calling for greater scrutiny of international — especially Chinese — investment in the European Union, which last year labeled China a “systemic competitor.”

Between China’s strategic partners there is no such recoil. Russia is working on a 5 G Rollout with Huawei. Iran is attempting to conclude an agreement that would promise Chinese investment of $400 billion as well as weapons sales in exchange for discounted oil, according to the draft agreement’s as yet unverified leaks.

Russia doesn’t feel threatened because right now, according to Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies, China can ill afford to alienate a neighbor who is a significant military and resource force in its own right.

Still, “Russia ‘s government and experts have, of course, noted a major shift in Chinese diplomacy and action that has escalated over the past several months and particularly during the Covid-19 crisis,” Kashin says, adding the potential for greater risk-taking by China to create problems in Russia’s third-country relations. “We are on the lookout.”

Take India, Russia’s largest weapons sales market, where fighting along a contested border with China in June resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers, the worst such incident in four decades. Although that flare-up has moderated since then, “it’s very likely that the Chinese side ‘s new politics led to the actions of Chinese commanders in the field,” says Kashin.

The clash was uncomfortable for Russia, which held a virtual conference of foreign ministers from the three countries to try to de-escalate the crisis. India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh then flew to Moscow to push for a $5-billion accelerated delivery of advanced S-400 air defense systems, reportedly scheduled for December 2021. In 2018 China ‘s got its first S-400s.

Similar tensions apply in Vietnam, another long-term Russian security partner, where state-owned oil and gas major Rosneft PJSC has a joint venture exploring waters within the exclusive economic zone of 200 miles (322 km) claimed by China. A Chinese vessel buzzed last year at a Japanese rig Rosneft had leased for the project.

There is no evidence that all of this is compromising the relationship between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in general. According to Alexander Lukin, a prominent Russian author on China and head of the international affairs department of the Moscow Higher School of Economics, the two have a mutual understanding of their freedom to act with third countries.

“But it wouldn’t be profitable for Russia if it comes to a serious conflict, of course, so it would have to choose,” Lukin said. Last week, India prepared to transfer a further 35,000 troops to the so-called actual control line.

Meanwhile, the still undisclosed Iran agreement has caused considerable controversy in Tehran. Opponents — including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — accuse the government of selling off the sovereignty of the country.

“On the surface, a more assertive China that is willing to take chances in its relationship with the US is good for Iran, it is really good,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Only a hollow promise of investments that could ease the burden on sanctions can be leveraged in the relations between the Islamic Republic and the US and Europe, she said.

At the same time, however, past experience indicates both that real Chinese investment will fall significantly short of any promised amount, and that Iran will not do something that threatens its sovereignty, leaving both sides disappointed. “Iran needs political and economic diversification, at the end of the day,” Vakil said.

the year Iran, India, Russia, and Azerbaijan have taken two crucial steps to complete the long-awaited International North-South Transport Corridor – their own Belt and Road-style project – for a ship-and-rail freight path from India to Northern Russia.

The corridor would also connect Kazakhstan, often identified as the “buckle” in the Belt and Road Initiative by China. Even so, the Kazakh government has found itself on the receiving end of the wolf warrior diplomacy that has arisen since the pandemic from some Chinese ambassies. Most recently, the embassy in Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, reported a more deadly unknown pneumonia than Covid-19 had broken out in that region.

Tensions over what China saw as Kazakhstan’s harboring of some Muslims who had fled from Xinjiang’s Uighur re-education camps across the border have also risen last year. It was then that Konstantin Syroyezhkin, a China expert at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Kazakh presidency, was arrested and convicted for espionage.

“Indeed these are fellow authoritarian states but they are also self-interested states,” said Parag Khanna, author of “The Future is Asian: 21st Century Trade, Conflict & Culture.” Remembering the desire of partners to defect in game theory, he said: “Everything seems to be secure until it is not.”