China's biggest challenge is ecology and with that, natural resources. It is a mountainous country with human habitation mostly in narrow valleys except for a f

China's biggest challenge is ecology and with that, natural resources. It is a mountainous country with human habitation mostly in narrow valleys except for a few large river valleys and deltas. And it has too many people. This is likely to lead to ecological collapse in one way or another. One way to stave that off would be to subordinate themselves to Russia so that Russia provides raw materials and therefore China doesn't have to dig up so many mountains, but that doesn't solve all the ecological issues.