The public outcry and a trial underway in Bishkek have exposed Chinese business practices and local corruption to months of intense scrutiny from Kyrgyzstan’s boisterous news media and elected politicians. The scandal also highlights a tectonic shift underway in the economics and geopolitics of Central Asia, a vast, resource-rich expanse of desert, steppe and mountains that Russia has viewed as its turf for centuries.

Fierce rivals during the Soviet era who fought a dangerous border conflict in 1969, Russia and China settled into something of a cold peace in subsequent decades. Lately, though, the two nations have made a great show of drawing together strategically and commercially, a relationship fueled primarily by tensions with the United States and its Western allies.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and the man he recently described as his “best friend,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, last month traded smiles and gibes about the United States during trips to Central Asia. They both attended a meeting in Kyrgyzstan of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group of regional states established by China, and then met again in neighboring Tajikistan, where Mr. Putin gave the Chinese leader a birthday gift of ice cream.

Despite the growing ties, however, a deep-seated rivalry remains between the two former adversaries, one that this case exposes.