China and Russia share a land border of more than 2,600 miles, an interminable stretch of birch forest separating mainly the Russian Far East from Chinese Manchuria, whose particulars were formally agreed upon only in the last decade. In 1969, the dispatch of about 30 Soviet divisions to this border, and China’s deployment of 59 divisions in response, deepened the Chinese-Soviet split and allowed for President Richard Nixon’s opening to China and his détente with the Soviet Union.

In few areas is the Russian state so feeble as in its far east. The ethnic Russian population is only an estimated 6 million. Chinese migrants are moving steadily north into this vastly underpopulated Siberian back-of-beyond, rich in the natural gas, oil, timber, diamonds and gold that China covets. China lost part of this region to Russia only in the 19th century, when the Qing dynasty was in its death throes, and the rest in the 20th century.

At the same time, China is vanquishing Russia in Central Asia. In the last decade, the China National Petroleum Corporation has become Central Asia’s main energy player. China pumps Kazakh oil to Europe and also to China through a pipeline, and the Chinese transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to western China. Chinese money has also been coursing through Central Asia to build power grids and transportation infrastructure, altering the landscape and forming the backbone of the One Belt, One Road plan.

The prize is Iran. Lying at the other end of Central Asia from China, Iran has 80 million people and straddles the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, providing Beijing with the incentive to build rail lines through the Iranian plateau, make energy deals with Tehran, use Chinese state companies to excavate Iranian mines, and send armies of entrepreneurs there. Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union, including Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, was formed in 2014 to counter China’s growing influence in Eurasia.

Russia is not only losing out to China in its far east and Central Asia, but in Europe, too. While Moscow has been undermining the independence of the former Soviet republics in the Baltic and Black Sea basins through subversion and military incursions, Beijing has been strengthening trade ties throughout Europe. The Trump administration’s aversion to free trade — combined with its apparent ambivalence about defending European allies — has provided China with an opportunity in Europe, further enhancing Beijing’s plans for the western terminus of One Belt, One Road. China’s gains will weaken not only American influence in Europe, but Russian influence, too.