Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. During the Cold War, many assumed that Beijing and Moscow were aligned. However, Mao Zedong was wary of the threats posed by Soviet hegemony and remained so even as China’s relations with the US improved after Nixon’s visit in 1972. Russia has long been an adversary of China. The Tsars wrested Mongolia from the Qing and seized Dalian. In 1944, Stalin sent troops into Xinjiang, and Soviet and People’s Liberation Army soldiers sparred in conflicts in Manchuria in the 1960s. While relations have improved drastically , one should not assume an alliance exists between Beijing and Moscow. The trust between Russia and China is greatly exaggerated by the West. Russian aggression in Ukraine is a threat to Chinese strategic interests. Having suffered for over a century at the hands of colonisers and having been forced to make concessions, China finds any external meddling in a nation’s sovereignty disconcerting. More importantly, China is worried about the precedent Russia is trying to set. Unilateral recognition of separatist movements in Ukraine is exactly what China fears will happen in Taiwan. If Russian President Vladimir Putin can swoop into Ukraine and declare the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent countries, what is to keep Washington from doing the same with Taiwan? China wants to defend the status quo, and Putin has threatened this balance. The United States has been up in arms about China’s abstention during the Security Council vote to condemn Russia. However, China is not playing favourites. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the world reacted in a similar fashion. France and Russia banded together and pledged to veto any resolutions proposed by the United States. Many European countries, like Germany, condemned the US, leading to deterioration in relations between the Nato powers. However, China remained neutral and signalled its intention to abstain from Security Council votes on going to war. China issued a statement stressing the importance of sovereignty and encouraging all parties to find a diplomatic solution. The Chinese response to the Iraq war was virtually identical to its response to the Ukraine war , but no one ever claimed that China was secretly helping Washington. This brings us back to the present. By remaining neutral , China has created an opportunity for back-door negotiations between the West and the Kremlin. Rather than embrace the possibility of China facilitating dialogue, the US is choosing to demonise China. As the US continues to stick to its stubborn “with us or against us” stance , the possibility of a diplomatic solution in Ukraine fades. Timothy Wong, Central Taxpayer money wasted on defeating ‘paper tiger’ Russia By labelling the conflict “Putin’s war”, the article by Thomas O. Falk implies that it was launched according to the Russian president’s whim (“Putin’s war has woken Europeans from security slumber”, March 18). Any responsible Russian leader would have fought back against Nato expansion. Yes, the anti-Russia hysteria whipped up by Western media has united Europe in a stupid policy of greater “defence” spending, when battlefield results show that Russian forces have barely entered a country smaller than the US state of Texas. Russia is a paper tiger. The losers are always the taxpayers. The winner is the US military-industrial complex. Bruce Weintraub, New York