China's geopolitical dilemma

What if war games: What would happen to China iff the Russian Federation ceased to exist?

This question is in my mind ever since the Ukraine crisis began to take shape. WHY? Because nobody talks openly about it, but you can infer it from 

Ominously, the war in Ukraine reminds me of the Spanish Civil War of 1936. It is a proxy war, where the real antagonists don't fight each other directly. Others fight, and die, for them, and the cities destroyed are not theirs. It has an air of being simultaneously a TV show, a war game, and a vast geopolitical gamble. The Spanish Civil War was also the anteroom to the Second World War.