[sparky]

.
@ Keith_McClary , yes , that's more or less my line of though ,
the curse of success for a state is grow or stagnate
most try to grow , more resources , manpower , more contact with other states , like a bubble expanding
The European story has been of expansion , then stasis , now it's the down slope ,
a bit like Austria between the world wars , a grand imperial city of Vienna with no empire resources to sustain it and a belief in one's greatness out of step with reality

[AdamB]

Russia remained the top crude oil supplier to China in January, data showed, beginning 2018 on a strong note after the start-up of an expanded trans-Siberia pipeline and as Beijing released more crude import quotas to independent refiners. Angola and Iraq took the second and third positions for the month, leapfrogging Saudi Arabia, which was the second-largest supplier to China in 2017. Russian supplies came in at 5.67 million tonnes, or 1.34 million barrels per day (bpd), up 23.4 percent from a year earlier, data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs showed on Saturday. The January number compared with 1.194 million bpd in December. Last month, data showed Russia notched up its second year as China’s largest supplier in 2017, surpassing Saudi Arabia - OPEC’s top exporter - by some 150,000 barrels each day. The strong Russian exports to the world’s largest crude oil

Russia remains China’s top oil supplier as pipeline expands