VLADIMIR PUTIN and Chinese leader Xi Jinping may have grown closer in recent years to form a powerful anti-Washington axis – but an escalating dispute over logging may cause tension between the nations.
China has been looting the world's largest forest in Siberia for years as a means to obtain valuable timber to supply their economic boom. The resource-rich, scarcely populated region has become an obsession for China at the approval of Putin. However, Beijing's activity has depleted Siberia's logging towns and sparked tensions between Moscow and Beijing.