If China bought the Russian Far East...

The story compared a sale of Siberia to China to the Louisiana Purchase, but a better comparison would be Seward's Folly, the sale of Alaska for $7 million. The Louisiana Territory was sold by its overseas colonial occupier. In this hypothetical sale, Russia would be selling vast land to a neighbor it sometimes quarrels with. I wouldn't expect the Russians to repeat Seward's Folly.

Not just quarrels with. Hates passionately.

perhaps, Ivan, you could bring up some opinion polls to justify what you percieve to be such common wisdom? Something like "what do you think of China" asked to the russian population?

From what i hear, the denizens of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok have no special love of china. In fact, they cannot stand them.

things like the 2005 jilin chemical plant explosion and the contamination of Khabarovsk water supply really don't endear china much t_co.

I dare say that siberian and far east russians would fight tooth and nail from a chinese purchase. It would be seen as an expansion - considering the reputation the PR of C has for doctoring claims to lands that they have no right to, the backlash by russians would be strong. it would encourage, as t_co (the imposter) so elequantly put it "rabid russian nationalism". and it may well be justified.

how do the russian minorities in china currently get treated? second rate citizens? is their a russian orthadox church in the beijing minorities theme park for chinese to gawk at? how strong is the segregation in russian cities currently within china, such as haerbin?

Considering that the average citizen of the RFE has a per capita income twice that of the average citizen of China's Northeast, then they would most likely be treated like HKers rather than Tibetans, if you get my drift.