Among the arrests of alleged Chinese spies last month, one case involving Russia stood out. Security services accused the prominent arctic scientist of selling classified data on technologies for detecting submarines to China. Meanwhile a court in Kazakhstan in October convicted the Central Asia nation’s pre-eminent China specialist of espionage. These two cases, which were made public, suggests an more assertive China has become a concern for nations considered its partners, too. “These are all fragile relationships,” Mr James Dorsey, Senior Fellow at RSIS said of the web of ties between China, Russia and Iran, plus Turkey.