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The ambition of the paper is to analyze the major characteristics of the Chinese energy policy towards the most important producers of natural gas in Chinas neighborhood. The analytical perspectives of a strategic approach to energy security and state-centric realism are used to work with case studies of Sino-Russian and Sino-Turkmen relations from the energy security perspective. The paper concludes that Chinas energy policy towards the given producers in Russia and Turkmenistan comes significantly close to the selected analytical perspectives and that natural gas has become an important part of the strategic considerations of the Chinese political leadership. This conclusion, however, applies more to Turkmenistan and less to Russia, as in the case of the Sino-Russian relations, both parties fail to achieve a mutual complementarity, and economic thinking prevails over Beijing's strategic interests. Adapted from the source document.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) meets the criterions of a multinational state - on its territory there live more than three ethnic groups and with respect to their territorial distribution these nationalities have a certain degree of influence on the internal situation in the PRC. The majority nation in the PRC is comprised of the Han nation (92% of the population according to the 1990 census data). The relatively high homogenity of Chinese population might lead to an underestimation of the ethnic question in contemporary China. As the minority populations inhabit sensitive strategic border areas with rich natural resources, this problem should not be overlooked. (SOI : MO: S. 94)

An examination of the concept of community from theoretical & political perspectives emphasizes the centrality of the question in contemporary societies. The impossibility of community, as one of the radical theses of political theory, is defined against the background of the real limitations of a global world that does not allow for the existence of community. The effectiveness of the thesis of the impossibility of community is tested using H. Kelsen's analysis of the parliamentary concept of democracy. In treating community as a political space where political & judicial systems & cultures meet, Kelsen's definition of community avoids the real manifestations of the world. Kelsen defines revolutions as political catastrophes that evoke the framework of the Other where freedom appears as the destruction of social integration. Adapted from the source document.