Supposedly in the Far East there is a rapidly growing Chinese population -- both legal and illegal (I think Chita, Amurskii, and Primorskii primarily?). I don't know if anybody TRULY knows what it is -- I've heard both that nationalists inflate it dramatically to scare people with an "invasion" of foreigners and that the government doesn't really know how big it is. Who really knows? But it is an issue in the rest of Russia, too. There was some controversy when the St. Petersburg governor announced plans for the creation of a "China town" section of SPb. And as for a relationship with the Chinese government, google "Shanghai Cooperation Organization."