[quote=Ampharos]This is opportunism more than anything
[/quote]

Obviously.

China has a reason to want war with Russia. With the Taiping rebellion having magically ended several years early, they have the physical capacity for such a war as well. [b]I don't have a problem with China hungrily eyeing eastern Russia, I have a problem with China not eyeing Japan's possessions in the west just as hungrily[/b]. The China-Japan alliance is purely a machination of OOC negotiations; the two nation's governments and citizens hold each other in contempt, and any amount of warmness between them (much less a full fledged alliance) is unrealistic. Should they be as hostile towards each other as they would be if this were during or after the SIno-Japanese wars? Obviously not, but they definitely shouldn't be warm neighbours.

As So Boerd has pointed out, China has just as much to gain from siding with Russia as against them. We're only a few years after the Second Opium War, and now China is joining with the French and British in a large-scale armed conflict? Chinese participation in the War of the Eighth Coalition is grounds for an early Boxer Rebellion.