The article is devoted to the comparison of national interests and priorities of China and Russia. As for China, the focus is on how Deng Xiaoping’s team managed to attract transnational corporations to the country’s development and, with their active participation, to industrialize and create a powerful high-tech sector. At the same time, the author emphasizes Beijing’s very flexible foreign policy aimed at creating the most favorable conditions for the country’s development. Concerning Russia, A.V. Kiva points out that two diametrically opposed revolutions in the twentieth century have dealt a strong blow to its national interests. This is the Socialist revolution of 1917 and the anti-communist revolution of 1991. Both revolution did not enrich, but impoverish the potential of the country, accumulated by previous generations. The author believes that this was the result of the transfer onto the national soil of social models of development created in other countries.