Thanks to an accident of geography, Russia is sitting on 50,000 bcm (billion cubic meters) of natural gas. Assuming the Russians keep half the gas to themselves for internal consumption while exporting the rest, in theory there is enough gas to build the capacity equivalent of Ten Nord stream gas pipelines. Now that the relationship with Europe and the pipeline is "damaged" Russia has few options left.
Maybe China can make an offer the Russians cannot refuse, a once in a 100 year opportunity for its energy supplies.
China "needs" Russia's help, but not for its navy.
If there's going to be a confrontation with the USA the biggest help the Russians can offer the Chinese is access to energy.
But China is planning to end hydrocarbon imports in the next 10-15 years.
There is currently a huge ramp of solar polysilicon plants in China to about 3 million tonnes per year, which should be completed by 2025.
That would be enough for 1000+ GW of solar panels annually, producing 1000+ TWh of electricity.
China currently consumes 8000 TWh of electricity per year. Realistically half of this could be covered through solar. And this solar would be used to displace coal and gas mainly.
Now, the solar electricity should be cheaper than coal and definitely gas. But the problem is ramping up energy storage.
However, if all vehicles in China became electric in 15 years time, we'd be talking about say 300 million vehicles.
If those vehicles have an average battery pack of 50 KWh, that's 15 TWh of batteries on the roads.
That would be enough to balance current electricity demand of 22 TWh daily.