It is, to say the least, ironic that Putin’s neo-imperial war against Ukraine is, for all the talk of friendship and partnership “without limits” with Beijing, steadily reducing Russia to something close to a Chinese vassal state, a process that may eventually come at a very steep price. For, as far as Beijing is concerned, there is longstanding unfinished business with whoever is in charge in the Kremlin.
As I noted in a Corner post a few years back:
As the world has learned, Putin sees himself as something of a historian. As historians go, he is not the best, but one of these days he should spend some time looking into Chinese views on the “unequal treaties,” a series of 19th century treaties that China was (essentially) forced to sign with stronger powers, conceding this or conceding that.
Many of those treaties, such as that ceding the island of Hong Kong to Britain, have been transformed into irrelevance over the years, even if, in China, their memory still stings. But some of them have left a legacy that still endures, most notably in the delineation of the current Russo-Chinese border. This leaves the large swaths of formerly Chinese territory (including today’s Vladivostok) that had been acquired by the czars under an unequal treaty or two in Russia. That border has been ratified by the current regime in Beijing, and, so long as Russia holds together, there is no likelihood that China would try to change it. Even so, memories of those lost lands endure and will probably play some part in inducing China to make Russia an ever more, well, “unequal” partner.
Those “lost lands” are resource-rich, but compared with the Chinese territory adjacent to them, they are strikingly underpopulated.
Daniel Peris, writing in Engelsberg Ideas:
The current population of the Russian side of the border with China is about four million, with a density of three per kilometre. The population has fallen by approximately 20 per cent since the end of the Soviet Union. In contrast, the main Chinese province facing Russia in the area has 30 million people and a density of 66 per kilometre. While not all of the Chinese are crowded on the banks of the Amur, the contrast is striking. Of the two cities that face one another, Chinese Heihe has 1.2 million residents while Russia’s Blagoveshchensk has a population of 240,000. Satellite maps tell a similar tale: often cultivated, if not crowded, land on the Chinese side, and largely pristine landscapes on the Russian side of the Amur for much of the 1,800 kilometres that separates the two countries.
Moscow is obviously well aware of this and, for that matter, of China’s continuing resentment over Romanov land grabbing, which will not be erased by treaties or professions of friendship. In June, the New York Times published details of a leaked (and apparently authentic) document prepared by a Russian intelligence unit in late 2023 or early 2024, which not only describes Chinese spying on or through Russia, but areas in which Chinese geopolitical ambitions (such as in the Arctic) are at odds with Russia’s. “Revanchist” thinking about the Russian Far East was one concern.
Writing on Medium recently, Oleh Cheslavskyi, a Ukrainian journalist, noted that a week or so ago, there was a post on NetEase, an internet technology company best-known as a developer and provider of online games in which the (Chinese) author discusses what Beijing’s approach should take to the land to China’s north. In his or her view these “seven million square kilometers” are resource-rich territories that a cash-strapped Russia is unable to (properly) exploit or even populate. China can, to the extent it needs to, do both.
As China “only” ceded about a seventh of that amount of land to Russia in the course the 19th century, the author is looking at a project that goes further than reversing that. As it happens, Russia’s entire Far Eastern Federal District covers about seven million square kilometers. Fancy that!
The author does not advocate taking this land by force. According to Cheslavskyi, he or she refers to the danger that such an action would lead to “global encirclement” as happened (sort of, not really) to Russia after the annexation of Crimea. There is also the small matter of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. A better way to go, the author argues, is to deepen Russian (and more specifically the region’s) dependence on China, something that it is well underway.
In itself, the post on NetEase is no big deal, but it is interesting that the author was not worried about putting it up there, and that, as Cheslavskyi observes, it was not censored.
Engelberg’s Peris relates that:
The idea of territorial recovery extends beyond elite politics to popular consciousness. Social media discussions in China frequently reference the territories lost to Russia, often using Chinese names like ‘Haishenwai’ for Vladivostok and ‘Boli’ for Khabarovsk. When Chinese internet users circumvent censorship to express territorial grievances, the Russian lands across the border feature prominently in their discussions. A 2024 comment on Weibo captured this sentiment: ‘According to history, Russia should return us Vladivostok and vast territory stolen 100-something years ago.’
Like Cheslavskyi, Peris does not believe that China will take any of this land any time soon but expects Beijing to keep extending its economic power there, part of a long game. In the meantime, why rock the boat?
As Peris writes, “Russia’s failure in Ukraine has inadvertently made Russia a junior ally in China’s relationship with the West. It suits China to have Russia draining the attention and resources of the West in Ukraine.” There is no reason to mount a direct challenge to the Unequal Treaties. China already has Russia more or less where it wants it and, to quote Peris, the “status quo provides many of the economic and political benefits of territorial control without the risks and costs of a formal transfer.”
That’s right, I think. It is not easy to see how Putin can get out from underneath China’s thumb even in the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine. The result unfortunately, will be to help China become an even more formidable rival to the U.S. than it already is.