China’s hatred for Russia is growing.
As China’s Communist Party Congress drew to a close, China’s “Superior Leader” Xi Jinping emerged stronger than ever before. Allowing himself a third five-year term, the remnants of any internal opposition were ceremonially removed from the chamber. With Xi’s solid power base, the West is slipping into the fainting seat, anticipating that Xi’s rigid approach to China’s territorial ambitions will degenerate into a military conflict over Taiwan, an important link in the strategic “first island chain” in the Pacific.
The threat is exaggerated. Although party delegates have added a new anti-Taiwanese language to the Communist Party’s constitution, the real territorial opportunity for China is in the North, in the Russian Far East, where hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese Russian citizens are trapped in a significantly weakened and hollow region. dictatorship, consider your options.
Taiwan is an obvious target for China’s territorial expansion, but it’s a tough nut to crack. Self-governing China since 1949 considers Taiwan a rebel province, while Taiwan considers itself an independent country. President Xi expected reunification to occur by 2049 at the latest, and he used this target date to promote massive military reforms and rapid modernization. Some timid Western observers fear that, facing demographic and economic headwinds, China is accelerating the “timeline” for reunification and may take concrete military action to seize the rebels’ territory in the next few years.
It can. But if China’s modern efforts at territorial expansion have taught observers anything, it is that China’s expansionism is opportunistic, and its leaders prefer to expand into contentious or loosely held areas. Instead of fighting, China is snatching. And with Russia’s conventional forces deployed in Ukraine, the best strategic turnaround comes from pressing north along China’s 2,615-mile border with Russia and seizing land there.
Tanks to protect Russia’s long border with China are being razed in Ukraine.
A Boundless Friendship with Boundary Issues
Before Russia’s debacle in Ukraine, China and Russia declared an “unlimited” friendship. But both countries know that friendship agreements are fragile things. Less than two decades after China and the Soviet Union signed their last treaty of friendship, the two countries engaged in a series of sharp border wars. Expansion-minded Chinese nationalists, coupled with China’s growing and barely concealed disdain for Russia’s weakness, have the power to erode Russia and China’s current rapprochement within minutes.
The foundations of conflict are deep. While China and Russia have been arguing and fighting over their common borders for centuries, the “official” solution, as it stands, only came in 2008. For a century-old border conflict that preceded the official presence of both nations, China could easily be overthrown. Existing agreements demand that Russia return Vladivostok and the 23,000 square miles of former Chinese territory Russia has held since 1860.
Despite agreements stating that all major issues have been resolved, China is keeping all expansionist options open. China is still feeding the grievances simmering quietly. Vladivostok, Russia’s military and commercial gateway to the Pacific, is still identified in China by the city’s ancient Chinese name, Haishenwai, or “sea cucumber bay.” Chinese resentment at the age-old treaties that form China’s northern border remains a society-wide foundation. There has been speculation for years that the massive demographic imbalance between China and Russia’s depopulated Far East might encourage Beijing to pressurize the north.
There is a basis for a northern territorial claim – albeit weakly – to an even larger part of Russia’s far Eastern regions. Chinese historical records show that Chinese explorers reached the Arctic during the Tang Dynasty, if not earlier, allowing China to break Russia’s territorial legitimacy. Even if the claims are exaggerated, mental gymnastics will be beneficial. Obtaining a foothold—any foothold—in the north of the Arctic circle allows China to formally claim the status of an Arctic power, if not an Arctic power.
378527 18: Chinese market in the Russian Far East.
Right time
Globally, China has made great efforts to minimize differences between Chinese ethnicity and Chinese nationality. As Russia’s far east wrestles with economic recession, ignored by Russia’s Moscow elite, many of Russia’s citizens of Chinese ethnicity may be tempted to reconsider their national allegiances. The forced resettlement of Ukrainians in the region will further destabilize the social homogeneity of Asian Russia.
Demographically, with only two or three people per square kilometer, the vast expanses of Asian Russia are essentially empty, ready for annexation and easy settlement. The remaining Russian citizens vote largely with their feet and move westward to the more glamorous cities of European Russia. In a few years there won’t be many ethnic Russians left in the eastern parts of Russia.
With a large amount of open space, Asian Russia is resource-rich and capable of fueling China’s rise in the coming decades. And with climate change, the dismal eastern lands of Asian Russia may yet bloom, turning into a much-needed Asian breadbasket.
With Russia’s military reputation tarnished and the Russian Army reduced to begging for supplies from a motley band of Iran and former Soviet states, little is left in the traditional Russian arsenal to deter Chinese military aggression. In desperation, Russia is re-enabling the same type of T-62 main battle tanks that China captured from Russian border forces nearly fifty years ago. It will become increasingly difficult for China to underestimate Russia’s military.
Asia Russia is open to shooting. With the skillful application of Gray Zone provocations and the deft exploitation of negative global sentiment towards the Putin Regime, China can rapidly change “facts on the ground”, leaving Russia’s nuclear deterrence behind and basically leaving Russia a prostrate who has no choice but to accept it. a regional fait accompli. Over the next few years, with Russia serving as a slightly more unarmed and unstable pariah state, China could claim all of Siberia overnight and no one would make much fuss.
Very useful for Taiwan China
Taiwan Can Wait
Modern China has learned that it can often win without a fight. Today, Supreme Leader Xi has enough power to back up his provocative territorial claims. On the other hand, China neither needs nor wants a struggle that will mobilize global resistance like Ukraine. The math is not working. Robbing a dying Russia to the bone currently offers a far greater return on investment than viciously pushing Taiwan in the short term.
Russia will never be weaker than it is today, and Taiwan’s stances may change over time.
Of course, a threatening attitude towards Taiwan is a useful tool. The government’s aggressive stance unifies China, while the sustained military push offers good operational training for Chinese forces. A credible Chinese threat to Taiwan also draws a disproportionate amount of Western attention, distorting Western state management and military investment priorities. In competition with the West, Taiwan is an extremely useful distraction that feeds America’s tactical obsessions while distracting America’s strategic focus in other critical areas.
If China moves on Taiwan in the near term, widespread conflict is inevitable. But if China grabs ground to the North, it has access to new resources, new protein stocks, and in turn it may very, very little feed the aggrieved country’s sense of “Clear Destiny”. Xi may even gain reluctant international respect for helping remove a rogue Russian leader from the board.
China’s pressure to retake Asian Russia makes sense. While Taiwan offers China little more than contention, it offers far more profitable options to a press, hungry and expansion-minded Chinese state to drive Russia out of Asia.
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