Does China Covet the Russian Far East?
Why Moscow needs to keep itself interesting to Beijing if it wants to keep together.
Dear all
On Sunday we saw the Belarusian government arrange the diversion of a Lithuania-bound Ryanair plane so that it could take into custody a known dissident and opponent of the Lukashenko regime.
On the face of it, this has little to do with what China wants. However, it is part of a pattern that is increasingly been taken by a number of non-Western nations, that of ignoring international (i.e. Western-originated) norms. This includes Belarus’ major ally Russia – who broke numerous conventions in its 2014 invasion of Crimea – and of course China, which has been busily reinventing the world over the last decade.
As I have mentioned before, it is plain to see that China and Russia are attempting to form some kind of anti-Western alliance. But what is important to note is that there is a lot of potential grist in the mill in terms of the relationship between these two “bear nations” (the brown bear and the panda – and yes, I know it’s not really a bear).
Today I’m going to go into more detail about potentially one of the most important challenges that awaits, the status of the Russian Far East.
Rich in resources but poor in population, it could be everything China needs to support its own people. The question is, how realistic is it to say that China covets this integral part of Mother Russia?
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Many thanks for reading.
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In 2015 an internet documentary called “China – a Deadly Friend,” went viral across Russia with claims that Chinese tanks could roll into a major city of Russia’s Far East, Khabarovsk, in under 30 minutes. The public concern that the film generated was in fact nothing new; for decades there has been anxiety in the Russian population about Chinese aspirations for their land. I had seen this with my own eyes when I travelled around Siberia in 2004, where the general sentiment was that the Chinese would eventually absorb the eastern-most third of Russia.
This view is hardly surprising when the disparity in population is noted. The Russian Far East (RFE), an area almost the size of Australia, is home to just 6.3 million people; the three Chinese provinces that border the RFE have a joint population of 110 million. This is an imbalance that is only getting worse, as tens of thousands of Russians leave the RFE each year.
Then there are the resources. The RFE contains a third of Russia’s coal reserves, 30% of its forests, and 40% of its fish and seafood. The region is the source of 98% of the country’s diamonds, 90% of its borax, and 50% of its gold. All of this is in theory attractive to China, which is a net importer of almost all the commodities it needs to fuel its long-standing boom.
One area of specific interest to China is the electricity-generating potential of the RFE. Russia ranks second in the world for undeveloped hydropower resources, and much of this potential lies in the vast network of rivers and lakes of the RFE. This has not gone unnoticed in Beijing.
In April this year China published a study that called for the creation of a northeast Asian international power grid. The aim of such a grid, said Chinese scientists, was to use these untapped water resources of the RFE, as well as the solar potential of the China/Mongolia Gobi Desert, to provide renewable energy to the region that would be as cheap as coal. Such would be its potential that the report called for countries like Japan and South Korea – which are closer to Washington than Beijing – to join it.
Even though Russia would be a major contributor to such a grid, the report was written very much with the expectation that it would be China that controlled the network. This would leave it in command of much of the electricity supply of its neighbours, including two of America’s leading allies - a useful tool of geopolitical influence.
The RFE is useful for less lofty reasons too, for example food. Despite its reputation as the land of trees and snow, the RFE has good agricultural potential – and China is taking advantage of that. The BBC has calculated that there are 2.2 million hectares under cultivation in the RFE, of which 353,000 hectares are leased and owned by Chinese companies. In the breakup of the Soviet Union many of the collective farms were simply handed over to Chinese investors, netting the Russian middlemen handy sums, but leaving the workers with foreign owners.
There are those who are suspicious of claims about China’s encroachment. Xiaochen Su, a Japan-based researcher on immigration issues, has pointed out that the low level of economic opportunities in Russia have dissuaded many Chinese from moving across the border.
According to Su, Chinese traders in the region claim that it has become less profitable over the past few years, citing local consumers’ waning purchasing power as the primary cause. More specifically, they point out that the Russian rouble has lost half its value relative to the dollar since 2014, making goods imported from China more expensive for locals suffering stagnant nominal wages. The local consumer base is shrinking fast thanks to depopulation, with little prospect for a sustained rebound in the future. As profits suffer, many of the traders close up shop and leave Russia for good, with ever fewer newcomers to replace them. The population statistics would seem to back this. According to Russia’s 2010 census, the number of Chinese living in the country was just 29,000, down from 35,000 in 2002, and no more than 0.5 per cent of the total population of the RFE. That said, there are those who say that the unofficial figures of Chinese could be as much as 500,000 in the region.
Population encroachment aside, there is a significant question of whether annexing the lands of an ally in the short or even medium term would be an advantage considering China’s other needs. Beijing has made it clear that the Han-isation and integration of its far western provinces Tibet and Xinjiang are the priority, one which would be watered down if it had to look north as well.
Besides, it is highly likely that Beijing can get all it wants out of the RFE without having to take it over. The reason is money.
Moscow has announced that the development of the RFE is a strategic imperative for the 21st century. The problem is, Russia’s stagnant economy, only slightly larger than Spain’s, cannot afford to do this alone.
In previous years Moscow would have looked to Europe and America for funding. But the raft of sanctions that have applied to Russia in recent years have left Moscow wary of economically relying on Western sources of finance. This was underlined in April when Joe Biden ordered more sanctions, including on buying new sovereign debt, in response to accusations of Russian hacking.
China, on the other hand, has the money and the desire to help.
A useful analogy as to how Russia and China could come together in the RFE is to be found in the Arctic. As I wrote about here, the two nations are cooperating in plans to build up the infrastructure needed to take advantage of the sea lanes opening up with the melting of the Arctic ice cap. Russian land and expertise is being funded by Chinese money to the aspirational benefit of both. This is exactly the model that Russia is likely envisaging for its RFE, as its plans for the renewable energy supergrid show.
Russia and China have a long and complicated history. After the first, 1689 treaty between them that put a cap on Russian encroachment on Imperial Chinese lands, the two countries settled down into relatively harmonious relations. This peace was destroyed by Russia’s annexation of 600,000 km2 in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, but ties were improved over the next century. The Sino-Soviet split of 1960, caused in the main by an argument between Chairman Mao and Khrushchev, might have led to a brief border war in 1969, but the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship is meant to have brought permanent amity to the bears.
The question is, how long will this last? At the moment both capitals see strong advantages to their alliance, no doubt helped by the good relationship between Putin and Xi. This closeness, however, is unlikely to last because what Russia and China want won’t always match.
The nineteenth century British statesman Lord Palmerston said of his country’s foreign policy, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. This is almost certainly something that Beijing would agree with. Russia would be well advised to keep itself as interesting as possible to China, and for as long as possible - because when their interests start to diverge, a richer, more powerful China in need of resources may make some painful demands on the integrity of Mother Russia.
Excellent article. Another factor that will be increasingly pertinent in Sino-Russian relations would be who succeeds both Putin and Xi Jinping. Both countries are ruled under an autocratic one-man strongman-style system (regardless of their nominal trappings of government-by-group-consensus). There's precious little outsider analysts know about both the wider Chinese and Russian political apparatus' views of each other and their predominant driving motives without the influence of their leaders setting the direction and tone. Once either Putin or XJP goes (or both go), all bets are off as to who succeeds them, and how domestic politics and foreign policies will evolve for both countries.