China has been urged to seize up to a third of Russian territory in the event of political and economic collapse in the country. Russia’s Far East is a huge swathe of land that covers an area of roughly 7 million square kilometres.
The region contains some of Russia‘s most prized mineral assets, including gold, diamonds and oil. It is also sparsely populated, with around just eight million people living there. To put that in context, Russia’s total population numbers roughly 143.5 million. Chinese nationalists have long viewed Russia’s Far East as belonging to Beijing and have claimed the Kremlin stole the territory in the 19th century.
In particular, they cite the Treaty of Aigun, which the Russian Tsar Alexander II forced China to sign in 1858 and which ceded much of Manchuria to the Kremlin.
Tensions over territory have continued to simmer, despite the recent detente between Moscow and China following Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
China’s Ministry for Natural Resources almost provoked a full-scale diplomatic spat after it published a contentious map of the region in August 2023.
Along with other unilateral and arbitrary demarcations, it showed Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island on the Russian-Sino border as Chinese territory. The map ignored the nations’ agreement nearly 20 years earlier to divide the 350-square-kilometre island roughly in half.
And now Chinese nationalists appear to be stirring the pot once again, mindful that Russia’s deteriorating economy and ruinous war in Ukraine could yet offer an irresistible opportunity to right the wrongs of the past.
In an article published on the popular Chinese platform NetEase, the author calls on Beijing to prepare for Russia’s collapse as a state and to ensure it is in a position to seize control of the resource-rich area.
“Currently, the Russian economy is in a difficult situation: GDP is even inferior to that of a single Chinese provincial region, and inflation is rapidly increasing,” they wrote.
“The war in Ukraine has been going on since 2022, the main forces of the army have been transferred to the west, and there are less than 50 thousand military personnel left in the Far East – essentially an empty shell.
“At the same time, the region is extremely rich in resources: gold, diamonds, oil, which make up a significant part of Russia’s national reserves. If Russia really collapses, the 7 million km² of the Far East should not be lost in vain.
“The region is sparsely populated, cold, with poor infrastructure, and Russia is not able to effectively manage it. In the event of Russia’s collapse, the risk of fragmentation of the Far East will be high. China should prepare in advance.”
