Opinion: Maybe it’s time for China to reclaim some stolen Russian land?

Taiwan’s president made a genius suggestion a last week. In an interview with a local television station, Lai Ching-te said, with respect to China’s revanchist pretensions to control his country, “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the Treaty of Aigun?”

After all, that territory is China’s for the taking, Taiwan’s leader implied. “Russia is now at its weakest,” he said. “Right?”

Lai Ching-te was questioning China’s claims to Taiwan, but more shocking was his indirect proposal that Beijing would be perfectly entitled to demand that Moscow return the historically Chinese lands that the Russian Empire illegally annexed in 1858. That territory comprised some 600,000 square kilometers.

Russia’s land grab took place at the same time that a score of Western imperialist powers were meddling in Chinese affairs and transforming China into a vassal state of the West. Too weak to resist, the Qing dynasty surrendered much of its sovereignty and territory to foreigners — a state of affairs that Mao Zedong only succeeded in reversing many decades later.

In demanding that Russia return its illegally acquired territories to China, Beijing wouldn’t just be reversing the humiliation it suffered at the hands of 19th-century imperialists. No less important, Beijing would be acting in accordance with the Putin regime’s own historical claims. If Moscow can insist that Ukraine, Belarus and other territories are historically Russian, then Beijing can insist that large swathes of the Russian Federation’s Far East are historically Chinese.

Indeed, if, as Putin claims, Russia and China are friends in perpetuity, then it behooves China either to honor its partner’s logic or to gently inform its dear friend Putin that his logic is faulty and will only increase tensions. The Chinese have already produced maps of Russia with some cities identified with Chinese names. Millions of Chinese people already live and work in large parts of the Russian Far East. And, as Lai Ching-te said, “Russia is now at its weakest, right?”

He was, of course, indirectly referring to Russia’s catastrophic battlefield losses — over 610,000 dead and wounded at recent count — its army’s inability to defeat a much smaller and weaker opponent, and the growing crisis of its economy and society. In many respects, today’s Russia resembles China’s 19th-century Qing dynasty.

Xi Jinping may be reluctant to exercise China’s right to reclaim historically Chinese territories today. But he must know — as does Putin — that Beijing would have every right to follow in Russia’s footsteps if and when it chooses. Putin would either have to swallow the land grab or admit that his invasion of Ukraine and de facto occupation of Belarus are imperialist adventures.

Alternatively, Beijing could simply play a long game and let conditions on the ground take their inevitable course. Why insist on a revision of a 19th-century treaty when Russia is already well on its way to becoming a vassal state of China?

Russia’s economic and military dependence on China is screamingly obvious. And, given Putin’s commitment to pursuing a war that can only weaken and perhaps even destroy the Russian Federation, Russia’s dependence on China and concomitant transformation into a Chinese colony can only grow.

Such a development would be the ultimate irony. China’s 19th-century master would become its 21st-century slave.

Unless, of course, Putin’s remarkable ability to commit strategic blunders results in the Russian Federation’s collapse. Scores of new states could emerge, as Russia would be reduced to the territory surrounding the Moscow-St. Petersburg core. Much of the Far East would then revert to China naturally, as Muscovy’s ability to control distant territories would be reduced to nil. As the reigning hegemon in the post-Russian space, China would in all likelihood also have to deal with the potential problem of “loose nukes.”

Such an outcome seems fantastic at the moment, but who in 1858 could have imagined that the Bolsheviks would inherit the Russian Empire, that the Soviet Union would collapse and that China would become a superpower?

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “ Imperial Ends : The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “ Why Empires Reemerge : Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

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