It’s the perfect time for China to invade Russia
By CN
The 19th century — China’s century of humiliation. Thugs, believing themselves to possess magic powers that made them bulletproof, launched a rebellion that massacred foreigners and Chinese Christians en masse. This was preceded by a revolt led by the (self-proclaimed) brother of Jesus Christ, that resulted in the deaths of over 20 million. Natural disasters ravaged the country. The corrupt and incompetent Qing dynasty lost control of the Chinese people.
Concurrently, Qing China lagged far behind the industrialised Western powers, becoming the “sick man of Asia.” They descended on China like vultures: Britain snatched Hong Kong in the Opium Wars; Japan ripped Taiwan away in the First Sino-Japanese War; Germany and France pilfered various port cities; and Russia embezzled over 1.2 million square kilometres of northern China — more than all the land lost to the other powers combined many times over. Seizing the chaos, ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Mongolia and Tibet declared their independence from China.
However, with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Chairman Mao declared that “the Chinese people have stood up again!”. The century of humiliation was over. The last territorial concessions lost to France and Germany were returned shortly before this, following the Second World War. Xinjiang, Tibet, and (Inner) Mongolia were (forcefully) reunited into the warm embrace of the Motherland. Eventually, the prodigal son, Hong Kong, returned home decades later in 1997.
Nevertheless, Taiwan still finds itself estranged from the Motherland, and so it remains a reminder of the nation’s humiliation. “Japan's 50-year occupation of Taiwan epitomised this humiliation and inflicted agony on both sides of the Taiwan Straits. Our two sides face each other just across a strip of water, yet we are still far apart. The fact that we have not yet been reunified is a scar left by history on the Chinese nation,” wrote a government policy document titled “Complete Reunification Is Critical to National Rejuvenation” — “national rejuvenation” being the heart of Chairman Xi Jinping’s political vision for China.
Yet, as China achieves global ascendance, it is increasingly poised to achieve its national rejuvenation. The writing is on the wall: the mere fact that 2% of Taiwanese consider themselves Chinese, the logistical nightmare of landing on the island, or that a reunification by force would bring the world economy to ruin, not to mention the prospect of American intervention, does not deter us! The reunification of the Chinese nation is a historical inevitability! (so much so that Chinese leaders have been saying it since the 1950s!).
Wait. What about the 1.2 million square kilometres of land Russia stole from China?
“We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors.”
— Xi Jinping
“Not allies, but better than allies,” proclaimed China’s foreign minister about the Sino-Russian partnership. However, this belies the fact that the amicable current state of Sino-Russian relations is a historical aberration — for most of their modern history, China and Russia have been enemies.
Russia is the only country to continue to govern territory it gained from Qing China in the century of humiliation. The Chinese lands they stole are now part of the Russian Far East, including the port city of Vladivostok (or Haishenwai in Chinese), a key point of access to the Pacific Ocean for Russia, as well as some 4.7 billion barrels of oil reserves. It is equal in area to approximately 33 islands of Taiwan.
If the loss of Taiwan is a scar, the theft of the Far East is a gaping hole in the soul of the Chinese nation.
During the 1960s, Chairman Mao attempted to reclaim the Far East from Russia, then the Soviet Union. As negotiations inevitably broke down, Mao attempted a reunification by force: the dispute escalated into a border conflict by 1964, bringing both Communist nations to the brink of all-out war. China then was deterred by the might of the Red Army, while Russia was equally reticent of the fact China had (then) 4 times its population. Relations would remain hostile until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Times have changed. Though Putin would hate to admit it, Russia’s glory days have passed.
The 2020s — Russia’s decade of humiliation. Russia is being sapped of men and money by the war in Ukraine. The economy buckles under Western sanctions; the ruble at one point worth less than the Robux. In addition, not just when Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner led a rebellion against Moscow, but with Ukraine’s recent occupation of Russian Kursk, has Russia shown its inability to defend itself in a war against a country with a third of its population. It would stand no chance against a country with ten times its population.
Why then such amicable relations? Where are the warships headed for Vladivostok? Why does the Chinese government court those who stole what is rightfully the Chinese nation’s? What’s stopping our great national rejuvenation? Political expediency. The Chinese government’s biggest source of oil and foreign military technology is Russia, while Russia’s biggest trading partner is China, in a trade partnership worth over $240 billion. Russia has the resources; China has the industry and population. Their interests are further joined by their mutual animosity toward the United States*; this better-than-ally has been useful in keeping America occupied in Europe and the Middle East. Thus the issue of land and borders (and historical grievances) was swept under the rug in a 2008 agreement that codified current borders, in favour of “Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation.”
The facts speak for themselves: The Chinese government has sold the land, the soul of the nation, for political expediency, courting our erstwhile enemy.
Power and politics are ephemeral, but the Chinese nation is eternal! “Complete Reunification Is Critical to National Rejuvenation”: How can we achieve our national rejuvenation without the ancestral lands of the Far East? It is not any foreign government or imperialist power, but our government that has divided the nation!
A “traitor to the Chinese nation” (汉奸) is defined as those “scum of the Chinese nation, those in the Chinese nation who have allied themselves with foreign invaders and are willing to be driven by them and betray the interests of the Motherland” — it gained an especially negative connotation, commonly applied to Qing officials that contributed to the loss of Chinese territory during the century of humiliation, as well as Chinese that collaborated with Imperial Japan in World War II.
Alas! “No country in the world has suffered as much at the hands of national traitors as China,” wrote state-run Xinhua News. “Examining China's history, we can see that many tragedies were caused not by foreign actors, but by traitors to the nation.”
However. “History bears this truth: the fate of those who betray their motherland, those scum of the nation, will be bitter.”
“There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent”
— Mao Zedong
*This is ironic given that the United States was the only Western power to not have owned any Chinese land during the century of humiliation, and their Open Door Policy prevented China from being directly carved up (in contrast to what happened in Africa)