John C. K. Daly
On September 2, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te added a new dimension to China’s irredentist assertions by suggesting that if China’s claims on Taiwan are about territorial integrity, then it should also press for the restoration of land from Russia that the Qing empire signed over in the 19th century (Era TV, September 1; Taiwan News, September 2). Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration remains quietly nervous about Chinese intentions toward its far eastern provinces, which are slowly depopulating while their economies stagnate (see EDM, June 16, 2022, May 14, July 9). Sino-Russian relations remain tranquil on the surface, but China’s ascendancy has shifted the dynamics of their bilateral relationship and could add weight to Lai’s observation.
Sino-Russian relations date back to the thirteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, China had descended into what its historians have labeled the “century of humiliation.” This was a period that began with political instability, Western imperialism, and multiple internal conflicts and rebellions during the Qing, and ended with the Republic of China emerging from World War II as one of the Big Four and achieving a permanent seat on the newly established United Nations Security Council in 1945. The Sino-Russian borderlands have long been sites of contention. China’s oldest treaty, the Treaty of Nerchinsk, was signed with Russia in 1689 (Presidential Library, accessed September 30). Nearly two centuries later on May 16, 1858, the two states signed the Treaty of Aigun, which established a border along the Amur River. This was closely followed two years later by the Treaty of Beijing. Taken together, these two “unequal” treaties allowed Russia bloodlessly to annex 231,660 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of Qing land, an area almost twice the size of modern Germany (Komsomol’skaia Pravda, February 9, 2019).
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