Such, at any rate, goes the official line. For although China currently maintains no claims to Russian land, many in Moscow remain convinced that Beijing has not given up on the Far East forever. Fueling Russian fear is a fantastic population imbalance and a wave of illegal Chinese immigration which could eventually render European Russians a regional minority. With 110 million residents—and 65 million in the border provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin alone—the northeast holds only 8 percent China’s population but is more than three quarters the size of Russia’s, which is heavily concentrated west of the Ural Mountains. With around 6 million people, the Russian Far East is among the most vacant places on earth and is only growing emptier, as nationwide demographic collapse is compounded by out-migration. Endowed with oil, gas, coal and timber, the region is the opposite of nearby China: rich in resources while starved for labor and capital.
Thus, although Moscow and Beijing recently staged their largest-ever joint naval drill off the coast of Primorsky Krai, Russia has continued to run exercises which appear to be aimed at China—including a 2010 ground drill tailored to repel an invasion by an unnamed foe resembling the People’s Liberation Army, and massive war games held just last month. In addition, the Kremlin has maintained its time-honored partnership with India, and has also sought to improve ties with China’s archnemesis Japan, pledging to negotiate a long-delayed World War II peace treaty, which would not only sow the seeds for additional Japanese investment in Far East oil and gas fields, but could provide a hedge against Chinese economic and military coercion.
The idea that Beijing might march on Vladivostok is obviously far fetched, but it is not terribly hard imagine well-placed hawks musing about the legitimacy of Russia’s borders if the two powers should find themselves at odds, just as Mao and Zhou did in the 1960s.
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