From Newsweek via MSN, August 30:
Chinese media outlets this week shared a new geographic map from China's state-owned standard map service that shows Russian territory as part of China.
The map, which is said to have been approved by Beijing and was released by China's Ministry of Natural Resources, comes as Western observers have speculated that the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping has become strained.
Shortly before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he and Xi signed a "no limits" partnership agreement, but Chinese officials have since publicly called for a peaceful resolution to the war. Earlier this month, the Institute for the Study of War think tank wrote that China's public stance of neutrality in regard to Ukraine is causing a fissure between Beijing and the Kremlin.
The new map will likely not help Russia-China ties, George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government Professor Mark Katz told Newsweek....
....MUCH MORE
The version of the story at Newsweek itself is more expansive but following on the post immediately below, "China Publishes New Map Claiming Part of India", I wanted to highlight the Russian angle.
We have a dozen or so posts on the geography, here's a map via the New York Times showing what China believes the rightful borders to be:
Frank Jacobs, the author of "Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities," blogs at Big Think.
Possibly also of interest:...The border, all 2,738 miles of it, is the legacy of the Convention of Peking of 1860 and other unequal pacts between a strong, expanding Russia and a weakened China after the Second Opium War. (Other European powers similarly encroached upon China, but from the south. Hence the former British foothold in Hong Kong, for example.)
The 1.35 billion Chinese people south of the border outnumber Russia’s 144 million almost 10 to 1. The discrepancy is even starker for Siberia on its own, home to barely 38 million people, and especially the border area, where only 6 million Russians face over 90 million Chinese. With intermarriage, trade and investment across that border, Siberians have realized that, for better or for worse, Beijing is a lot closer than Moscow....
—via "Why China will 'reclaim' Siberia", China Daily Mail,
