From Asia Times, November 15:
China faces challenges that make increasing its influence or even taking territory in Russia’s Far East particularly attractive now
Do names on a map matter? When they are in border territories, the answer is probably “yes.”
Earlier in 2023, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources ordered that new maps must use the former Chinese names of its lost territories in what is now Russia’s Far East. Vladivostok, home to Russia’s Pacific fleet headquarters, became Haishenwai; Sakhalin Island became Kuyedao. Then in late August, the ministry released a map that showed the disputed Russian territory of Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island within China’s borders.
These map moves come amid growing chatter and even calls in Western foreign policy circles for the disintegration of the Russian Federation into a multitude of smaller states. The thinking is, being split into smaller states would blunt Russia’s challenge to the West and its ability to carry on a war in Ukraine.
As a scholar of Russian regional identity and history, I believe the prospect of a broken-up Russia is unlikely, to say the least. But talk of Russia’s disintegration and the change in map names taps into themes worth exploring: Is there much appetite for independence in the far regions of the Russian state? And if there were to be breakaway regions in the Far East, would that be to the benefit of the West – or to China?
Rise of the ‘breakup boosters’
Those calling for, or predicting, the disintegration of the Russian Federation have grown in numbers since the start of the Ukraine war.
In the book “Failed State: A guide to Russia’s Rupture,” political scientist Janusz Bugajski argues that the territories of the Russian Federation will in time declare independence – like during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. This, he and others argue, would be good for everyone outside Russia. A rump Russian state would have “reduced capabilities to attack neighbors,” Bugajski argues.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius has a gloomier view of Russian disintegration, writing in August that it would provide “a devil’s playground” that could pose a danger to the West.
Either way, a growing number of analysts are of a mind that, in the words of Russia scholar Alexander J Motyl, it is “time to start taking the potential disintegration of Russia seriously.”
Having worked on the history of Russian regionalism for two decades, I see serious obstacles to territories declaring independence. It is certainly true that centralized authority has been to the detriment – both economically and culturally – to some of the Russian Federation’s 83 regions.
But there is a lack of mass public support for autonomy – that is, the ability to decide local and regional matters within a larger state – let alone full-blown independence.
Not all regions in Russia are the same. In some, such as Tatarstan and Dagestan, autonomy has a genuine mass appeal.
But most Russian regions that favor greater autonomy are in locations that would make it difficult for them to declare independence outright because they would still be surrounded by the Russian Federation.
Those locations more suited to independence – say, those that have borders with neighboring countries – often face other difficulties, such as being close to China....
....MUCH MORE
Here's one of the proposals:
— It Appears Russia And China Are Moving Ever Closer Together
Some related posts:
"Residents Of Russian Far East Protest Chinese Presence"
"The Chinese influx into Asian Russia"
China has been eyeing their neighbor to the north based on some revanchist claims to the land for 160 years.
Here is part of the Chinese pitch from a few years ago as verbalized by the New York Times:
...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.)"Russia's Dependence On China Is Deep And Wide — It May Also Be Irreversible"
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,
Diagram of the six possible types of symbiotic relationship, from mutual benefit to mutual harm.
