From Nikkei Asia, June 14:
China, Russia and North Korea are expected to start discussions soon about allowing ships to navigate a border river into the Sea of Japan, which could have major security implications for Tokyo.
The waterway, the Tumen River, flows east along the border of China and North Korea, and eventually also of Russia, before emptying into the Sea of Japan.
Chinese vessels can currently only freely navigate the river until the village of Fangchuan, on the eastern end of landlocked Jilin province. Permission is required from both Russia and North Korea to navigate the remaining 15-kilometer stretch to the Sea of Japan. A Soviet-era, 7-meter-tall bridge also blocks the passage of larger vessels.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin included in a joint statement following a summit last month a mention that the countries will engage in a "constructive dialogue" with North Korea about the Tumen River.
China historically held the area until the Russian Empire took control in the 1860s. China has repeatedly urged Russia and North Korea to allow Chinese vessels to navigate the river to the Sea of Japan, proposing the creation of a special economic zone along its banks.
Russia used to be reluctant on the idea, concerned that it would increase China's influence in Northeast Asia. But its attitude is changing as the power dynamic between Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang shifts.
Russia has grown increasingly dependent on China for trade amid Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Energy exports to China have increased since the start of the Ukraine war. Moscow also relies on China for electronic components and automobiles, and imports from China increased to 37% of the total in 2023 from 22% before the war....
....MUCH MORE
And from Seoul-based NK News, May 24:
Why China wants North Korea and Russia’s help in gaining access to the sea
As we've noted over the years, the Chinese government/party would eventually like to redraw the map of the Russian Far East to look something like this:
That is a 2019 New York Times map that we linked in "Siberia As Breadbasket For China":
....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.)
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,
And although the SCMP's editorial stance usually seems to be pretty much
independent of the official Beijing line, the fact the paper is owned
by Alibaba means the potential for government pressure should always be
factored into stories such as this from the July 20, 2018 edition:
Why forecasts of a Chinese takeover of the Russian Far East are just dramatic myth
Also "The Chinese influx into Asian Russia" and "Residents Of Russian Far East Protest Chinese Presence".
