As the world holds its breath about Ukraine, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin met during the unveiling of the Beijing Winter Olympics and issued a 6,000-word joint statement denouncing NATO’s expansion.
It also voiced Russia’s support for China’s stance that democratically-governed Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and opposition to any form of independence for the island. Xi did not hand out a blank check endorsement to Putin, but participated mostly to keep his malevolent neighbor, and customer, onside.
The two announced a $117.5-billion future energy deal, which Putin desperately needs, and there certainly was no mention of the elephant in the room: Siberia, a region bigger and richer than any place on earth with resources that underpin Putin’s economy. It is Asian, not European, and one day will mostly fall into China’s hands. A Chinese takeover of Siberia may seem preposterous.
But Putin’s warfare against the West weakens Russia and accelerates the probability that the Russian Federation itself will dissolve. Sanctions since Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine still hobble Russia’s economy, creating hardship at home and making Putin more dependent than ever on China, once a hated rival.
Besides, using Putin’s and China’s logic: If Ukraine belongs to Russia, and Taiwan belongs to China, then most or all of Siberia belongs to China. This is the unspoken subtext behind the Russia-China relationship.
But for the present, the two joined to sign a joint agreement that is significant in large measure due to its omissions: it did not attack the US, China’s largest trading partner, or Ukraine (another significant trade partner) or mention Taiwan.
It assailed “US hegemony” and, notably, the coverage was tame in China’s own media mouthpiece The Global Times. Its headline read: “Unprecedented China-Russia ties to start a new era of international relations not defined by the US”, and was followed by a sub-head that the “joint statement highlights close coordination, rejects US hegemony”.
The platitudinous statement went on to say that “China and Russia opposed the further expansion of NATO and called on the organization to respect the sovereignty, security, and interests of other countries…and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other states.”
That was amusingly hypocritical, given the stated intention by each to forcefully occupy Ukraine and Taiwan, countries that want to develop peacefully. But the loss of Siberia — the entire northern Asia continent — would upend the global world order, not a tame joint statement. And Putin’s trajectory imperils his country. Even if he pulls back his invasion forces, Russia will be increasingly isolated. If he doesn’t climb down, Russia will be crippled.
Either way, Russia will implode from within, due to restive provinces with secession movements and people upset with Putin, who will bolt if Moscow’s militarized center does not hold.
Kazimierz Wujcicki, a lecturer in Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw, recently posited six scenarios for Russia before the recent brinkmanship at Ukraine’s borders: “the fall of Russia under the influence of China”, “balkanization”, “territorial disintegration”, a “gradual but peaceful disintegration”, an “imperial” boom resulting from high oil and gas prices for years, or “modernization” in cooperation with the West.
Cooperation is not in Putin’s DNA. Instead, he heads toward Gotterdammerung, or the type of complete collapse that happened in 1991-92 after the Soviet Union dissolved due to decades of similarly militaristic and dictatorial leadership. Alexei Navalny and critics were stilled last year in a crackdown, but remain.
On February 4, a courageous letter signed by hundreds of Russian scientists, academics, politicians, and human rights activists, appealed to Putin to end his predations: “Our position is simple: Russia does not a war with Ukraine and the West. Such a war is devoid of legitimacy and has no moral basis.
Russian citizens are becoming de facto hostages of reckless adventurism that has come to typify Russia’s foreign policy. Not only must Russians live with the uncertainty of whether a large-scale war will begin, but they are also experiencing a sharp rise in prices and a devaluation of their currency. Is this the sort of policy Russians need? Do they want war—and are they ready to bear the brunt of it?
Have they authorized the authorities to play with their lives in this way?” Then there are many nascent secessionist movements: The Russian secessionist movements: many in the Urals including oil-rich Tatarstan; along the northwest and southwest borders, and in Siberia — the Sakha Republic in purple, the Evenkia in pink, and in its south, the Khakassia, Tuva, Buryatia, and the Altai Republic causes.
These independence movements are fault lines and in jurisdictions that were cohesive political or cultural entities for centuries. Siberia, on the other hand, was nomadic until the 19th century when Russia moved in militarily. In ancient times, it was populated by nomadic Turkic and Mongol tribes then governed by the Mongols in the 13th Century until fur traders came in the 16th century.
A hundred years later, Russia extended its reach by building forts to defend migrants and as a buffer from China. In 1860, the Czar solidified his grip and grabbed Chinese territory in the Far East, annexing 350,000 square miles of Manchurian China (the size of Nigeria) with its verdant climate and strategic Pacific coastline, including Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.
It did so by capitalizing on a series of unjust treaties that became known as the Amur Annexation, which was foisted on the Qing Dynasty by the West to settle the hideous Opium Wars. (These treaties also handed over Hong Kong to the British.)
These are resented today by China. The Amur Annexation: Yellow and red territories were handed over to Russia by the Qing Dynasty in two unfair treaties Following this, Russia tightened its hold by building the Trans-Siberian Railway. This led to colonization and by 1917, half a million Russians lived in Siberia and a number of industrial towns – and a chain of penal camps, or gulags – followed, built by Joseph Stalin.
Today, 33.7 million out of 145.8 million Russians live there, but Russia’s economy is dependent on Siberian resources. About 80 percent of its oil resources, 85 percent of its natural gas, 80 percent of its coal and similar amounts of precious metals and diamonds, and about 40 percent of the nation’s timber resources are scattered across Siberia.
Despite this endowment, Russia’s economy remains peanut-sized compared to America’s and China’s. Its GDP (and living standards) have fallen since 2014 sanctions were imposed and today its GDP is smaller than New York City’s or China’s industrialized Province of Guangdong. This is because Putin’s reign has looted the wealth of the Russian people through a combination of costly military misadventures and control of the country’s corporations and assets by his oligarchy.
China need not send in armies of conquest to acquire some or all of Siberia. Its mercantilist strategies are doing the trick, as is the case with its $1-trillion Belt and Road Initiative. By building and financing infrastructure and buying gobs of energy, as in this case, Beijing “buys” trade relationships and creates bi-national financial and economic “dependencies”. By contrast, Russia’s elite remains corrupt and incompetent, capital leaves, a brain drain continues and investment dries up.
In reality, Russia’s real “existential threat” is Vladimir Putin – not America or NATO or China – because his rapacity orphans Russia from Europe, where 75 percent of its exports go. President Joe Biden has orchestrated oil and LNG (Liquified natural gas) “workarounds” designed to replace Russian energy in Europe. Even LNG contract holders like South Korea, Japan, and China, and their suppliers, have signaled their willingness to redirect cargoes to Europe if a further cutback in Russian exports creates a supply crisis.
And Russia’s OPEC “partners”, such as Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and others, have agreed to re-route oil to Europe to replace Russian shipments and are already doing so. Putin’s latest stunts shoot Russia in the foot, but China’s culture of hard work, technology, and business smarts has already launched an organic, slow-motion takeover of Siberia.
There are only 500,000 Chinese living there, but Chinese cities with millions of people sprout along the Russo-Siberian borders, building economies and businesses that provide goods and services that Russians are uninterested or incapable of producing.
For those who doubt China can ever subsume part or all of Siberia, consider the tale of two cities: Russia’s Blagoveshchensk and China’s Heihe, its “sister city” across the Amur River. A tale of two cities: Russia’s Blagoveshchensk and China’s Heihe In 1891, a famous Imperial Arch was built to greet Crown Prince Nicholas to Blagoveshchensk, a sleepy Siberian town that now has a population of 211,000.
In 2015, the Arch was restored with the declaration: “The earth along the Amur [River] was, is and always will be Russian”. Missing was the fact that the region only became Russian 150 years ago as part of the hated Amur Annexation. Across the river, Heihe booms.
The city has a population of 1.673 million and is in the province of Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province, with a total population larger than Siberia’s. Many other cities are spread across the province, which is also geographically bigger than Japan, Germany, Belarus, or South Korea and is a significant producer of agricultural crops and raw materials such as timber, oil, and coal.
Chinese-owned factories exist there and also inside Siberia, churning out manufactured goods and sprouting high rises as though Siberia was already part of the Middle Kingdom. To the victors belong the spoils, which is why this and other examples illustrate why China, combined with Russia’s rotten political elite, will eventually destroy the Russian Federation. Xi knows this, so should the West and its Asian allies.
The Kremlin’s demise will upend the world order in the coming years, hopefully for the better if it removes Putin.
