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rfmcdonaldWindow on Eurasia's Paul Goble has summarized an anonymous writer's Russian-language essay suggesting that Russia should beware that, in its Far East, it should not find itself outplayed by a more powerful China in just the same way that Russia itself has outplayed Ukraine in its east.
Chinese immigration to Siberia, as I've noted in the past at Demography Matters, is a non-issue. Generally aspirational Chinese migrants hope to move to places more promising than the Russian Far East. Russian immigration to China is at least as noteworthy a factor. If China ever threatens Russian control over its Asian periphery, I don't think it will be via Chinese settlement in the area.
The only thing I'd like to note is that a properly-functioning international system, capable of protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weaker countries, would protect Russia and other countries from like threats. Russia for the past year in Ukraine has been doing its best not only to undermine that system, but to alienate the various other states that might have been sympathetic to Russia. This, I would suggest, is one of Russia's several own goals.
In the influential Moscow portal “Voyennoye obozreniye,” a writer who identifies himself only as a “couch general” says that despite cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, it is critical for Russians to ask how they can avoid “losing” the eastern portions of their country to China as Ukraine is losing its east (topwar.ru/58525-kak-ne-poteryat-sibir-i-dalniy-vostok.html).
The author says that he is not talking about “the military annexation of the Far East and Siberia by China.” Russia is a nuclear power and the Chinese are “too intelligent” to engage in open aggression against it. But what is happens, he argues, is the gradual and quiet “colonization” of parts of Russia by the Chinese.
“The Chinese are coming to Russia and remaining here, they receive Russian passports, and they bring their relatives. Many Chinese marry Russians. And this is a fact,” he says. Russian women do so because “Chinese men do not drink, they work hard, and they bring their money home.”
Given the declining number of ethnic Russians east of the Urals and the increasing population of China, “in the not distant future, Chinese will become the ethnic majority in these territories,” he writes. And while they will have “Russian passports and their children will speak Russian perfectly … they will be Chinese.”
“Ethnic Chinese will be elected to local parliaments and as mayors. They will open Chinese schools in parallel with Russian ones. And after a certain time, it is likely that they will raise the issue of the recognition of Chinese as a second state or at least a regional language” in Siberia and the Far East.
Chinese immigration to Siberia, as I've noted in the past at Demography Matters, is a non-issue. Generally aspirational Chinese migrants hope to move to places more promising than the Russian Far East. Russian immigration to China is at least as noteworthy a factor. If China ever threatens Russian control over its Asian periphery, I don't think it will be via Chinese settlement in the area.
The only thing I'd like to note is that a properly-functioning international system, capable of protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weaker countries, would protect Russia and other countries from like threats. Russia for the past year in Ukraine has been doing its best not only to undermine that system, but to alienate the various other states that might have been sympathetic to Russia. This, I would suggest, is one of Russia's several own goals.
