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‘You Two Deserve Each Other’: Russia, China, and the Impending Fight Over Vladivostok
It seems that Xi Jinping’s move to a more openly aggressive foreign policy is extending in every direction, not just to his Southwestern neighbor India, but to his Northern ally, Russia. The PRC is now claiming past (and hinting at proper present) ownership of one of Russia’s major Pacific port cities, Vladivostok (Владивосток), on the basis of Qing rule in the territory. (For those who are unfamiliar with Chinese dynasties, the Qing were the final emperors of China and ruled from 1644 until 1912, but the territory under question was annexed by Russia in the 1860 Treaty of Beijing and Han people, who constitute(d) the majority of China’s population, had long been banned from entry by their Manchu rulers. Additionally, the Chinese Empire was not the first or last territorial entity to claim or assert ownership in the region). What does this bode for Russia and China individually, and their mutual relations?
>As a disclaimer, I understand very little Chinese, basically nothing beyond the ability to politely navigate a grocery store/restaurant and introduce myself, so my analysis will mostly fall on the Russian side of the issue, where I have a far superior linguistic arsenal. But, let’s begin by situating this (maybe) surprising turn of events within a broader context. For the sake of some minimal amount of brevity, I’ll summarize the pre-1949 relationship by saying that it was a mixed bag at the official level (borders were not firmly set in the pre and early modern worlds, and even beyond then people at a local level generally continue to interact regardless of their government’s wishes), and by the late 19th century favored Russia as the richer and more Westernized/militarily superior power.
Skipping a bit ahead, relations between the PRC and the USSR were often about as cosy as the climate of the Russian Far East. Naturally, the two largest Communist powers in the world were allies, and the Soviets sent aid to Mao when he was fighting the Kuomintang, but even then Stalin was stingy in the amounts that he sent, and as the years went on he hardly became more friendly. Mao, when he visited Russia, was made to feel like a lesser entity in all of his meetings with Uncle Joe, something that was particularly damaging to relations when the Chinese despot had such singular control, and in general the Soviets did not hesitate in displaying a paternalistic attitude towards the newer members of the Marxist-Leninist camp, encouraging technological and educational exchange programs but also emphasizing their superiority as longer standing, stricter communists and a more advanced society.
This rubbed the Chinese wrong in almost every possible way. Although Mao declared eagerness to remake Sino culture, he also embraced Confucian sayings and traditional values/cultural forms when they conformed with his goals, and his (and many others) sense of Chinese/Han national pride was offended by such an attitude from the Soviets, a society that Imperial China had regarded as barbaric and backwards only a few centuries previous. A whiff of colonial paternalism, a great sin in the Communist handbook, was also in the air. With the death of Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev’s denouncement of him three years later, Mao felt more at ease to go his own way. From then on, relations were often less than cordial between the two great powers, and they competed for ideological purity, allies, and, briefly in 1969, territory.
Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, a more ‘special’ relationship has emerged, with various treaties of friendship, mutual trade and infrastructure projects, and close cooperation in the political, military, and global arenas. In order to answer our overarching question of “how”, we first have to ask “why”, when things have been going so well. As with China’s actions on India, my estimation is that things taking a turn for the worse was a huge part of the motivation to move in this direction. Xi takes great pride in his inscrutable image in the West, much as Putin does his man of steel/175 IQ political master variation, but he is also an admirer of Mao, and a staunch Han Chinese nationalist. Mao often took bold action when the situation internally in China was very bad (famines, mass purges, etc.) and Xi sees an opportunity to do the same at a time when China’s image on the world stage is very poor, and there is much fear internally because of the virus and the economic and social upsets that it has caused.
In other words, make moves that will inspire enmity when the global perception is poor in hopes that they will be swept under the rug with the ‘bigger’ issue of the virus when the time for handing out blame comes, and China asserts its vast wealth and propaganda machine to begin to shift it. Xi is also at a certain disadvantage dealing with Russia that he might not be with more firmly Western powers, because it is a bit harder to make the charges of imperialism that often inspire submission stick. The Chinese love to bandy about accusations of imperialism and reprimands for past wrongs on the part of their enemies, but there is a two-fold problem with them in relation to Russia. (This would also be a good time to acknowledge that China has a long history of colonialism just as brutal as any Western power in East and Southeast Asia, and a history of race/color based discrimination that far predates the arrival of any Europeans. The assertion that racism began in China with the coming of Europeans is laughably degrading, and if you want proof or a greater understanding, I heartily recommend that you read Construction of Racial Identities in China And Japan by Frank Dikotter).
Firstly, the Russians can easily counter that they were just as much victims of, and pawns in, the game of Western imperialism in the 19th century, and that many of their own aggressive actions were based on a desire to survive and/or protect pan-Slav interests. In another direction, the culture and educational milieu of Putin’s Russia is not particularly interested in seeking forgiveness for Russian expansionism, and places national pride above any sense of modern relational ethics or culpability for horrific historical events. So simply guilting based on imperialism won’t get them very far. Another push behind Xi’s move is a simple desire for revenge. China feels that it was badly treated by Russia, both in its imperial and communist forms, and wants to extract retribution by either making Russia look less powerful by handing over the city, or conflictual by refusing to negotiate. Xi made a power play similar to Putin’s current one with the nationwide constitutional referendum, when he managed to get the term limits of the presidency removed, and knowing that this made him more secure in acting just as he wanted to, seeing his ally do the same provokes fear. Minds that think alike recognize each other.
Smart as Xi may be, dictatorial leaders that preside over vast swaths of unhappy, oppressed citizens, no matter how many loyalists they may have, project paranoia both at home and abroad.
From this “why”, China’s hope of what this bodes, greater control in Eurasia and more security by the reduction of neighbors’ power and world image, is clear. On to Russia. Part of what motivated this spat to begin with were celebrations in Vladivostok of the city’s 160th anniversary, and a tweet from the Russian embassy in India celebrating how the city became a part of Russia. Just as Xi seems to be feeling threatened by Putin’s firmer grip on the reins of the Russian state, Putin looks to have his own fears regarding Chinese aggression and was egging India into continuing to oppose them. Naturally, Russia also wishes to have a good relationship with such a big, economically rising nation and if they can do it while pushing the Chinese out of a similar position, all the better. The origins of the conflict also likely reveal Putin’s response. Нет!
Putin’s power base in the Russian population, especially because he is distinctly unpopular with big percentages of the educated and monied classes, rests upon his reputation as a stellar Russian nationalist; Vlad (such a very Russian name) defender of the traditional territories, eager even to regain those that have been lost, a sharp rebuke to the ‘Western puppet’ Yeltsin in reestablishing Russia’s image as unbeatable and glorious all over the world. In no universe can Putin give up or compromise his status as a symbol of Russian pride and survive long term, especially when what is at stake is an important (albeit crime-ridden and depressing) port.
For China this is a chance for Xi to assert preeminence and Chinese hegemony, at least in its regional sphere, while for Russia and Putin it’s a window to live up to a reputation as great, national leader and maybe even make themselves look like the sympathetic aggressed upon, currying favor with some Western observers and rising third-world powers that feel threatened by China. The final part of the question was what this foretells for relations. Lacking some kind of magic crystal ball (I did take a very intensive IR class last year, and I mostly learned that I’m cut out for analyzing historical happenings, not predicting the future), I’ll explore possible avenues, and what they might foretell.
The most obvious would be for Putin to start, as he had steadfastly refused to do since the beginning of the pandemic, blaming China for the severity and spread of COVID-19, which has devastated Russia. Such a declaration, I think, would present a marked deterioration in national relations and probably permanently impact Xi and Putin’s relationship. For as long as they remain in power, full trust, such as that might have been, would never really reappear. Another possibility is that China could go beyond simply asserting that the territory was once their’s, and implying that it should be returned, by either making formal demands or beginning a border skirmish. As with the first option, a break down in association is inevitable. The chance that this might provoke Russia into large scale military action, or simply end up creating a conflict that China will find difficult to win, makes it unlikely, but President Xi hardly seems to be aiming for predictability nowadays. A less extreme reaction than either of the other two is a simple cooling of the countries’ relationship and a greater divergence in military and/or political objectives. Both countries, though, see a fundamental enemy in the US, and the NATO/Western-dominated world order, and that will always be a good cohesive principle.
There are a lot of lessons that can be learned here, but I think the most important for US policymakers and informed citizens, as well as allies of the post-WWII neoliberal order, is the exploitable weaknesses between allied autocratic nations. No matter how smart their leaders may be, paranoia that ruling a country where a significant portion of the citizens would either like to see you dead or obey out of fear rather than respect bleeds into foreign policy and the relationships between such power-hungry politicians. Pinpointing those fracture points, and increasing them while minimizing the chance for open physical conflict where possible, is a key way to decrease the credibility of those regimes in international eyes, and the view of their populations, and to begin destabilizing. Certainly, no two countries deserve to do this to each other quite as much as China and Russia.
*For the curious, a link to the video in question is here, and an article about the conflict in Russian state media here. Since I seem to write weekly/bi-weekly about Russia (consistency, thy name ain’t college student), I thought it would be fun to give this somewhat regular Russia centric report a name. Any ideas?
Published in Foreign Policy
What strikes me as the most odd is the people who complain that Trump is also a malignant narcissist who exists for praise, but can’t seem to comprehend that he might be doing the same thing to Xi and/or Putin. Somehow, to them, only Trump has that problem. Bizarre.
They might be insincere.
He might try, and he does see his glory as being served by being a ‘great negotiator’ (using flattery/praise to reach his goals with other leaders), but I think Xi and Putin are less susceptible to it than him. Of course they have massive egos, but they are also skilled political operators in societies where a wrong move can get you killed, and they are more interested in praise from within their country than outside. That doesn’t negate the possibility that he could get them to do what they want by their underestimation of him, but by and large I would estimate that Xi and Putin hold the upper hand as more experienced politicians from cut throat nations, and more shrewd judges of personality.
That may be true. But the thing is, that doesn’t mean Trump is actually “embracing” them
That would be glorious! I’ll admit, I had a lot of fun participating in pro-Hong Kong protests at my university earlier this year, even if it probably ended me up on a watch list. Taiwan is setting up an office to help escaping Hong Kong citizens too, and there is something delightful in the idea of them giving a massive middle finger to the CCP by accepting as many people as they can. Tsai Ing-wen is an amazing woman.
This is news to me. Russia (and the old USSR) is paranoid about being invaded, and I would think even the slightest hint of a Chinese takeover would draw a harsh response from Putin – which in turn would make the international news . . .
Chinese journalists (and diplomats) have been making statements, mostly on Twitter, that the celebrations of the city’s anniversary were offensive, and unfair because it was territory gained in an ‘unequal’ treaty. They haven’t outright said that they want the city back, but no one who works for a Chinese embassy or broadcast network would make such statements without approval from the state, and the implication seems to be that the Chinese feel they have just as much a right to the territory as that they are disputing in India.
They are paranoid about invasion, which is how the whole thing started (that video aimed at India celebrating how they had conquered Imperial China to build the city). It hasn’t progressed beyond harsh words, which is probably why there hasn’t been much English language reporting. Normally I wouldn’t think much of it, but Xi has picked fights with India, Japan, and Hong Kong in the last few months alone, so it could be signaling. And the video itself was probably Russia’s way of signaling that the PRC better not even think about taking their territory.
All treaties are unequal to someone. Even if it’s just the guy who lost the pig in his neighbor’s potato patch.
It isn’t only India and Russia. China has redeployed troops to push Bhutan. And the Chinese are making threats.
In Nepal the pro-Chinese communist party (which led a decades long civil war) is in coalition with another party. PM Oli, a communist, has had a cabinet revolt over creating a border dispute with India while the Chinese have done the same thing. Nepal is supplied from India and not from China so it wasn’t a very smart move on the PM’s part.
And then there is the South China Sea.
I think your analysis of Putin is also totally wrong. If he is what you say he is, why does he even bother with a ballot initiative. Xi doesn’t.
I find this similar to the news you sometimes hear from Central or Eastern Europe about Putin making official objections to the treatment of old Soviet statues or memorials in the Czech Republic or elsewhere. It sounds ominous to hear him taking such a proprietary interest in objects in countries that are independent of Russia. But that doesn’t mean he is lining up to invade. And he does have an excuse. There often were agreements to respect Soviet graves and war monuments when countries went their separate ways when the Soviet empire broke up.
Two summers ago on a family history trip, my wife and I went out for a morning walk near our hotel in Frankfurt (Oder) Germany, on the border with Poland. When we first saw the below monument from a distance I told my wife, “That looks Soviet.” And sure enough, it’s a memorial to the Soviet (Russian) soldiers who died in the liberation of Germany. Many of them are buried at the base of the monument, where there are individual markers engraved with name, rank, birth year, and date of death.
I wasn’t as surprised with its existence as with how well it is kept up, considering that not every East German family has fond memories of being liberated by the Russians. But then I learned about the agreements that were made at the time of the breakup.
In the next several days we visited some of the villages in Poland where my German ancestors had come from. I had read that I shouldn’t expect to find much, as the Poles didn’t always have fond memories of the Germans who were expelled after WWII. Gravestones had been destroyed or removed and used for other purposes, I had been told. That may have happened, but I eventually figured out that I had visited the sites of two of those cemeteries without knowing it (and have identified another one I want to visit). They are sites of benign neglect. They haven’t been desecrated by new construction, but are overgrown with grass and trees. Yet another one is now underwater from a dam that was built on the Vistula River in 1968. I have a hunch that the Russian and Polish commies didn’t find it necessary to go to the expense of relocating the graves, as has been done with dam projects from the same period in our country. But I don’t know that for sure. I figure I could now use my GPS and rent a small boat to get to the exact site, though.
But in the former “satellite” countries of Russia, it is expected that Russian graves will be honored and kept up appropriately, or else Putin will exercise his right to get publicly upset about it. Vladivostok is a different matter, but I can see how the two sides will lay down markers as to how it should be remembered.
You’re right, I doubt (though Xi seems kind of trigger happy lately) that there will be any kind of invasion, but China and Russia have gotten along relatively swimmingly since the fall of the USSR, so it doesn’t bode well either that they are engaging in these kinds of diplomatic sniping sessions. My best guess is that Putin is as angry with the Chinese about how covid has affected Russia, and that combined with persistent aggressive action prompted the video for the embassy in India. And since China now seems to want to stake claims to any territory they’ve set eyes on in the last thousand years, they went right back at Russia over ‘unfair’ treaties. It will be interesting to see how it plays out long term.
I think you’re right. Long term. Whether or not they plan to do more in the short term, it can be part of the psychological groundwork for the longer term. It can be helpful to keep national resentments alive just in in case it becomes necessary to exploit them.
“Allies”? No, when China and Russia act in concert, it’s the same as when two members of Batman’s rogues gallery team up: The Riddler and The Joker will work together just as long as their interests align, but after that, it’s every villain for himself.
As Winnie the Pooh starts making irredentist grumblings towards Outer Manchuria, I wonder if Vlad the Invader is having second thoughts about the precedent he set in snatching back Crimea?
Probably thinks like any other leftist, “precedent for me, but not for thee.”
At the end of the day, I doubt that he does have second thoughts. Putin seems to believe in two things, power and the Russian nation (with all of the complex baggage that that carries), and he felt that Crimea was Russia’s territory and they were going to take it back. The basis of his popularity is in being the anti-Yeltsin, asserting Russian dominance at home and abroad, so reclaiming it was building up strength. He’s also enough of a realist, and has a good enough understanding of the Chinese, to know that one day they would come calling for Outer Manchuria with or without his actions in Ukraine. This little diplomatic spat over Vladivostok, I think, is a hint for the conflict coming in the long run.
There seems to be a dominating theme of “history repeating,” and here to, it seems like Winnie the Pooh’s ultimate goal is the restoration of the cefeng (冊封) system, in which all the neighboring states sent emissaries to the Chinese emperor with tribute. These foreign diplomats would make formal prostrations to show their nations’ inferiority to the Chinese – this is the origin of the word “kowtow” – in order to maintain peaceful relations and trade with their bigger, domineering neighbor. These nations confirmed China was their superior, and China would, in turn, give their leaders titles and legitimacy. (The first country to break from this was Japan, which explains much about China’s enmity towards them.)
The cefeng system has much in common with Putin’s idea of a “sphere of influence” (or even the Monroe Doctrine), but the issue here is that Winnie the Pooh seems to want to make a country with its own notion of cefeng kowtow.
It’s odd to think that Vladivostock has only been Russian since 1860. Though there are almost no Chinese (or Manchurian?) people there now.
China is in some ways like the Soviet Union, in that it includes a number of ‘captive nations’ like Tibetans and the Uyghur. But it’s not like the SU in that the Han comprise 90% of the population, with few places having a non-Han majority. I don’t know if that is a fragility, and whether/how it influences the Chinese Govt’s use of nationalism.
There were almost no Chinese or Manchurian people in what is now Vladivostok there before. It wasn’t a strategic point for the Chinese since they had lots of ports and better-situated ports farther south. The Russians wanted the area because it would give them an ice-free port out to the Pacific. The Russian’s problem was how to get there overland. A railroad was of course the answer, but it would take decades because they didn’t have the capital. And most of the capital was French.
As for 90% of those in China being Han, it’s not true. 90% of those in China think of themselves as Han but when they find out they aren’t by taking a DNA test, they’re surprised. Do a search on youtube.
For political purposes, wouldn’t it matter more how they identify themselves and are identified by others?
In North America, being Indian didn’t originally mean having Indian DNA or “blood.” It had to do with how a person was raised and behaved, though the Indians themselves didn’t put it in such prosaic terms. The European understanding of who was Indian was a little more racist, but even Europeans recognized some people as Indian even though they were born in white families. This whole concept has changed somewhat since the 1930s when Indians’ relationship with the federal government changed, and they had to start establishing tribal membership requirements. But the old way of thinking has not completely gone away.
I don’t know so much about Chinese cultures, but I wouldn’t assume that DNA is determinative without hearing how it actually works among people in China.
Putin isn’t the anti-Yeltsin though. He’s certainly not the drunk in Kremlin, but Yeltsin was also a nationalist just as Putin is. Putin is a creature of Yeltsin, after all. Without his help and mentoring, Putin wouldn’t be where he is.
Russia faced a Nato expanding towards their borders even though Gorbachev had been assured that a reunited Germany was as eastwards as Nato would push after the fall of the iron curtain. So all the invasion routes Russia faced for centuries were falling into the hands of the military block that had been Russia’s foe for the last several decades. Then there was Serbia. Then with the inclusion of the Baltic states, Nato was on Russia’s borders and sandwiching Kalingrad. Then there was an American administration doing regime change on the basis of ideology. Nato was not only coming from the west, but then they were coming from the south with Georgia.
Putin knows that westerners are legalistic. So in the charter of Nato, there is a clause that requires that any applicant, that applicant must be in control of the territory it controls. If it isn’t in control of all its territory, then its application cannot be approved. So how to stop the expansion of Nato? Grab a piece of applicant’s territory. Putin grabs territory where Russians are the majority population and where Russia has a higher standard of living than the country where the Russians are living. In other words, he’s helping out the local population. In the advent of the break up of the Soviet Union, Russians who were isolated in pockets where they were in the minority were often subjected to violence and suffered. So it wasn’t a hard sell.
Russia could never pull this off successfully in the Baltic States with the little green men because (a) the standard of living there is higher than in Russia; (2) the populations are older; (3) by being in the EU, the Russians can go anywhere in the EU to live and work. Being part of Russia would disadvantage Russian Balts so Putin’s move would be unwelcome.
Agree 100%.
I don’t think that he actually is, but that it part of how he wants to portray himself internally. Yeltsin was always perceived as incompetent and baboonish, for any other good qualities that he might have had, and by some as an agent of American/Western forces. Putin strives to always look supremely competent, two steps ahead of the opposition, and like the firmest of Russian nationalists. In policy, like you rightly pointed out, there are overlaps, but I think his concern with Yeltsin is more about optics than substance in some ways.
That’s probably right. Perceiving themselves as Han, even if DNA says that they aren’t, allows them to feel like part of the dominant majority, safe from the ethnic cleansing efforts of the CCP and more willing to support, or at least not voice opposition, to them. There’s also probably an element of Han pride, in feeling in the longer historical context that, after centuries of glorious rule, they were under the yoke of Manchu emperors and then threw them off and created the most successful communist state in the world. If you’re interested in Chinese, and broader East Asian, concepts of race Frank Dikotter’s two books on the subject (The Discourse of Race in Modern China and Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan) are excellent.
The PRC being 90% Han, while the USSR was only 50% Russian, was also a big Mao talking point, and I doubt that they want to let that go for a variety of reasons (Xi is a big admirer of Mao, and his method of governance, and because the CCP doesn’t want difference, so for people to perceive themselves as Han and fall into line with racial policy is much easier for them).
I think what Xi thinks of Mao is really complicated in ways that even Xi doesn’t understand since Mao purged Xi’s father during the cultural revolution and Xi’s life fell apart. It took Xi a decade to get out from under the rock and from what I understand Mao’s widow helped him. And she was totally devoted to Mao.
I think you’re right about optics. But I think Yeltsin would have agreed too. I think Yeltsin was very aware of his own shortcomings and thought of Putin at a version 2.0.
I look upon what has happened in China as being a decades-long NEP. Xi is reasserting party control after allowing the country to grow much more prosperous than it would have if party orthodoxy had been followed. This has serious repercussions on China’s future growth. But I wouldn’t say Xi is the new Stalin. That would be hyperbole. Xi may be terrible, but Stalin was really terrible.
I would be really curious, though I doubt there will ever be any way to know, exactly how much blame Xi places on Mao personally, or even the CCP structure in general. Yang Jisheng, in the opening chapter of his book Tombstone, talks about how his faith in Mao and the Chinese Communist ideology remained unshaken (almost unquestioned really) even after his father starved to death as a result of The Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine. It took until the Cultural Revolution for him to even begin to question, the indoctrination (and probably youthful desire to believe in something bigger than one’s self) was so great. I wouldn’t be shocked if Xi was someone who thought that Mao, in the purges that led to the downfall of his father and the suicide of his sister, was either being misled by bad elements or trying his best, with mistakes, to clear out recalcitrant rightists. Jiang Qing was a nasty piece of work, so somehow it seems fitting she helped lever someone similarly evil into a position of power.
“If only the Tsar knew!”
That’s exactly the phrase I was looking for! I sat there for 5 minutes trying to think of it when I was typing that out and it just would not come to me.