The Myth of a Chinese takeover in Siberia

submitted by "Mister Unknown" of the Hidden Harmonies China Blog

As an avid follower and enthusiast of modern trends in Sino-Russian relations (and media coverage thereof), I saw this “jewel” of an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week, titled “Why China will Reclaim Siberia“. This type of Sinophobic fear-mongering is nothing new in the western media. With amusement, I read through it with the slight hope of finding some new, compelling arguments other than the same old rhetoric of “there are so many Chinese and so few Russians”. Unsurprisingly, there were none. I have written on this subject previously, and demonstrated why the so-called “invasion by mass migration” from China into the Russian Far East is a myth. Ethnic Chinese consists of 3% of the Russian Far East regional population, and most of that 3% are seasonal migrants with no intention of long-term settlement. Another noteworthy nuance is that these ethnic Chinese are concentrated largely in Russian urban centers where they have no chance of attaining a numerical majority. Reality aside, I understand that in the realm of propaganda and misinformation, facts and data-driven logic are optional conveniences.

Nevertheless, I will pose another question that few, if anyone, has asked in the discourse over this topic – is it actually in China’s strategic interests to seize sovereign control of the Russian Far East (RFE) or any part of Siberia? It seems like few, if anyone, has done any basic, high-level cost-benefit analysis from a Chinese strategic perspective. When we put forth even a casual effort to weigh the costs and benefits, the answer becomes quickly apparent – NO, it’s not. As usual, for those who do not want to read too much, the bolded text provides an adequate summary.

Any attempt by the PRC to takeover Russian territory in the RFE and/or Siberia would be a huge strategic mistake for China. There are three main reasons for this.

1. China reaps EXPONENTIALLY MORE benefits from a stable, progressive relationship with Russia than a hostile takeover of Siberia. The primary motive attributed to a Chinese takeover scenario is access to Russia’s vast natural resources. However, China already has access to Russia’s natural resources without having to resort to risky land seizure schemes. Such access will only expand as Russia urgently diversifies its economy as part of its own “Asian Pivot”, in the face of western sanctions and enduring US hostility. Additionally, Russia has far more to offer China than just natural resources. It is a middle-income emerging market of about 145 million consumers, a partner in all multilateral institutions, a balancing force to an otherwise unfettered US hegemon, as well as a source of nuclear energy and military technology. But perhaps most important of all in the coming decade, Russia is a critical land bridge in China’s efforts to build the New Silk Road. All these strategic benefits will be jeopardized if an attempted hostile takeover of the RFE provoked Russia into closing its doors to China, and returning to a hostile stance reminiscent of the 60s.

2. A hostile Russia – even if weakened – will pose a strategic, existential threat to the PRC. Any Chinese attempt at taking over Russian territory would squander the comprehensive partnership and goodwill built up with Russia since the funeral diplomacy days of the early 80s, and cause an anti-Chinese backlash. Russia has a range of retaliatory options at its disposal. The most obvious of which would be material and political support for separatist movements in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. Moscow can also exercise its persisting regional political influence to sabotage Chinese economic ties with Central Asia, and rollback Chinese advances in the Silk Road project. If by some miracle China actually succeeds in taking over parts of the RFE, it would have 4-6 million angry local ethnic Russians to deal with, among whom Russia would surely instigate political defiance and armed rebellion against PRC occupation. Even if Russia does not want to take retaliatory measures out of nationalistic hostility, it would be forced to do so out of strategic necessity, simply to distract China from further incursion, and ensure its own national survival. Such threats would be exacerbated if a future US-Russian detente enabled the two powers to collaborate in these efforts.

3. There is no feasible, realistic option to implement a Chinese takeover, which has any reasonable prospect of success. We can segment these options into four broad categories:
- Military action is a non-starter. A military takeover of the RFE/Siberia would require a full-scale invasion against the world’s largest nuclear weapons state. Obviously, no amount of Russian land or natural resources could offset the devastation China would incur when such a war escalates to nuclear proportions.
- Political subversion instruments are non-existent. Unlike the US and Europe, China does not have a well-trained and experienced network of “NGOs”, “activists”, and other political operatives, with which to subvert Russia’s government and engineer regime change. Even if that were a possibility, what is the likelihood that these regime change agents would be such brainwashed 5th columnist sinophiles, that they would openly surrender RFE sovereignty to China over the Russian people’s objections?
- Demographic “invasion” simply isn’t happening. As mentioned in my previous blog, ethnic Chinese make up about 3% of the RFE population. By that estimate, there are more ethnic Chinese in New York than there are in the entire RFE.
- Economic “hegemony” is impossible in the face of competition. The latest commonly touted argument against Sino-Russian trade expansion is that this would reduce Russia to a resource appendage of China. Such an argument conveniently ignores the fact that Russia – until recently – has been a near-exclusive resource appendage to the EU, who remains Russia’s top trading partner despite rapid Sino-Russian trade growth. Neither the EU nor the major East Asian economies would simply acquiesce to Chinese economic hegemony in Russia.

In short, a pragmatic and well-informed Chinese leader would see that it is NOT in the PRC’s strategic interests to takeover the Russian Far East or Siberia. Any such attempt would severely deteriorate China’s strategic environment and has a near-zero probability of success.

Mr. Unknown was born in Beijing and brought to the US by his parents when he was ten. Following high school, he served a four-year enlistment in the US Army (including a Middle East deployment). He then completed a double major in international relations and Russian. After his undergraduate studies, Mr. Unknown spent time working in both Russia and China in business development and research roles; he speaks both languages. He is currently studying business administration and environmental science in a dual master’s program. Mr. Unknown’s topics of interest include Chinese foreign policy, military modernization, and energy security.
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Commentary by the Saker:

When Mr. Unknown emailed me to submit his article I was absolutely delighted because for the second time (the first was Larchmonter445) a China specialist had come to the exact same conclusions as myself but looking at the same dataset from the "other" (Chinese) side.   I completely agree with this conclusions, of course, to which I would only add a few minor things:

1) Siberia is quite literally uninvadable, even with *zero* resistance from the Russians, the Chinese military is neither equipped nor trained to invade the kind of terrain (mountains, taiga, permafrost, polar tundra, etc.) that it would encounter in Siberia.  While Siberia is huge, there are very few communication routes inside it and all are chokepoints.  THEN add to it the resistance to death of a nuclear armed country whose people never submitted to any foreign occupier and you get the image.

2) Russia and China are ideal symbionts and they vitally need each other.  Not only does each country desperately need what the other has, but without the other they became much weaker and very vulnerable.  The future of Russia is China and the future of China is Russia - neither country has any comparable alternative option.

3) Of course, tensions and problems between China and Russia are possible and will probably happen.  But whatever the issue is, its importance will always be completely dwarfed by the existential priority of maintaining the strategic partnership between Russia and China.

4) One last minor detail just in case anybody wonders: a Russian invasion of China (for what reason one would wonder anyway?) is also quite impossible.  While Chinese terrain is not as insanely challenging as Siberia, the Russian military simply does not have the kind of power projection capability (or the logistics) for combat operations inside China.  The Russian military never trained for that kind of scenario anyway.  At most, Russia could strike deep inside China with a mix of air and missile strikes, but that's it.  No land invasion could follow these (rather pointless) strikes.  In reality, both Russia and China are looking not at each other, but at the US presence in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, a far more serious threat.

Conclusion: the only war between Russia and China is the one happening every day in the demented brains of the US Neocons and their propaganda outlets.

China openly and officially backs Russia

Well, now we have it from the most official source possible: Foreign Minister Wang Yi who declared on Monday. “If the Russian side needs it, we will provide necessary assistance within our capacity".  Considering the US rhetoric and imperial mindset which proclaims that "you are either with us or against us" it is pretty clear what such a declaration really means: China is putting the US on notice that in the current economic war Russia will have the full backing of China.

The Saker 

Vineyard of the Saker White Paper: the China-Russia Double Helix

Dear friends,

Today I sharing with you a document which I personally consider as absolutely crucial: an in-depth analysis of the China-Russia Strategic Alliance (RCSA) written by somebody who looks at it from the "Chinese side".   I want to tell you a few words about how this document came into existence.

I was talking with Larchmonter 445 about the development in Russia when I realized that a lot of his arguments centered around the relationship between China and Russia and when I probed him further I realized that he knew a lot about it.  Not only that, but he had come to the exact same conclusions about the RCSA as I had, but he came to the from the other, Chinese, side.  That's when I asked him to write a short analysis of this topics, and Larchmonter 445 agreed.  Except that is as a perfectionist workaholic and his short analysis ended up 25 pages long and with 39 footnotes!  As a result, what I can now share with you is a comprehensive survey of all the officially known components of the RCSA (you can bet that there are many more which I kept secret!).

I find Larchmonter 445's image of a double helix particularly appropriate because what we are witnessing here is the birth of a new geopolitical "life form" so to speak, an informal alliance of two countries which goes much deeper than most regular alliances do: what we are seeing is the mutual agreement to establish a full-spectrum geostrategic symbiosis between two civilizational realms as both Russia and China are what used to be called 'empires' in the past but which today are what I call "civilizational realms": multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-religious ex-empires whose influence extends beyond their current national borders and whose international strategic "weight" makes far more akin to continents then to countries.

Make no mistake, what we are seeing is something unprecedented in history and it is much more than just an "alliance".  After all, an alliance can easily be broken and country A can decide to switch from an alliance with country B to an alliance with country C.  In the case of the RCSA what we are seeing is something much more akin to the birth of Siamese twins: in a geopolitical tectonic shift, Russia and China have decided to be shared not just "at the hip", but with many "vital organs and systems" including energy and defense, of course, but also their economies and long term development policies.  Each symbiont will keep its own head and brain, but they will share "torsos".

I would argue that this is by far the single most important political development since the end of WWII and probably the most important one in this century: it is hard to overstate the implications of what this means and Obama's famous "pivot" to Asia is completely dwarfed and, really, rendered utterly irrelevant by this new reality: typically, while the Obama roared and barked, Putin and Xi Jinping quietly, but profoundly, changed the planetary equilibrium.  I wonder if somebody will dare tell the White House.

I urge you all to carefully read Larchmonter 445' White Paper and to keep it for future reference (in particular all the recent developments he lists).  Since it was too long to post here, I have made it available for download from Mediafire in ZIP, ODT, DOCX and PDF file formats.  You can find the link to the Mediafire directory right under Larchmonter 445's introductory remarks below.

A big THANK YOU to Larchmonter 445!

I hope that you will enjoy this great read.

Cheers,

The Saker
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Introduction by Larchmonter 445: 

Saker asked me if I could provide an article regarding China and Russia. I told him that I thought the entwining of the two was far deeper and meaningful than 'deals' for commodities and weapons. He added that the two militaries had gone through highly unique, for the two nations, training and had scheduled more for next year to push their integration capabilities.

I felt that what I had learned studying China for over a dozen years, the relationship was qualitatively unique in international history, far from just a special partnership category. There was a bonding in process. Double Helix was, to my mind, an ideal metaphor. Thus, the article became a large presentation. But the two nations are two of the largest and the bonding in process is comprehensive. To give it light, it took length and some depth.

One other note, I could have added another 20-30 footnotes, but it is another purpose of the philosophy of the Vineyard, as Saker has expressed, for the visitors, readers, commenters and participants do research of their own, contribute material and facts dug up and shared. In other words, one voice does not make anything authoritative and final. I agree. In the spirit of Orthodox practice, challenge whatever you find in error or doubt.

I found it best to read in pdf on my iPad. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and remember to donate to the Saker. He uses most of 18 hours a day of nearly every day to make this blog work for you. The Vineyard is our megaphone and resource in the resistance to hegemony and the destruction of life and human values. Chip in with 'green ammo'
 
Larchmonter 445

Mediafire download directory: 

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/fpid1fhd6nv59/China_Russia_Double_Helix