Russia’s "Crimea" Problem in the Far East

Jan 26, 2015 | Nikolay Delchev
View Original

It has been almost one year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. The event caused much controversy and was condemned by the majority of world leaders, as well as NATO, and the EU as an illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory, in disrespect to the signing of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Some even condemned the act as a military invasion thus leading to Russia’s expulsion from the G8 and the introduction to a set of sanctions against the country.

China’s reaction to the events was very interesting in a way. On 21 November 2014, the acting director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s European-Central Asian Affairs department, Gui Congyou, told Russian media that China is ¨against any nationality gaining independence through referendums”. Obviously worrying about similar events happening in some of its controlled territories (recent Hong Kong protests proved that concern). But what if that statement was to change?

Some foreign affairs specialists are suggesting that in the long term an infiltration and even annexation is possible of parts of the Russian Far East by the Chinese. Let’s see why is that. According to data from the Russian census of 2002 from 1991 till now nearly 2 million citizens of Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and other cities in the Far East have migrated to Moscow and Western Russia. In the same time over one million Chinese have moved to Russia (most of which are merchants). In some areas of the Amur oblast, Khabarovsk Kray and Primorskyi Kray the Chinese population is bigger than the Russian one.

Recently there have been many xenophobic attitudes and widespread concerns among the Russian population there that the Chinese are trying to take over the region.

On the other side of the border in the Chinese provinces Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning there over 130 million people in comparison to only 7 million Russians and other Slavic groups in the Russian Far East areas.

As Russia is occupied more on the ¨Western front¨ it has not announced any stimulative actions in order to increase its population in those regions. There are even some possibilities that if the trends continue, in the next decade, China may try to annex (or even buy) part of Russia’s Far East in order to provide more land for its large population and also thus getting access to the region’s rich gas, mineral and water resources.

That all being said, it would seem the proverb ¨He who digs a pit will fall into it¨ may come around and ¨bite¨ Russia some time soon.