Transcription
Whenever we think of a potential move by China in order to expand their territory, we always think of Taiwan. After all, it used to be a part of mainland China. And in the eyes of the mainland, it's not so much a conquest as it is taking back what they see as theirs. To some extent, I mean, if you ignore the right of Taiwanese people to self-determination, there is a historical reference. I mean, when you look at this map of ImperialQing, China, Taiwan did, in fact, belong to it.
But there's another area that imperial China also controlled that modern China doesn't. One area which, in fact, isn't even still under the control of Chinese people, just under another ideology, as is Taiwan. This area is known by some, especially in China, as outer Manuria. And while it was Chinese for decades, it's now under the control of Russia. And the key city and port of Larivosto now serves Russian Pacific interests, when until 1860, it was a Chinese city called Haen.
Now, there's not much to that. I mean, territories change hands throughout history many times all over the world, often as a result of wars. The key here is that it seems there's some type of activity within China that is considering a plan to take it back. There's no public statement on it, but there have been a few things that have been happening within China that point to this idea of China taking the opportunity of Russia being busy in the west with its invasion of Ukraine to take back this territory themselves.
For instance, the Chinese Ministry of the Environment in 2023 decided that new official maps must depict cities in outer Manuria, such as Vladivosto, with their official Chinese names. Another change was to portray an island at the confluence of the Usuri and Ammur rivers, subject to a long-running dispute, as entirely Chinese. There's also been an increase in Chinese government purchases of private farmland near to the border. Meanwhile, some Chinese nationalists openly call for the return of territory that they see was forcibly transferred to Tsarist Russia as part of their expansionist rhetoric.
So, what's this all about? And could it actually happen? Let's find out. First, I want to explain a little bit of the history of the region, understanding how it became Chinese, how the Chinese lost it to the Russians, plus what's been happening since then.
The name Manuria arrived in European language through Dutch explorers. It's a Latin version of the Japanese place name Manshu, meaning region of the Manchus, which dates from around the 18th century. The Manchu are precisely the native inhabitants of the area that today encompasses the entirety of northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East, south of the Uda River.
And the existence of these Manchu people is key because while Chinese diplomacy and influence existed in the region throughout history, it was mostly when the Manchu took over power in China through theirQing dynasty that it became a core province of the empire. The Yuan had ruled it indirectly, as they ruled many more areas via their Mongol tribal heritage, and the Ming had some influence, but not that much. It was only after 1644 that theQing expanded and truly ruled all of China and treated Manuria as a strategic heartland, not just a borderland, because it was where they came from and the area from which they took over as the imperial dynasty.
One key feature was that they initially restricted a largecale Han settlement in parts of Manuria for long periods to preserve that Mansu control. Although over time, they also allowed them and actually encouraged Han migration for cultivation and tax revenue. But the specific area later labeled outer Manuria, north of Dammud, east of the Usuri, was still under their idea of a border. It was remote, likely populated, and pretty thin administratively.
And all of these things mattered when the Russians came knocking at the door. Just asQing China had been expanding its territories, Zarus Russia had been too, annexing central Asia and colonizing the wild east of Siberia. Even then, making it to Alaska, and Chinese outer Manuria was in the way, sort of.
It all started in the 17th century when Russian Kosacled expeditions reached the Amur basin and built or occupied forts, Albazine being the most famous. The Imperial Chinese forces fought pretty hard to remove these Russian footholds, and after conflicts like the siege of Albazine in 1685, Russia agreed to withdraw in exchange for a stable border and trade with the Chinese. They also knew that they needed time to build infrastructure that would allow the supply of actual military forces in the region all the way from European Russia.
The treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 was the first formal treaty between the two empires, and it set the border broadly along the Argon River and the Stanovoy mountains. This effectively kept Russia out of Manuria. But many Russians saw this as a loss of territory, actually. They thought that they had sort of discovered or colonized the region, and they were giving it up to the Chinese. Of course, the Chinese saw the opposite: this was already their land, and the Russians had just arrived and claimed it. And so the dispute started, and the initial border agreement didn't last long.
By the mid-9th century, theQing weren't able to defend their northeastern frontiers. Internally, they were weakened by huge rebellions, and externally, they were kind of overwhelmed by the opium wars against the British. China lacked the troops, infrastructure, and just the political capacity to resist pressure in a remote region.
At the same time, Russia was experiencing the opposite. They were in great shape, having completed their eastward expansion across Siberia, building important infrastructure on their way. They exploited the moment by advancing their troops intoQing claimed territory along China's least defended border. In the 1850s, Russian forces and settlers moved into the Amur basin under the pretext of border and regional security. There's somebody else that's doing that now, isn't there? Can't think of who it is, but let me know in the comments if you can remember.
Unable to resist,Qing officials were kind of coerced into signing the treaty of Aigun in 1858, which transferred all land north of the Ammud River to Russia. Two years later, with Beijing occupied by Western armies, Russia extracted further concessions through the Convention of Beijing, gaining full control of the lands east of the Usuri River all the way to the Pacific. This map illustrates both of those territorial losses by the Chinese, showing us the original border of 1689 in this thick red line up north, then the first loss of 1858 in gold, and the second loss of 1860 in red, which included the important port city that is now Vladivosto.
After this, Russia consolidated their presence in the region. They built ports, settlements, and infrastructure such as the incredible Trans Siberian railway, which connected Moscow to Vladivosto. It became Russia's main Pacific naval base and remains so up to today. Through either repression or other tactics, they killed and displaced thousands of formerQing subjects that lived there, both of Manchu and Han origin, and the land was effectively consolidated as a Russian territory.
But the Chinese, through all their internal struggles and regime changes, always saw it as a territory that was wrongfully taken from them. Even after Russia turned into the Soviet Union and China became communist, the issue remained, especially after the Cenos Soviet split. In 1969, for instance, serious border skirmishes were fought between them, most famously at Zenbau and Demansky Island. But then things calmed down in the 1990s and 2000s. They resolved the border disputes, and both have since stated in official statements that the border issue inherited from history has been resolved and there are no mutual territorial claims.
But then you get to modern times when some actions on the part of the Chinese seem to be pointing in another direction. Just like Tsarist, Russia took advantage of Imperial China's political, economic, and military weakness in the 19th century, could modern China used exactly the same strategy today, taking advantage of Russia being economically fragile due to sanctions and dependent on Chinese trade deals, military occupied in the west, to slowly encroach and potentially take back outer Manuria?
I think when you look at the facts, it's a likely scenario. But let's understand why China would even want to do this. I think from a Chinese perspective, Vladivosto and the region around it is valuable for three big reasons: History, strategy, and leverage.
First, we have the historical angle that follows up on the story that we learned about here. The region was taken from China in the 19th century. In modern Chinese political culture, that period is framed as the century of humiliation, and undoing its consequences is a core part of the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy story. Unlike Taiwan or the South China Sea, Ottomanuria was clearly lost through unequal treaties with an imperial colonial power. And that makes it unusually clean of a grievance in historical terms, even if Beijing officially avoids pushing the issue today.
Second, and I think most importantly, there's the geographic strategic value. Vladivosto is a major Pacific port, sitting outside the southern maritime choke points that China worries about the most. In any future conflict centered on the South China Sea or Taiwan, Beijing fears that the US and its allies could use the so-called first island chain (Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines) to bottle up Chinese shipping and naval forces. A northern Pacific outlet like Vladivosto offers a way around that problem. Even access, which they already have rather than ownership, helps. It gives China an alternative route for trade, energy imports, and naval movement that doesn't run straight through waters dominated by US allies.
And that same logic extends northward to the Arctic. As polar ice melts, Arctic shipping routes are becoming more viable. And China has openly branded itself a near Arctic state, whatever that means. But Vladivosto and the Russian Far East are natural gateways linking China to the Arctic sea lanes, energy projects, and even resource extraction. Control or heavy influence in the region would tie China's Pacific strategy directly to its Arctic ambitions, reducing dependence on southern sea roots altogether.
And third, there's the aspect that presents us with opportunity, which is the power imbalance between China and Russia. Right now, since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has become economically dependent on China, military overstretch, and diplomatically isolated. Its far eastern defenses have been thinned to support the war, and the region is sparssely populated and economically fragile. China, meanwhile, is embedding itself quietly through port access agreements, logistic hubs, energy pipelines, farmland leases, and trade. This kind of slow, practical influence is hard to reverse once it's in place.
I think this is the key point and the road towards Chinese reanexation of the territory because since the war started, Russia has become economically dependent on Chinese energy purchases, financially dependent on yuanas based trade, diplomatically dependent on Beijing support, and military overstretch, especially east of the Urals. This creates a situation where China can extract concessions without framing them as territorial losses for Russia. They could sort of buy the territory in exchange for supporting Russia economically, financially, or even militarily, by normalizing Chinese access to Vladivosto now, increasing economic dependency, and keeping historical memory alive through those changes in the names on maps. It preserves the option for the future.
And their strategy might be precisely this: access will turn into influence, which will turn into dependence, which will transform into a demand that, in the right circumstances, Russia might not be able to say no to. Will a military invasion ever happen? I don't think so, but a political and economic invasion? I think that's kind of already underway.