From Haichenwai to the Arctic

At present Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary and People’s Liberation Army Generalissimo Xi Jinping are close comrades. Both are leaders for lifetime. But with all their might and wealth they cannot buy eternal life. Who will come after them is uncertain. In Russia there is a slight possibility that people will push for democratic elections. China will follow the tradition of power struggle to determine Xi’s successor. The most ruthless and scheming among the Chinese Communist Party’s princelings will make it to the top.

We have to brace for more ruthless rulers in Beijing for the coming decades. In order to deviate from the peoples’ dissatisfaction with the CCP, the leader will have to come up with foreign successes namely expansionism to placate the nationalists or patriots as they are called now. At present China claims about 40 territories of 17 neighboring countries. Han Chinese infiltrate and subvert these lands including the Russian Far-East at Amur and Ussuri rivers, their former Haishenwai.

Russian Tsar Alexander II had annexed it in 1860 when China was completely powerless. Alexander founded Russia’s first ice-free port on an ocean: Vladivostok. In 2020 a bridge was opened between Blagoveshchensk and Heihe in China. Russia exports wood and then imports furniture from China. Russians go shopping in Heihe malls for there is much more choice at lower prices. Cultural life is far more vivid than in Russia. Common people get along well and so do their authoritarian leaders --for the moment. Geopolitical differences will make them enemies again not only because of Haishenwai.

Alexander II had also subjugated Central Asian Turkestan, Khiva and Bokhara. Later Stalin integrated the Turkic lands into the Soviet Union. After its collapse in 1991, Putin wants to establish the Eurasian Economic Union comprising Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan under his lead. He also wooed Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. He is about to subject and integrate Ukraine into his post-Soviet empire.

With his Belt and Road Initiative, Xi extends his influence in Central Asia. He claims the territory based on historic facts: Genghis Khan’s grandson and successor Kublai Khan inherited Central Asia. He conquered all of China and became Chinese emperor in 1279. That Kublai Khan was not Chinese but a Mongol does not hinder Xi to claim the Central Asian independent nations for his world domination plan.

Once the Chinese will have added Haishenwai to their territory there will be no stopping them from advancing North through sparsely populated Siberia up to the coast of the Arctic Sea and Bering Strait just 2 kilometers shy of Alaska. The Chinese dream of being an Arctic nation will come true. They can sail over the then ice-free North Pole into Europe and America. They can build ports and military bases wherever they want.

But this dream doesn’t consider domestic and foreign obstacles. Putin is wary. He refused to sell the Chinese his anti-missile missiles.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City