BEIJING - At
the end of Russian President Putin's three-day visit to
China, he toured one of China's main attractions:
Emperor Qin's burial grounds, where hundreds of
life-sized terra-cotta warriors have been lined up in
battle array since 221 BC. Had those clay soldiers a
life of their own and marching orders, they just might
have ruined the day and the legacy of Russia's head of
state.
That is because Russia, of all the
imperialist invaders that annexed China's territories by
force, just got itself the largest piece some 1.45
million square kilometers, or four times the size of
Japan and 2.6 times the size of France - as a farewell
gift from China. After Putin returned home, Russia will
get to keep all that fertile land for posterity, with
China's agreement. Last Thursday, China and Russia
signed an agreement in Beijing settling the border
demarcation between the two countries, thus putting an
end to their territorial disputes of the past 150 years.
Since the mid-18th century, China suffered a
series of military defeats at the hands of Western
powers such as England and France that were opening up
new routes of trade. The victors didn't help themselves
to the land of the weak Qing Dynasty, though they did
wrest a few exceptions, such as the leases on Hong Kong
and Macau. By contrast, Russia proved itself the master
of diplomacy - wars, after all, are for the
unsophisticated. Moscow talked Beijing into giving up
vast tracts of land not on battlefields but in
negotiation rooms, using scare tactics on what was then
an uninformed, gullible and vulnerable China.
For example, when the French-English armies were
advancing on the Chinese capital during the second Opium
War of 1858, Russia persuaded China to surrender large
areas of land to Russia. The argument was simple and
effective: if China allowed Russia's presence in its
northern Manchurian province, that would prevent the
invading Europeans from the holy land that held the
roots of the ruling Qing royalties. Salt was rubbed into
the wound when the Russians cast themselves as the best
friends of the victim; the Russian ambassador assured
China that "the Russian army is in China not to bully
but to serve".
Subsequent Chinese leaders were
not as generous - with a notable exception. The warlords
who went through the revolving doors at the Forbidden
City adhered to their nationalist vows when they
overthrew the Qing Court. As one, they refused to
recognize "the treaties, conventions, agreements,
accords and contracts entered into between the preceding
government of China and Russia" because they were unfair
to China. Chiang Kai-shek never gave up the fight to
regain lost land, though to no avail. Mao Zedong was a
nice man to neighboring Burma and India in border
treaties, but his largess didn't extend to the country
lying to the north. But his stand stemmed more from his
resentment of his fellow communists in Moscow than from
his patriotism. He was quoted as saying to the visiting
US president Richard Nixon in 1972, "The Russians,
including both czars and the red Soviets, have occupied
too much of our land."
Deng Xiaoping appeared
initially to be firm in his position against "unfair
history". In May 1989, he reminded Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev of Lenin’s promise not to resort to
those unfair treaties as the basis of border demarcation
talks. However, Deng contradicted himself in the same
summit meeting when he proposed that talks nonetheless
should proceed based on these treaties. In his own
words, his vision for a solution consisted in "ending
the past and looking toward the future".
That
forward-looking attitude got the stalled negotiations
going again. Within the next five years, China inked
three successive treaties with Russia, agreeing on about
97% of the demarcation of the 4,300-kilometer-long
Sino-Russia border. The remaining disputes are now
settled, too, with the signing of this latest
supplementary agreement last week, lending substance to
the "no mutual territorial claims" clause in the 2001
China-Russia Friendship and Cooperation Treaty.
For sure, it is highly unlikely that the lost
land will return to China's sovereignty after so many
decades. When is the last time anyone has seen Russia
coughing up what it has already swallowed? Ask Japan
about its northern islands. But what weak countries
usually do when they are powerless, in order to get the
better hand, is to renew claims from time to time over
what they believe is theirs until, they hope, the
balance of power starts to change in their favor some
day. Forfeiting territorial claims, even though the
aggression took place a long time ago, in effect denies
future generations a chance for "unification", a concept
held so dear and sacred by the Chinese. Small wonder,
then, that some overseas Chinese are already crying
foul.
In fact, Beijing has surprised itself this
time, given its record in dealing with Russians. Back
when the Chinese Communist Party was still a branch of
the Communist Internationale funded and controlled by
Moscow, it had an obligation not to the Chinese people
but to the Soviets, who had, in the best tradition of
skillful, manipulative and shameless Russian diplomacy,
ulterior designs on China.
When Josef Stalin
felt threatened by the Japanese army crouching on
China's land, he built up a buffer by engineering first
the secession and later the independence of Mongolia
from its suzerain - China. What did the Chinese
communists say about that? "Bravo for the Mongolians,
who have suffered too long under the reactionary,
oppressive Chinese Nationalist government," raved the
People's Daily. Accepting credentials from the new
country’s ambassador on July 3, 1950, Mao congratulated
Mongolia on its great achievement of breaking away from
the previous government of China.
That was not
Mao's best performance - that was yet to come. After
Japan invaded and occupied China's Manchurian provinces
in September 1931, the Chinese Communist Party issued a
statement calling on the Chinese people to "take up arms
and defend" - get this - "the Soviet Union" because "the
invasion is a prelude to an imperialist war against the
socialist Soviet Union". Ideology and convenience
prevailed over national interests again when the Chinese
communists hailed the Soviet-Japan 1941 Neutrality
Treaty that recognized each other's de facto occupation
of parts of China's territories. Mao Zedong described
the treaty as a "matter of course that will benefit
China in the long run".
How a loss could turn
into a benefit still awaits explanation. That won't come
any time soon, though. The Chinese foreign minister
declines to disclose the details of the latest border
protocol. Not only is he eating his own words about
"willingly subjecting his ministry to supervision by the
people", but also the very words "China-Russia border
talks" are now filtered out on mainland's Internet
portals, lest the masses object to the giveaway of
territory.
Vodka and Mao tai are both powerful
memory erasers, but it is worth noting that Emperor
Qin's subterranean warriors were stationed for the same
purpose as the Great Wall that Qin erected along his
northern borders: to preserve the kingdom and keep the
barbarians out. Would the old emperor be furious and
turning now in his grave at his squandering and
unrepentant sons who gave up China's land?
Li YongYan is an analyst of Chinese
business, economics, politics and cultural affairs.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
