• Chinese media platform NetEase ran a Dec. 14 article urging Beijing to “prepare for the worst” if Russia fractures, arguing the Russian Far East’s 7 million square kilometers should not be “lost.”

• The piece frames the region as a resource treasure for China and a burden for Moscow, then outlines an annexation by stealth” playbook: deepen investment, move people and money in, lock long contracts, promote pro-China local elites, introduce the yuan, and finance infrastructure with loans that create dependence.

• It also cites “unequal treaties” from 1858–1860 to revive territorial claims as Russian security officials quietly warn Beijing is encroaching.

Archived

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For more than 25 years, the great fear of many Russian national security strategists has been the increasing vulnerability Moscow faces vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nowhere is that anxiety more pronounced than in the Russian Far East and Pacific coast regions.

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That region is home to a number of strategic industries, including the massive Komsomolsk-na-Amure aviation production plant that manufactures the most advanced Sukhoi fighter aircraft, most notably the Su-35 and Su-57.

The PRC has already purchased the first of those two models. The second is loaded with technologies and on-board systems that Beijing would like to have.

Therefore, Moscow’s “China nightmare” has been, for years, that as Russia’s population in the East continues to decline and its economic prowess declines, the combined weakness could prompt the PRC to begin seizing some of the most valuable areas of that territory. According to a classified document leaked from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) earlier this year, even Russian President Vladimir Putin fears that Beijing is already “trying to encroach” on this territory.

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[Russia's] nightmare is now coming close to becoming a reality—a very bad daydream.

On December 14, NetEase, one of China’s largest media platforms and officially listed with hundreds of millions of users, published an article with a headline that telegraphed intentions Russia has long feared. “China Must Prepare for the Worst: If Russia Collapses, This 7 Million Square Kilometer Territory Must Not Be Lost” is the title of the Chinese-language article.

The subject, of course, is Russia’s Far East. The irony is that the PRC is the very nation that Putin so defiantly “pivoted” to in the wake of Western sanctions after his invasion of Ukraine.

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And it is that same nation he was counting on to evade Western sanctions that is now talking openly about beginning to devour one of the most strategically important regions that he rules over.

The Chinese authors do not even attempt to clothe Beijing’s ambitions in any diplomatic or circuitous language. The Far East is like a “chicken rib” for Russia, they write, an enormous but useless region, because “there’s no money for development, no people, and the war in the west is draining the last resources.”

For China, however, it’s a “treasure”—teeming with gold, diamonds, oil, gas, and timber. In other words, everything Beijing desperately needs.

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The Chinese language article reads:

“One should not attempt to seize it by force; this would lead to global encirclement, as happened with Crimea. The smart approach is to be more accommodating, continue investing money and human resources, sign long-term contracts, and support pro-Chinese forces in the region. Nominally independent, but practically dependent on Chinese support."

As a Russian commentator points out, this plan is not some conspiracy theory or wild speculation. It’s a direct quote from Chinese media. One step after another is spelled out: create economic dependence, introduce the Chinese currency (the yuan) as a local legal tender; build infrastructure, bind the locals to Beijing with loans (that are used to pay for the infrastructure), and wait for the “political landscape to change.”

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The Chinese could also give the Russians lessons on historical grievances and how to play the victimization card. Like Putin in a Tucker Carlson interview, the article reaches back more than a century and a half to remind readers that, in 1858, Russia used the Treaty of Aigun to annex 600,000 square kilometers north of the Amur from a weakened and corrupt Qing Empire.

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For China, these territories being part of Russia are the consequence of “unequal treaties”, the term that Beijing officially uses to describe these 19th-century agreements. In China’s eyes, the agreements are not binding, Russia still “owes” this territory back to the PRC, and the debt remains unpaid.

Chinese intent is clear. When Russia collapses from the strains caused by the Ukraine war, this issue will be dealt with.

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Russia is bogged down in this war, write the authors, and now its GDP is “smaller than a single Chinese province,” and thanks to that war [in Ukraine], Russia now has fewer than “50,000 troops remaining in the Far East—essentially an empty shell”, as Chinese media openly writes.

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