Part 1. “Great China”: Who Benefited the Most from the Collapse of the USSR?

Recently, I published a post about how China increased beer supplies to our country and even successfully took third place in the dubious "honor" of intoxicating Russian citizens. Meanwhile, we are shipping parts of our Russian Taiga to China, destroying even refuges of wild nature, and inviting "Chinese investments" to develop Siberia and the Far East, in exchange flooding the market with cheap Chinese beer.

Such are the paradoxes.

In 2024 alone, China nearly doubled its beer supplies to Russia, with a sharp spike occurring between January and October of the previous year!

Other countries have also increased their beer supplies to Russia. For instance, Poland (with which our politicians seem to be constantly at odds) increased their beer supplies 5.7 times. The Czech Republic doubled its supplies, reaching a record level since August 2020 (a period of increased beer consumption in the country due to depression among people caused by pandemic-related restrictions).

Today, I want to talk about China.

A little about what is not customary to discuss publicly and what our politicians certainly do not voice.

First, take a look at the graph comparing the national potentials of different states.

The graph shows a comparison of the national potentials of states based on the Composite Index of National Capability, proposed by the authors of the Correlates of War project.

The Correlates of War project, as it is called in its original form.

The graph is based on statistical data from 1946 to 2016. It is composed using aggregated data across six indicators:

1. Population size;
2. Volume of military expenditures;
3. Volume of pig iron and steel production;
4. Volume of primary energy consumption;
5. Size of the army;
6. Urban population size.

In other words, the methodology works as follows: the index for each country is formed based on the average value of six indicators, each expressed as a percentage of the global total. The Correlates of War project claims to measure hard power, the tangible strength of a state. I would call it the foundation of military potential.

Instead of a thousand words, a single graph. As the saying goes: "Better to see once than hear a hundred times." Personally, I was simply shocked when I realized what I was seeing! The USSR collapses, and at that moment, China skyrockets like a rocket. The "younger brother" simply outmaneuvered the elder brother—the USSR—or did it actively participate in its destruction?!

For me, this material is uncharacteristic. It is not exactly about environmental problems, although it also touches upon nature conservation issues directly.

I started the "Russian Taiga" project with the realization of the scale of forest exports to China. I did everything I could to raise awareness about this problem among as many people as possible. Together, we managed, at least, to stop large-scale poaching.

My latest article was about the export of bear fat and other organ-based products derived from the bodies of wild animals killed in the Russian Taiga, again to China.

Somehow, it turns out that both illegal and legalized exploitation of our country's boreal forests, our northern taiga, benefits China. And somehow, this is not commonly discussed. On the contrary, they talk about strategic partnership with China, about how China is our "closest friend." We are actively advised by "top officials" in the government to learn Chinese. Special economic zones are created specifically for the Chinese. Federal laws are changed to cater to Chinese interests. China was the "younger brother" of the USSR, and now Russia has become the "younger sister" of "Great China," is that how it is now?!

At some point, I tried to understand the "green" movement in the world. I asked myself: why do these public movements promote not the actual protection of the last ancient forests, for example, which would be logical, but rather murky economic interests where some industries are burdened with incomprehensible "green taxes," making them unprofitable? Why is this happening? Perhaps it is done in someone's specific interest?

China is now the main global beneficiary of the "green economy." And the actions of "greens," primarily in Europe, fit well into the framework of lobbying for China's economic interests—supplying Chinese electric vehicles, Chinese wind turbines, Chinese solar panels, etc.

When I began to explore Europe's environmental movements further, it turned out to be even more interesting. Historically, they emerged from Maoist movements in Europe, which were guided by the books of Chairman Mao.

Maoism became popular in the 1960s among leftist political movements in Europe as a way to implement communist ideas without the influence of the "totalitarian USSR." With the collapse of the USSR, these same movements with the same leaders switched to nature conservation, to the "green" agenda.

Reference:

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 — September 9, 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary and founder of the People's Republic of China, which he led as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically, he was a Marxist-Leninist, and his theories, military strategies, and policies are collectively known as Maoism.

These are very complex issues. Corresponding historical knowledge is required, which I do not possess. So these are amateur speculations. My amateur assumptions are that China's role in the destruction of the Soviet Union is consciously and rigidly hushed up here. Just as the piecemeal dismantling of our country by China under songs about "friendship and strategic partnership" is hushed up. I expressed my opinion in response to readers' questions: why am I so negative towards China, and why do I so often mention in my articles the dismantling of our country's natural resources by the Chinese?

Probably because it is China that is dismantling our country's natural resources. It is impossible to write, for example, that bear fat for the needs of Chinese traditional medicine is bought, say, by Greenlanders. Or that more than half of the pine nuts from our taiga are exported, for instance, to the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

But what amazes me even more is the zeal with which the sale of our country's natural heritage is carried out by our own people. I literally just wrote material about how bears are desperately hungry in the Russian Taiga, hunters complain about the "very scarce supply of bear fat," which, in turn, has triggered a rise in the prices of wild animal derivatives.

Now, in the Far East and Siberia, new companies are rapidly opening, buying up parts of wild animals' bodies and raw materials from endemic plants, packaging all this into dietary supplements for mass export to China and other Asian countries.

Regional authorities, such as the Ministry of Economic Development, publicly report on the successful growth of exports, which have been "rocketing" in recent years.

And now we see that China, in return, is actively intoxicating our population by increasing and cheapening beer supplies.

"Drink, Russian brother, and don't think about anything! Here are your Chinese beads, and here is your language of beer! Don't deny yourself anything."

Maybe we should stop selling off the Russian Taiga, the natural heritage of our country? Introduce a ban on any export of endemic plants and animals? Maybe solve the problem of critical food shortages for the same bears instead of increasing hunting quotas for their slaughter "for lard" for supply to China?

Maybe we should start preserving what our ancestors left us and what we are responsible for before our children?

© PAVEL PASHKOV