Part 2. “Big China”: Having Defeated the USSR — Conquers the World

In the first part of my material, I told about how China influences our country today. Derivatives of the Russian Taiga for Chinese traditional medicine in exchange for cheap beer from the Celestial Empire — this is more likely a pinpoint illustration of how absurd the expansion of "Big China" has become.

Or maybe not quite. Let this be a “paradoxical illustration.” Perhaps that’s the most fitting term, illustrating the paradoxes of modern politics.

With the collapse of the USSR — as it turned out, the main beneficiary was China. Their economy is still growing rapidly, outpacing global economies and competing with the United States, which still tries to endure the competition.

As for modern Russia, it’s hardly the case that any “ruble-based” movements in the country will affect the global economy, whereas any shifts in the yuan or the dollar will immediately have a colossal impact on the world!

But once it was different, and the most powerful force in the world, truly balancing the political arena, was the Soviet Union. Among other things, the USSR restrained China’s predatory behavior, in good time putting the “younger brother” in its place at the border.

Today, in the second part of the material, I want to visually show why it is precisely China that is the main beneficiary of the collapse of the USSR. In preparing my material, I studied state projects from the last century to the present day and tried to figure out what policy “Big China” is pursuing today.

СТАНОВЛЕНИЕ КИТАЯ

I’ll start from afar so that the picture is clearer.

In the 1950s, the USSR and China began to draw closer, but already in 1961, due to ideological and geopolitical conflicts between the CPSU (then led by Nikita Khrushchev) and the CPC (led by Mao Zedong), the paths of the two states finally diverged. This happened because of differing views on the future path of development.

As a result, from that time on, the fiercest rivalry began between China and the USSR. Some historians call this shift the “Sino-Soviet split.” China wanted to expand its influence, especially in light of its rapidly growing population and ambitious personal projects. The Soviet Union, in turn, began to suppress the “growing appetites” of its neighbor.

It got to the point that in 1969, on Damansky Island (today this is a border area between the Russian Federation and the PRC), there were real military clashes between our soldiers. China demanded that Damansky Island be given to it, claiming it belonged to the Celestial Empire! On March 2, 1969, about 300 Chinese soldiers ambushed a Soviet border detachment patrolling the island.

However, China forgot that it was trying to strike at the USSR, whose power no one in the world doubted. As a result, the Chinese killed 31 Soviet soldiers while losing from 100 to 150 of their own. After that, the Soviet leadership deployed expanded military forces, artillery, and armored vehicles to the region! And already on March 15, the second battle began: Soviet troops used Grad multiple rocket launch systems to “besiege” the Chinese.

It worked.

The Chinese government decided that continuing this conflict was suicidal.

Thus, thereafter, during the period of the “Cold War,” the USSR actively developed military infrastructure and stationed troops specifically along the entire border with China, preventing the neighbor from growing economically and promptly curbing any attempts at predatory behavior.

In addition, from the 1960s onward, the USSR halted technical assistance to China. And previously there had been quite a lot of such assistance, including programs for the construction of industrial facilities and the training of specialists!

This continued right up to the late 1980s, essentially until the very beginning of the collapse of the USSR. And by this time, the Chinese government was actively preparing.

In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart, and in its place, the independent states of the CIS emerged. The “power vacuum” that appeared began to be rapidly filled by China! No longer was there a need to sort things out with the huge Soviet Union: taking advantage of the disunity and the fall of the giant, China began to pursue a “soft power” policy toward the CIS countries.

The fact is, the Celestial Empire gained access to the raw materials that the Soviet Union had once possessed. Kazakhstan has oil, gas, and various metals. Turkmenistan has natural gas. Uzbekistan has cotton and gas. Tajikistan is rich in mineral resources!

China simply began offering them cooperation on very favorable terms, promising support, including alliance-based and military support.

According to World Bank data, China’s trade with the Central Asian countries grew from 460 million dollars in 1992 to more than 40 billion dollars by 2020.

Just thirty years — the sum increased almost 87 times! That’s an average annual growth of 17.3%. I think the scale is clear to everyone!

Also, after the collapse of the USSR, China began establishing transport arteries through the CIS countries. Massive construction of roads, railway lines began, long pipelines carrying oil and gas stretched out! All this carried resources into China, and from it — goods.

According to the same World Bank, from the early 2000s to the 2020s, China’s exports to Russia and the CIS countries grow by 10–15% every year, making real production outside China completely unnecessary! The law of “Big China” is simple: “You give us resources — we give you goods. You don’t need real production and technology. We handle that now.”

There was also the situation that for about ten years after the collapse of the USSR, China needed to build relationships with the new neighbors to remove earlier restrictions and demilitarize the borders. And in 2001, China created the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), aimed at political and economic cooperation with all CIS countries.

Now for the numbers.

According to the World Bank, in 1990 (a year before the collapse of the USSR), China’s GDP was only 360 billion dollars, whereas by 2020 it had reached 14.72 trillion. That is, the GDP of the Celestial Empire, thanks to the fall of the USSR, showed an increase of more than 40 times.

This is due to the fact that China was able to obtain all Soviet technologies (including military ones), endless resources, and new markets. Essentially, it acquired everything the Soviet Union had owned before it.

Chinese investments in the Central Asian countries built metallurgical plants, cement enterprises, and so on. Already by 2010, according to the Asian Development Bank, China had invested 40–50 billion dollars in Central Asia, and after that, it began to actively invest in Russia — from 2008 to 2018, more than 30 billion dollars.

For an example of the scale of the projects:

In Kazakhstan, China built the Atyrau – Alashankou oil pipeline in just three years (from 2003 to 2006), whose throughput capacity already reached several tens of millions of tons of oil per year.

In Turkmenistan, China built a gas pipeline, laying it through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, with a length of 1,830 km. It has been operating since 2009, supplying China with a large volume of gas!

БОЛЬШОЙ КИТАЙ

Thus, it was China that became the main beneficiary of the collapse of the USSR, and it all started with real military conflicts between the states. When the USSR was gone, the Celestial Empire lost its main socialist competitor, whose ideology differed greatly from that of China. There was no need to fight over whose socialism was “more correct.”

One can forget about military tension altogether — it simply disappeared. On our side! Meanwhile, over these years, China’s “military machine” has become one of the strongest in the world, truly capable of opposing and competing even with the United States.

After the collapse of the USSR, the CIS countries fundamentally did everything not to cooperate with the successor to the Soviet Union — Russia. And here comes “Big China,” which began pouring in huge sums of money and effectively building up the economies of the new neighbors!

And while from 1991 to the 2000s Russia dealt with its internal problems, oligarchs “seized” factories, and people tried to survive and feed their families any way they could, China was systematically absorbing everything it could reach.

Also, after 2000, China began to actively change its policy toward attracting foreign investments! The idea was: produce goods on our land for next to nothing.

You don’t need environmental standards, restrictions? Want to pollute the air? Go ahead. Want cheap labor? That’s not a problem either.

Naturally, companies went to China, and to this day, the giants of the US and Europe keep their production in the Celestial Empire. Meanwhile, China simply pulled in all the technologies for itself and managed to break into a leading position in technological development!

By the 2010s, China had quite rightly come to be called the “Second Economy in the World.”

СМОТРИМ НА ВОСТОК

In the early 2000s, the Russian authorities launched a policy of “Looking East.” The idea was to start receiving investments from Asian countries. Naturally, primarily from China!

After 2014, China became Russia’s main “strategic partner,” and all our foreign policy turned sharply eastward. Essentially, belatedly, we did exactly the same thing the CIS countries did for China: in the absence of real technological leadership and our own production, we began exporting natural resources in exchange for cheap Chinese goods and investments.

The Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline was laid, from Yakutia they drew the “Power of Siberia” to sell gas, global railway lines (the Trans-Siberian, the BAM) began to be transferred for increased export supplies to China. Border checkpoint systems were simplified, and new freight corridors opened.

And our country began offering very significant discounts on everything! And when all the infrastructure leading to China was already built, it was precisely at that moment that the Chinese government began dictating terms. Refusal is unrealistic, you can’t turn gas pipelines and roads back. So there is nothing to do but agree to the conditions.

Thus, China gets oil, gas, and other raw materials from Russia at a much lower price than other Asian countries, say Japan or South Korea.

Meanwhile, China expands its presence in the agricultural market, effectively occupying sectors! In return for support on the world stage, China demands a share in major deposits and in the industrial sector, which allows it to influence key resource projects in our country.

Chinese banks and corporations receive all sorts of preferential conditions for working in Russia, expanding their network of branches and integrating into Russian infrastructure.

According to the General Administration of Customs of the PRC, in 2021 the trade turnover between Russia and China amounted to about 146 billion dollars! By 2022 it had already exceeded 190 billion dollars, while in subsequent years analysts forecast growth from 200 to 250 billion dollars.

It was for this purpose, in fact, that the laws on priority development areas (TOR) were created — to give Chinese investments and corporations the opportunity to move to Russia permanently and “develop” the territories of Siberia and the Far East, residing inside the country under special favorable conditions.

ПОДВЕДЁМ ИТОГИ

I have given a real picture of what is happening, having studied the rise of “Big China” and the fall of the USSR. I won’t be wrong if I say that today all the CIS countries and Russia are tightly woven into the Chinese economy and depend on it. This means that “Big China” can dictate terms and regulate relations however it pleases!

If earlier the center of power was the Soviet Union, now that center is the Chinese Empire.

I don’t know how to finish this material. I just wanted to show the scope of interests — few people point these things out!

Let me just give you a few quotes:

• “The Chinese language can become one of the key tools of international communication in the 21st century, and it is important for Russia to train specialists who speak it fluently,” — Dmitry Medvedev in a series of interviews with Chinese publications.

  
  

• “We see the trend — every year the number of schools introducing Chinese as a second (and in some cases even first) foreign language is increasing. This meets the demands of the times and the economy,” — Olga Vasilyeva (Minister of Education of the Russian Federation in 2016–2018, Minister of Education with the abolished Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in 2018–2020).

  
  

• Sergey Kravtsov (current Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, appointed in 2020) — at one of the meetings with the heads of regional education authorities, said that “the interest of the regions in learning Chinese will continue to grow” and that the ministry will support programs for training Chinese language teachers.

  
  

• Oleg Kozhemyako (Governor of Primorsky Krai) — during a meeting on the development of tourism and trade with the PRC, noted that knowledge of the Chinese language is “a strategic competitive advantage for the residents of Primorye.” He called for the development of additional education for schoolchildren and students, which would help them master the Chinese language at a conversational level.

  
  

• Mikhail Degtyarev (Governor of the Khabarovsk Krai) — in an interview with the regional TV channel “Guberniya,” mentioned that the regional government seeks “to establish more bilingual projects (Russian-Chinese)” to attract tourists and partners from the PRC. According to him, “in the future, it’s important that schools in the Khabarovsk Krai have the option to study not only English but also Chinese.”

  
  
• “When our comrade delivers a message and we understand him, because we can speak in the language of interethnic communication, that is very important. Let’s learn our national languages, languages of interethnic communication, Chinese. English is a dead language. That’s it, its time is gone,” said Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodin after the speech in Russian by the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the PRC to Belarus, Xie Xiaoyong.

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