The Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership starts to get serious!

Blackstone

Brigadier
It is not unusual some quarters will be upset whenever a foreigner buys or lease a big chink of land in theirs. There were rumblings when a Chinese company bought a sizeable farmland in New Zealand, but have since been silent.
New Zealand is silent now? Really? You mean China didn't send hordes of invaders to colonize the leased land? Did Beijing give up on annexing New Zealand or something?
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
- Lucrative contract for otherwise unused idle land
- Significant investment in the infrastructure of the local economy to open up previously inaccessible areas
- Large foreign direct investment and spending massively raising local income and wealth levels

Sounds pretty terrible doesn't it? :rolleyes:

The western press will bend over backwards to twist anything China does into a bad thing.

Although I would argue that the New Zealand deal and Russia deals are not directly comparable given the geographical differences. The idea that China will seek to annex land it leases in NZ is certainly far more ludicrous than the Russian fears about an area of land right on the Sino-Russian boarder.

However, I still think those fears are way overblown inside Russia and then vastly inflated by the Western media in terms of just how big of an issue it is to most Russians.

The Russian fears are largely stemming from semi-racist roots and augmented by the Russians projecting their own behaviour and methods onto the Chinese.

It is usually an insightful exercise to dissect the irrational fears of people, as that can often give you insights into how they themselves think, as people often project their own motivations and schemes onto others.

However, from a historical standpoint, China has been extremely principled and consistent in terms of its territorial claims.

Contrary to the propaganda of the western media about Chinese "expansionism", the PRC has never ever once revised up its territorial claims to include territory it first claimed upon the founding of the People's Republic.

The only changes to its territorial claims China has ever made has been to revise them down after reaching bilateral agreements with others.

In the face of that cast iron fact, a piece of Siberian wilderness seems like a pathetically poor prize for China to break such a long standing and important principle over.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
Wolf- let's put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say there's a huge piece of Chinese land with very few people living there, something like... TIBET. Let's then say there's a country with huge population living next door that previously didn't move into Tibet for a host of reasons. Furthermore, let's say with improvements in Sino-Big Country relations, cross border travels are now common. Finally, Big Country leases land in Tibet for mining, water, and farm/ranch projects. How would the average Han Chinese feel about it? Beijing elites may say all is well, and business is good for both countries, but the common people would be suspicious and maybe even xenophobic.
 

delft

Brigadier
Wolf- let's put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say there's a huge piece of Chinese land with very few people living there, something like... TIBET. Let's then say there's a country with huge population living next door that previously didn't move into Tibet for a host of reasons. Furthermore, let's say with improvements in Sino-Big Country relations, cross border travels are now common. Finally, Big Country leases land in Tibet for mining, water, and farm/ranch projects. How would the average Han Chinese feel about it? Beijing elites may say all is well, and business is good for both countries, but the common people would be suspicious and maybe even xenophobic.
Problem is Big Country was already extending into Tibet when it still was a British colony. The British even falsified one of their collections of international treaties to claim the existence of a treaty wrt Tibet that was rejected by China. This falsification was a major factor in causing the war of 1962.
 
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Blackstone

Brigadier
Problem is Big Country was already extending into Tibet when it still was a British colony. The British even falsified one of their collections of international treaties to claim the existence of a treaty wrt Tibet that was rejected by China. This falsification was a major factor in causing the war of 1962.
Eh... China-India war of 1962 can fill up volumes, and probably best if we leave that out of this discussion. It is extremely interesting and deserves discussions in another thread though.
 

solarz

Brigadier
Wolf- let's put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say there's a huge piece of Chinese land with very few people living there, something like... TIBET. Let's then say there's a country with huge population living next door that previously didn't move into Tibet for a host of reasons. Furthermore, let's say with improvements in Sino-Big Country relations, cross border travels are now common. Finally, Big Country leases land in Tibet for mining, water, and farm/ranch projects. How would the average Han Chinese feel about it? Beijing elites may say all is well, and business is good for both countries, but the common people would be suspicious and maybe even xenophobic.

What you're hypothesizing has actually happened, except instead of Tibet, it's Northwestern China, and instead of some unnamed "Big Country", it's Koreans.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
What you're hypothesizing has actually happened, except instead of Tibet, it's Northwestern China, and instead of some unnamed "Big Country", it's Koreans.
True, Solarz, but the difference is North Koreans moved into province with lots of Chinese population, whereas considering Tibet only has about 3 million people, it's relatively empty.

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solarz

Brigadier
True, Solarz, but the difference is North Koreans moved into province with lots of Chinese population, whereas considering Tibet only has about 3 million people, it's relatively empty.

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Actually, the Chinese government gave the Koreans their own Autonomous Prefecture:

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They basically treated the Koreans just like any other Chinese ethnic minority.

The problem with your hypothetical scenario is that if there were any place that would attract lots of people to settle, the Chinese themselves would have settled it long ago. Empty places in China are empty for good reasons!

The fact is, China is a big country with a huge population and a culture that stretches back five millenia. This gives the Chinese people an unparalleled confidence in their own identity and culture, no matter where they are and who they live with. This kind of confidence can sometimes intimidate people from other cultures, which then leads to mistaken beliefs of "Chinese takeover". In fact, when compared to other immigrant groups like muslims and hispanics, the Chinese (and other Asians too) are some of the most willing people to conform to their adopted homeland's social norms.

When you are confident about your own culture, you don't worry about being converted or assimilated.
 
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