14 February, 16:34
Chinese political discourse is growing louder on a question Beijing refuses to ask officially — the question of Outer Manchuria.
Some 647,000 square kilometers that Russia seized from the Qing Empire under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Convention of Peking in 1860. The territory where Vladivostok stands — or, as Chinese maps now render it, Haishenwai: Bay of the Sea Cucumber.
The question is no longer whether China wants these lands back. The question is when — and by what means.
A Grievance 165 Years in the Making
China calls the Aigun and Peking treaties "unequal." Russia extracted them at a moment when the Qing dynasty was hemorrhaging from the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion. St. Petersburg moved with surgical precision: while London and Paris burned the Summer Palace in Beijing, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky quietly processed the annexation of the Amur region. The result — close to a million square kilometers transferred northward, along with access to the Pacific.
That historical account fuels what China calls the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." In 2023, authorities were forced to block the account of popular television host Zhou Libo — over a post about a possible annexation of Siberia. Notably, they blocked it not because the idea was outrageous, but because its public discussion created diplomatic inconvenience.
That same year, China's Ministry of Natural Resources released a new official map. Vladivostok became Haishenwai. Khabarovsk became Boli. The Stanovoy Range became the Outer Hinggan Mountains. Russia filed a protest. Beijing shrugged.
Analysts at The Diplomat, tracking the trajectory of Chinese nationalist discourse, conclude that the idea of reclaiming these territories has gained traction precisely since 2022. The logic is simple and, from a nationalist standpoint, airtight: if Russia can take foreign territory by force, why should China hesitate to press its own claims?
Not War — Economic Gravity
Beijing will not fight for Outer Manchuria. To take a neighbor's territory, war is not required — it is enough to become indispensable.
Russia is a nuclear power and a useful partner in pushing back against the American-led world order. Armed conflict with Moscow serves no Chinese interest. But the economic dependency accumulating year by year turns the territorial question from a diplomatic one into a financial one — settled not in military headquarters but in balance sheets.
In 2022, after Moscow found itself under Western sanctions, Russia opened the door itself. The Kremlin established special economic zones and special administrative regions across the Far East and Siberia — exclusively for Chinese investment. The Russian ruble is rapidly losing ground to the yuan in bilateral settlements. According to The Diplomat, the yuan has effectively displaced the ruble from all economic operations that Chinese companies conduct in Siberia. Russia's Far East now functions as a resource hinterland for China, with state-owned or subsidized Chinese companies extracting raw materials on terms Moscow accepts with visible relief.
In 1919, Soviet diplomat Lev Karakhan signed a manifesto promising to return to China all territories taken by Tsarist Russia. When the Bolsheviks won the civil war, the promise was quietly forgotten. Beijing did not forget. A century later, it holds an instrument more reliable than any army: structural economic dependence from which Moscow can no longer break free.
Numbers That Speak Louder
According to Reuters, bilateral trade between China and Russia fell in 2025 for the first time in five years, with Chinese exports to Russia dropping 9.9%. Car shipments collapsed by 56–58% — from 1.28 million units in 2024 to 513,000 in the first eleven months of 2025. Russia's share of Chinese automotive exports shrank to the point where Moscow ceded first place to Mexico.
Moscow has been trying to push back. The Kremlin raised recycling levies on imported vehicles by 70–85%, shielding its domestic auto industry. But that move only exposed the dependency Russia had already built: roughly 57% of the country's industrial equipment now originates in China. When Beijing curtailed exports of precision machine tools to Russia, it demonstrated immediately who controls the switch.
The Slow Absorption
This strategy has precedents. It is how China operates along the Indian border and in the South China Sea. According to The Diplomat, Beijing is pursuing a creeping annexation — a gradual, informal assertion of control through companies, infrastructure, people, and the yuan. No war. No declarations.
Moscow understands this. Leaked FSB documents, cited by The Diplomat, indicate that the Kremlin regards Chinese influence in the Far East as a threat. But it has no alternatives. The war in Ukraine has destroyed them. Every month of fighting means another concession to Beijing — another discount on oil, another lease in Primorsky Krai.
China's economy is six times the size of Russia's. Its yuan is the operating currency of Siberia. Its maps have already renamed Vladivostok. The territories Russia seized by force in the nineteenth century, China is reclaiming in the twenty-first — through investment, concessions, and currency. Quietly. Without firing a shot.