'China Believes That Treaty On Territories With Russia Can Be Revised'

Why is the Kremlin preparing for war with Beijing?

The Financial Times writes that the Russian military forces are rehearsing the scenario of a nuclear war with China. Other scenarios of the PRC's attack on the Russian Federation.

Does the Kremlin really see China as a threat? Charter97.org addressed this and more questions to Oleh Belokolos, Director of the Center for National Resilience Studies in Kyiv, former Counselor of the Embassy of Ukraine to Canada and Kenya:

— To begin with, I served in the Soviet army in the second half of the 1980s in the Mongolian People's Republic. I was the commander of the T-72 tank crew. It was the army that was in Mongolia that was supposed to fight against China. There were such plans. At that time, China was seriously considered as the most likely enemy for the USSR.

I think that plans for the use of nuclear weapons were undoubtedly attached to conventional weapons. Since even then the army of China, although it did not have today's technical equipment, but was numerous, had a certain level of training, weapons, it posed a threat.

No wonder we had a painted poster on the parade ground of our base - there was a Chinese in the picture and the inscription: "Source of Threat To World". This is another confirmation.

— In the news, information periodically pops up that there are some maps where Siberia, the Far East are shown as "lost territories of the Celestial Empire". Is such revisionism towards the Russian Federation really strong in Beijing?

— I can say that according to the agreement of the middle of the 19th century, the border passed along the Amur. Experts I trust argue that China considers that the treaty was imposed by force. In the concept of international law, there are theorists who argue that treaties imposed by force (not the subject of a real consensus) can be revised.

Based on this approach, some Chinese circles believe that this treaty may be revised.

— After the war, China's influence on the Russian Federation increased in terms of economy – "soft power". How dangerous are these trends for the Kremlin?

— As for the situation in Russia, I read the works by experts who are close to the government of the Russian Federation. They express concerns about the great level of Russia's dependence on China that is developing now.

Large Western companies have left the Russian market, starting from the production of cars, railroad cars, machine tools, power equipment — and so on. The export of these products is currently not possible. You can steal some chips somewhere and bring them in a suitcase, but you can't bring the country in a suitcase.

Their place is actively taken by Chinese products from the same areas. Russia can only take these products from China. In the foreign exchange market, the yuan begins to replace the dollar and the euro.

Russia becomes a semi-colony: a supplier of raw materials and a market for the sale of finished products. This is how the status of a country in semi-colonial dependence sounded in the 1970s and 1980s. In the political sense, there is some independence, but in the economic sense, the country is subordinated to another.

We see that the economy sooner or later begins to influence politics. Russia is moving along this path, becoming increasingly dependent on Beijing.

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