Sarah Paine — How Russia sabotaged China's rise

Historical Context & Terminology

• The speaker defines "Russia" as the enduring entity covering Czarist, Soviet, and modern periods, similar to how "France" encompasses its various monarchies and republics.
• The core paradigm of Russian and Chinese foreign policy is that of "continental empires," which historically follow two rules: avoid two-front wars and prevent any single great power from establishing itself on their borders.
• To maintain security, these empires historically destabilize rising neighbors, set up buffer zones, and sequentially absorb territory to ensure no rival powers exist on their periphery.
• Both nations have a history of overextending their power, leading to periodic implosions and high mortality rates, a pattern observable in modern conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.
• Russia and China's relationship is characterized as "glacial rather than cordial," with a history of Russia actively derailing China's rise despite superficial alliances.

Russian Territorial Gains at China's Expense

• In the 1850s, during the Taiping Rebellion, Russia mediated between China and European powers, convincing the Qing dynasty to sign the Treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) in exchange for protection.
• These treaties resulted in Russia ceding vast territories in Central Asia and the Pacific, totaling an area greater than all U.S. territory east of the Mississippi River.
• Following the First Sino-Japanese War, Russia orchestrated the "Triple Intervention" to force Japan to relinquish the Liaodong Peninsula, only to seize the territory itself and allow other powers to carve out concessions, leaving China fragmented.
• In 1919, the Bolsheviks issued the Karakhan Manifesto, promising to return all unequal treaty lands to China; however, this offer was a strategic maneuver to gain Chinese trust while Russian concessions remained intact until the 1950s.
• During the Russian Civil War, Russia retained its massive concession areas in China, which were significantly larger than British concessions like Hong Kong, despite the latter generating more revenue.
• In the 1930s, Russia deployed over 100,000 troops, tanks, and aircraft to crush Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang's attempt to reclaim the Chinese Eastern Railway, ensuring Russian control over critical infrastructure.
• The Yalta Agreement (1945) legitimized Russia's annexation of Outer Mongolia, which had historically been part of the Qing sphere of influence, effectively removing it from Chinese control.

Strategic Meddling in Chinese Internal Affairs

• During the First United Front (1920s), the USSR provided the Nationalist Party (KMT) with arms, expertise, and the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy, conditioning aid on the inclusion of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) within the KMT.
• Stalin advised the CCP to remain in the United Front despite Chiang Kai-shek's growing threat, aiming to keep Chinese communists close to the KMT army for future elimination.
• Chiang Kai-shek eventually turned on the CCP in Shanghai, massacring communists and forcing Mao Zedong to abandon urban centers in favor of a rural guerrilla strategy.
• Stalin used the resulting failure of the "world revolution" in China to defeat Trotsky in the Soviet internal power struggle, promoting the doctrine of "socialism in one country."
• During WWII, Stalin encouraged the Second United Front (Nationalist-Communist alliance against Japan) but refused to send Soviet troops, ensuring Chinese forces bore the brunt of the war against Japan.
• In the final weeks of WWII (August Storm), the Soviets invaded Manchuria, dismantling its industrial base by removing 83% of electrical equipment, 86% of mining machinery, and 82% of cement production facilities to transport to Russia.
• The Soviets also enslaved 640,000 Japanese POWs for decades and seized Northern Kuril Islands, which remain disputed today, while providing the CCP with the captured Japanese equipment and expertise needed to win the Chinese Civil War.
• In 1948, Stalin advised Mao to halt his offensive at the Yangtze River to allow a divided China to persist; Mao ignored this advice, continuing south and forcing Stalin to acknowledge the CCP's victory.
• During the Korean War, Stalin supported the North to prolong the conflict, believing a prolonged war would weaken the US and bind China to the Soviet sphere while the US was tied down.
• After Stalin's death, the relationship deteriorated as Mao realized the USSR did not want a strong China, leading to disputes over Vietnam aid, nuclear technology, and shared naval bases.

The Sino-Soviet Split & Geopolitical Reversal

• China detonated its first atomic bomb in 1964, ending its reliance on Soviet nuclear protection and allowing for an independent foreign policy.
• Territorial disputes flared in 1969 over Zhenbao (Damansky) Island, where China challenged Russia's claim to both banks of the Amur River.
• During the border crisis, the USSR proposed nuclear strikes on China; the US rejected this, signaling that China had become a more direct existential threat to Russia than the US.
• The split allowed the US to play a "swing" role, normalizing relations with China to counterbalance Soviet power through military and diplomatic pressure.
• China's economic rise accelerated under Deng Xiaoping's reforms, achieving double-digit growth rates for two decades, while the Soviet Union entered terminal decline.
• Soviet growth stagnated in the mid-1970s due to the "Brezhnev Stagnation," leadership health crises, and heavy reliance on oil revenues, which plummeted in the 1980s.
• Gorbachev's reforms failed, leading to the loss of Eastern European satellites and the dissolution of the USSR by 1991, leaving Russia as a diminished "rump state."

Modern Strategic Dynamics & Future Outlook

• Russia's national identity remains fixated on vast territorial extent and the security of its borders, a mindset that led to the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.
• China's leadership prioritizes regime survival and stability over economic efficiency, utilizing jingoistic nationalism to replace declining ideological legitimacy.
• Unlike the Soviet era, where proxy wars were preferred, Putin has engaged in direct "hot wars" (Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine), a departure from traditional continental empire rules that Russia previously avoided.
• China currently holds significantly more leverage than Russia, possessing nine times the population, nine times the GDP, and converging per capita GDP.
• China is actively expanding its influence in Central Asia and Siberia through the Belt and Road Initiative, accessing critical resources like water (Lake Baikal) that Russia can no longer defend.
• Putin's war in Ukraine has left Siberia vulnerable, potentially subjecting Russia to a "Chinese yoke" where it becomes a resource supplier rather than an equal partner.
• The "bromance" between Beijing and Moscow is likely temporary; the speaker predicts it will end when Xi Jinping decides the current terms of trade are no longer advantageous.
• The speaker warns that the West must avoid trade wars with allies and instead maximize its own prosperity to contain the destructive tendencies of both powers.
• The ultimate risk is a "hot war" or nuclear conflict between these powers, but the speaker argues that their primary theaters of operation (Taiwan for China, Ukraine for Russia) do not currently align to create a unified Axis-like threat.
• Historical lessons suggest that the West's greatest strength is its alliance system and technological innovation; abandoning these could lead to the same isolationist disasters that befell Imperial Japan in WWII.
• The speaker concludes that the US must act as a "blast shield," managing the fallout of Sino-Russian conflicts while ensuring allies remain economically robust to counterbalance authoritarian aggression.