Lenta.ru: China approved new maps and included part of Russia’s territory in them
Chinese State website “Standard Maps Cartographic Service” has released a new, officially approved, set of geographic kart for 2023, in which part of the territories of Russia is annexed to China.
We are talking about the Big Ussuri Island, which, according to the demarcation of the Russian-Chinese border from 2005, is divided into two parts that are part of Russia and China. However, on the maps on the website of the Chinese service, it refers entirely to the territory of the PRC.
How did relations between countries develop over the issue of the island?
The issue of belonging to the Big Ussuri Island (the Chinese name is Heixiazi) was especially acute at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. The Beijing Treaty of 1860 demarcated the lands along the Chinese bank of the Amur, the Ussuri, and also along the Kazakevich channel.
In 1861, the Chinese and Russian sides erected a monument at the confluence of the rivers, which marked the place where the borders of the states were divided, but the Chinese later stated that Russia allegedly moved the monument deep into Chinese territory, and already at the beginning of the 20th century they began to collect taxes on the island.
The conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway is a Soviet-Chinese armed conflict that occurred in 1929 after the control of the railway, which was a joint venture between the USSR and China, was seized by the ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Xueliang. During the clashes, the Red Army defeated the Chinese military and restored the status of the CER
After the conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), the territory of the island was ceded to the USSR and was under its military control. A barbed wire fence was erected along the Chinese side of the island, and gunboats were placed on the Russian side in the upper and lower estuaries of the rivers.
The Soviet-Chinese border treaty of 1991 specified the line of the countries’ borders along almost the entire length of its eastern part. According to the document, the ownership of the islands on the border rivers was to be determined in the future after consultations between the parties.
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On October 14, 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed an addendum to the agreement on the Russian-Chinese state border. As part of this agreement and drawing the border between the countries along the center of the Amur River, Beijing received a plot of land in the area of Bolshoy Island in the Chita Region and two plots in the area of Tarabarov and Bolshoi Ussuriysky Islands at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers.
These islands were in “suspended state” because [государства] could not determine on which side this border runs: does it go entirely to Russia or China? This question was removed by the fact that everywhere the border passes through the water, and only here – by land
What threatens China’s approval of the map with the Big Ussuri Island?
Experts still cannot say exactly how to interpret the new maps of China. There have been no official statements from Beijing regarding this island. However, according to the professor and head of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies IMEMO named after E.M. Primakov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Lomanov, the assignment of the Russian part of the Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island to the PRC on the map published by Beijing should not be considered a territorial claim.
I think there is no need to talk about some serious claims to this island. If something like this happened, it would not start with this card
The Russian part of the island belongs to the Khabarovsk Territory, it has only one settlement – the village of Ussuriysky, whose population after the 2013 flood is about 100 people. The island is home to horticultural associations, hay and cropland, and a butterfly sanctuary.
According to Lomanov, China planned to develop its part of the island, but these plans were only partially implemented: there was no serious construction that could pose any problems for Russia and its economy and security.
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