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By Micah McCartney
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Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has challenged China's claim over the self-ruled island, questioning Beijing's focus on territorial integrity. Lai suggested that if China is truly concerned about this, it should also seek to reclaim the land it ceded to Russia in the 19th century.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has never governed the island. In recent years, Beijing has increased military activity near Taiwan to exert pressure, including major drills following the inauguration of Lai, whom Beijing views as a "separatist."
In an interview on the TV program The View with Catherine Chang, marking his first 100 days in office, Lai said: "If China wants to annex Taiwan... It's not for the sake of territorial integrity."
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"If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn't China take back Russia?" he added, especially considering the northern neighbor's diminished state.
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Lai referenced the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, which saw China cede large swathes of Manchuria north of the Amur River to Russia. This concession occurred during what China refers to as the "century of humiliation," when Western powers and Japan exploited the weakened Qing Dynasty.
Lai added that what drives China's bid to eventually take over Taiwan is the goal of changing "the rules-based world" order "to achieve its hegemony."
Sergey Radchenko, a Soviet-born British historian at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, told Newsweek he believes Lai's comparison was "seriously misguided.
While the territory lost to Russia through treaties has been a point of contention, even leading to border clashes in 1969, the neighbors settled the disputes in the 1990s and early 2000s, Radchenko said.
"China fully recognizes Russia's sovereignty over these territories," he said.
Meanwhile, China has "never recognized Taiwan as anything other than a part of China, nor ever signed any documents to suggest otherwise. Thus, the legal situation is very different," he said.
In recent years, the past concessions to Russia have become a topic of interest among some Chinese nationalists who argue that Moscow should return the lost territory, including Vladivostok, the largest city in the Russian far east.
The Chinese government has been silent on the issue, instead emphasizing the strength of the Beijing-Moscow relationship as an alternative coalition to the U.S.-led West.
Russia, for its part, has become heavily dependent on Chinese exports and demand for oil and natural gas amid international sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In 2023, China's Natural Resource Ministry mandated that new maps use Chinese names for Vladivostok and seven other cities in the region.
The new map also depicted a small island at the confluence of the Ussuri and Amur Rivers as being entirely within Chinese territory, despite its status as jointly owned since a 2008 border agreement.
After losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong's communists in 1949, the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan, establishing a rump state that later democratized in the 1980s and 1990s. Previously, the island had been under Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945 and nominally controlled by the Qing dynasty before that.
CIA Director William Burns and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Chief Admiral Samuel Paparo have indicated that they believe Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed his forces to be capable of an invasion by 2027. However, this does not necessarily mean that this or any other year has been chosen for such an undertaking.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese and Russian foreign ministries with written requests for comment.
Update 9/3/24, 2:13 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with a comment from Sergey Radchenko.
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