Since many years Russian border patrols and 16 thousand (!) country cottages of Khabarovsk’s residents are located on Bolshoy Ussuriisky Island. The new border will pass near the chapel of the martyr-warrior Viktor and will divide the island in half. Supposedly the cottages of Khabarovsk’s residents will stay on Russian territory, while the Chinese will get the rest. Tarabarov Island, where buildings of private companies are located will be given to China in totality. In whole the Chinese will get 337 square kilometers of Russian territory.
“The islands given by Putin abound with natural resources, writes Nezavisimaya Gazeta. – Up to 70% of the area could be used as arable land, hayfields or pasture. /…/ A polder was built on an area of 61 sq. km, protected from flood by a high dike. Over four thousand tons of potato are grown here per year; in the summer up to 1500 heads of cattle are kept and up to 1700 tons of milk is produced per year. There are, rather there were projects for the enlargement of the polders. The island is inhabited by valuable species of fur animals and waterfowl. The Far eastern and black storks, the black and Japanese cranes, the mandarin duck, the dry-beak goose, the Far eastern leather turtle and others were included in the Red Book of the World Wildlife Fund. Just as the protected fish on the islands: the black Amur and the Chinese perch. The autumn migration of the keta salmon and the lamprey passes near the islands. More fish species than in the entire Volga inhabit the waters near the islands.” In other words, it is a corner of paradise twenty-five kilometers away from a big city. There are two towns with permanent residents on the island.
The news about the transfer of the islands came as a surprise to Khabarovsk’s authorities. According to a high functionary of the region’s administration nobody has consulted the governor of Khabarovsk’s region before signing the documents. The governor had his own plans for Bolshoy Ussuriisky Island. He intended to build a bridge. According to Far-eastern economists, giving the islands to China brought a 3-4 billion dollars damage counting the loss of the already invested capital, the transfer of Khabarovsk’s airport and the adjustment of the border on new grounds.
If we turn to the history of the Russian borders on the Far East, then both the historical Russia and we are right. Both banks of Amur were not populated by the Chinese in the XVII century. These were wild lands, populated by rare forest tribes. The Russians assimilated Amur’s banks already in the XVII century. The first Russian-Chinese border agreement can be considered to be the 1689 Nerchinsky treaty, when under the pressure of the Chinese troops, the Russians were forced to acknowledge the sovereignty of China over Amur’s left bank and the Primorye. But around the middle of the XIX century the strengthened Russia bloodlessly annexed 165.9 thousand sq. km of Primorye, which until then it ruled together with China. In result China lost access to the Japanese sea. This acquisition was sealed by the Tientsin treaty on June 1st 1858 and confirmed on November 2nd 1860 by the Beijing treaty. “After the border signs are put, it said, the border line should not be modified”.
When China was occupied by Japan the Soviet Union has put some islands on the Chinese side of Amur and Ussuri under its control for defense reasons. In 1964 both sides developed an agreement project. This is when a “window” has appeared in the form of Tarabarov and Bolshoy Ussuriisky Islands. However the document was not signed (Khrushev was removed), which was the reason why the Chinese have attacked Damansky Island, which they considered theirs, in 1968. After Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 has signed the agreement that the border with China should pass through Amur’s channel, the Chinese obtained the possibility to dispute Russia’s rights over Bolshoy Ussuriisky and Tarabarov Islands right next to Khabarovsk’s walls. However, as I explain, the problem consists of which of the branches should be considered the principal course of Amur. Before Putin decided to transfer the islands to China, the border passed in the middle of the Kazakevich Channel and China forced Putin to acknowledge that it must pass right through Khabarovsk’s city beach. Putin’s decision minimally proves his incompetence and indifference to the fate of the largest Russian city in this region. And also that he knows nothing about strategy.
And this is not all concerning the border near Khabarovsk. With the help of the Chinese’s efforts Kazakevich Channel is rapidly washing off with sand, I remind the barge sunk on purpose and the dikes, and very fast the disputed Bolshoy Ussuriisky Island will be replaced by a far less disputed peninsula tied to Chinese territory.
Beside this, there is also a problem near Vladivostok. Here the Chinese should get the territory along the left bank of Tumannaya River and the local authorities, the population and rational experts and analysts are starting to protest in mass. The opponents of the bank’s transfer say that nothing would prevent the Chinese from building here a port and make it compete with the Russian Far-eastern harbors.
Why did this happen? Well, first, the cheating of the Chinese allowed them to get Heixiazi Dao Islands (Tarabarov and Bolshoy Ussuriisky) on Amur and Abaigaitui Island (Bolshoy) on Argun River from the stupid tsar Putin. The Chinese have well read the agreement between the RF and the PRC about the Russian Chinese border and in particular its third article. It says: “The line of the Russian-Chinese border, described in article 1 of the present agreement passes through the middle of the channels of navigable rivers and through the middle of non navigable rivers. The exact situations of the channel and its middle are defined during the demarcation of the Russian Chinese border.
The main criterion for defining the main channel is its depth and width. The middle of the channel is a line that defines the middle of a stream on the channel. The main criterion to define the main branch of a river is the water outlay at middle level.”
This is why the Chinese needed the barge and the dikes. They are ready to throw baskets of sand into the Amur River; they are ancient and wise. They do not intend just to snatch and run.
The CPRF member Anatoly Lokot spoke against the transfer of the islands in the State Duma. He said that it should be verified, “What is the price of these agreements”. Besides, Rodina’s coordinator Sergey Glotov said that by ratifying this agreement Russia is making concessions to the PRC and asked the minister of foreign affairs Lavrov “to whom else are we going to make such concessions”.