Haishenwai and Hong Kong (Lee Yee)
July 1, on the day of the 23rd anniversary of the Handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty, the Hong Kong National Law was promulgated.
July 2, the Russian Embassy in China published an article and a promotional video on its official Weibo to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the founding of Vladivostok. The article explained that Vladivostok means “ruling the East”.
During the Qing Dynasty, this city was called Haishenwai. It sits at the junction of Russia, China, and Korea. Facing the sea on three sides, this is a nonfreezing port. Since the Tang Dynasty, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing all had jurisdiction over this city. In the Yuan Dynasty, it was called Yongming City [literal translation in English was the City of Eternal Light]. In the Qing Dynasty, it was renamed to Haishenwai. Its port was opened even before Hong Kong, and was a location with much more geographical significance than Hong Kong.
Russia’s acquisition of Haishenwai in 1860 was made possible through extortion during the Anglo-French defeat of China, also known as the Second Opium War. The defeat of the Qing Dynasty led to the signing of Convention of Peking that consisted of treaties between the British and the Chinese, and the French and the Chinese respectively. Seeing the opportunity, Russia insisted that it helped in mediation, and asked that the treaty between the Russian and the Chinese be signed as well. Britain, with the treaty, took the Kowloon Peninsula. Russia, however, wanted more. It asked that the Convention of Peking not only recognize the validity of the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, but to designate the 400,000 square kilometers of Sino-Russia co-governed land, from the east of the Ussuri River to the sea (including Haishenwai), all to the sole sovereignty of Russia.
There have been several border talks with the Soviet Union and Russia since the establishment of the CCP, the last of which was an agreement between the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers in Vladivostok to determine the border covering thousands of kilometers between the two countries. It was an equivalent of China recognizing the Nebuchu Treaty, the Treaty of Aigun, the Convention of Peking, the Treaty of Tarbagatai and the land occupied by Russia in 1900, totaling 1.44 million square kilometers of land that is about 1360 Hong Kong. In the past, the city of Vladivostok came with “Haishenwai” in parentheses on Chinese maps. Now the parenthesis are gone.
The Russian Embassy in China’s commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the founding of Vladivostok on China’s Weibo, and the claim that it meant “ruling the East” were like a huge slap on the faces of mainland netizens who have long been bathing in patriotism. It started a wave of online anti-Russia sentiments. The typical mentality and rhetoric of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson would be that Russia is “deliberately provoking” and “seriously hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”. Yet, this time, China has been silent.
In view of the turbulence on the Internet, Global Times’ editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, posted on Weibo to put out the fire. He admitted that the Russians have not been respectful of the Chinese public, but the fact is that Vladivostok belongs to Russia, and said that “Us Chinese must accept this”. He cautioned that pro-America camps have been using the native land nostalgia of the Chinese to incite hatred towards Russia.
Yet haven’t the CCP been indoctrinating the native land nostalgia all along? Isn’t the hatred for Russia incited by the Russian Embassy’s Weibo? How are these related to the pro-America camps?
In the same 1860 Convention of Peking, while Britain handed over a prosperous international financial center to China after 130 years, Russia is celebrating 160 years of “ruling the East”. After the enactment of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, China condemned Britain’s new BNO policy, but expressed the “need to accept” to the Russian occupation and “slap in the face”.
The ideological foundation of the National Security Law is “without a country, there’s no home”, to promote “patriotism” and to punish “betrayal”. But where comes the rights for us commoners to betray the country? My late literary friend, Xiao Tong, said, “Give me 5 cents and I’ll sell you the country.” For something that is not yours, you have no right to sell it, nor the right to love it.
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