Special to WorldTribune.com

Compiled by Miles Yu, Geostrategy-Direct.com

On March 30, six Chinese border guards officially replaced their Russian counterparts and assumed routine patrol duty over a 67-square-mile uninhabited area of the western part of an island that has been under Moscow’s control since the early years of the Soviet Union.

The island is called Bolshoi Ussuriysky in Russia and Heixiazi in China. About 140 square miles in all, the sedimentary island is located at the converging point of the Ussuri and Amur rivers in the northeastern tip of Chinese territory, directly across from the Russian border city of Khabarovsk.

The island was seized by Josef Stalin in 1929 in a short but bitter military conflict between the two nations.

The Soviet occupation of Heixiazi Island was vehemently protested by the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan still does not recognize Russia’s claim over it. However, Mainland Communist China has had a more ambivalent attitude about the matter.

In official Chinese propaganda, Russians since the czars have been portrayed as greedy land grabbers who have stolen 1.3 million square miles of land from China, an area larger than India.

However, Beijing’s ideological and strategic dependence on Moscow since 1949 has also forced the Chinese leadership to repeatedly sign documents with the Russians affirming the territorial status quo….

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