With an area of 9.6 million square kilometers, China is already very vast and can rank third among all countries in the world. In fact, during the Qing Dynasty, China's land area reached more than 13 million square kilometers, and later lost part of its territory for many reasons. Two of them, which were separated from China at that time and are now independent and have become a country, how did they develop? And which place is it?
During the Qing Dynasty, the land area was huge, resembling begonia leaves
China has a long history of 5,000 years, and with the change of dynasties, the land area has been constantly changing. At the peak of the Qing Dynasty, China's land area reached 13.16 million square kilometers. The Qing rulers at the time not only incorporated the Mongol region into their territory, but also successfully recovered Xinjiang and Tibet.
It stretches west to the Pamir Plateau and Lake Balkhash, east to Sakhalin Island, northwest to the Tangnu Urien Sea, the present-day Tuva Republic, north to Siberia, and south to the Spratly Islands. At this time, China was very unified, with a huge land area and shaped like a begonia leaf.
Unfortunately, despite its vast area, the Qing Dynasty did not have the ability to hold it all the time, and during the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong periods, the Qing Dynasty became a national strength and a prosperous social life, even more powerful than the Han and Tang Dynasties. However, by the end of the Qianlong Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty had already begun to show signs of decline.
In the twenty-second year of Qianlong, a holy decree was issued to the whole country to implement "one port of commerce" and allow only one port in Guangzhou to open. Coupled with the influence of the previous closed country, the Qing government became more and more ignorant, until the opium war began in 1840, foreigners carried ships and cannons, while the Qing Dynasty only had cold weapons, at this time some people really saw the gap between the Qing Dynasty and foreigners' weapons and equipment.
From the beginning of the first Opium War, the Qing Dynasty was completely plunged into the quagmire of war. In 1900, the British Empire, the French Third Republic, the Italian Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the United States in North America and the Japanese Empire in Asia formed the Eight-Power Alliance to invade China.
In the nineteenth century, China became a fragrant feast in the eyes of the great powers, and they all wanted to share a piece of the pie. The Treaty of Nanking of 1842 stipulated that China would divide Hong Kong to Britain, and in the 1860 Treaty of Peking, territory east and south of Lake Balkhash was ceded to Russia. Almost every great power wants to occupy China's land.
Many of the lands that were divided were recovered after the founding of New China, and Hong Kong was returned to the motherland in 1997, and two years later, Macao also returned to the embrace of the motherland. But there are also some places that have not yet been recovered, such as Outer Mongolia, which broke away from China in 1921 and became an independent country not long after; and Kyrgyzstan, where the unequal treaty of 1864 caused the northwest of China to be taken away by Russia, and later this territory joined the Soviet Union until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Kyrgyzstan became an independent state.
Second, with the support of Soviet Russia, it became an independent country, but its economy was backward
Although both Outer Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan became independent states and had more autonomy, neither of them developed very well. First look at Outer Mongolia, in fact, the name Outer Mongolia is not an official name, the real name of this country is Mongolia, and Outer Mongolia includes Mongolia and the Republic of Tuva.
Mongolia borders China, and during the Qing Dynasty, in order to facilitate administration, the entire Mongolian region has been divided into inner Mongolia and outer Mongolia. Mongolia is in the transitional area between China and Russia, with an area of 1.5665 million square kilometers, which is already very large among landlocked countries and can rank second.
Although the land area is not small, Mongolia is sparsely populated, and the entire country has a population of only 3 million, which is similar to the population of Shanwei City in Guangdong Province. At the end of 2019, the permanent population of Shanwei City was 3.01 million, but it should be noted that Shanwei City is only one-third the size of the entire Mongolia.
As the second largest landlocked country in terms of land area, Mongolia's economy is very backward, which is also greatly related to its topography. Mongolia is either a plateau and mountainous region with an area of up to 777,000 square kilometers, accounting for half of the country's entire country, or the Gobi Desert, which covers an area of 400,000 square kilometers.
Most of the remaining land is grassland, and the arable land area is very small, so 30% of the population of Mongolia is engaged in nomadic animal husbandry, and agriculture is extremely underdeveloped. Moreover, the backward level of industry makes resources such as fruits and vegetables very scarce in Mongolia, and can only rely on imports, and every year Mongolia has to import a large number of fruit and vegetable products from China.
However, Mongolia is after all a vast country, it has rich mineral resources, there are more than 80 kinds of proven minerals, of which copper reserves are as high as 2 billion tons. Unfortunately, these resources have not been well utilized, Mongolia does not have developed industrial support, and like many countries near the Persian Gulf, Mongolia's resources can only be owned by themselves, but cannot be realized.
And because it is sparsely populated, if it wants to develop, it has to concentrate its population together, but then there is no time for other places to take care of it. Most of Mongolia's population was concentrated in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and the rest of the country was almost deserted.
Thanks to the large population, China can encourage some people to develop in Places such as Inner Mongolia and Tibet, which also has a lot of fireworks. But Mongolia's population is too small, and even the capital, Ulaanbaatar, is so poorly built that in many places there is not even cement flooring. The traffic is also very inconvenient, there are only two railways in the country, one to China and one to Russia.
The harsh natural environment, backward infrastructure, poor medical care, and sparse population are all important reasons why Mongolia has not been able to develop. In 2019, Shanwei's GDP was 108.03 billion yuan, while Mongolia's GDP was only 94 billion yuan.
Moreover, Mongolia also owes a large amount of foreign debt, as high as 23.5 billion US dollars, which is more than 10 billion US dollars higher than the gross domestic product, equivalent to more than 60 billion yuan. Because its economy is so backward, Mongolia is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East.
3. Unequal treaties in Tsarist Russia, low-level development
Let's look at Kyrgyzstan. During the Han Dynasty, most of Kyrgyzstan was already included in the territory of China. During the Qing Dynasty, it was ceded to Tsarist Russia because of unequal treaties, and later followed Russia to join the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and became officially independent, becoming a Kyrgyz Republic.
Like Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country, bordering Kazakhstan to the north and China to the east. Its geographical location in the heart of Eurasia is a key region connecting the two continents and is of great strategic importance.
Kyrgyzstan is a small country with only 199,900 square kilometers. Kyrgyzstan is mountainous, with mountainous area accounting for 80% of the entire country, although mineral and plant resources are very rich, but the development and utilization are not ideal. Because the central region has the Kyrgyz Mountains and the Fergana Mountains, these mountains separate the north and south and block cultural exchanges between the north and the south.
During the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan was one of the poorest countries in the Union, and after independence, economic development remained very slow, almost all of which survived on foreign debt. In 2019, Kyrgyzstan's poverty rate was 20.1 percent, accounting for one-fifth of the population. Because of its weakening national strength, Kyrgyzstan has to rely on Russia on the one hand, and at the same time learn from the Western political system and move closer to the United States.
Although the country was poor and backward, Kyrgyzstan returned a lot of China's land. After a decade of negotiations, the two disputed areas of KhanTengre Peak and the Yingyan River region, as well as 30% of the source area of the Qiongwusan Kush River, have returned to China.
In summary, it can be seen that Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan have not had a good life after leaving China, and the economies of both countries are very backward, not even comparable to a single Chinese city. According to China's current strength, it is still strong without these two territories, and if they return to China, they can only be regarded as icing on the cake.