When it comes to China's modern history, it can be described as a handful of bitter tears. It can be called the darkest era in 5,000 years of China, due to the wrong national policy of the Qing government and the subsequent weak and incompetent foreign policy. The Western powers are running amok on the land of China, trampling and trampling on China's territorial sovereignty. It was during this period that most of our country was lost.
It should be known that in 1840, before the outbreak of the Opium War, the territory of the Qing Dynasty was one-third larger than that of today's China, with a total area of 14 million square kilometers. The shape of the entire territory is not a rooster, but like a blooming begonia, so it is also called a begonia map. However, since entering the modern era, the Qing government has signed 1,100 unequal treaties with more than 30 large and small countries, thus losing a large amount of territory. Among them, it was the most serious plunder by Tsarist Russia at that time.
Until the founding of New China, with the prosperity and strength of the motherland and the improvement of national strength, some of the lost lands of that year gradually returned. Some of them have been obtained by our country through diplomatic negotiations, such as Hong Kong and Macao, and some have been returned to china by other countries on their own initiative. Tajikistan, which I want to talk about today, is one of those countries.
Some readers here may wonder whether Tajikistan has historically had no dispute with China. How can they also have our territory within their borders? This is related to the history of Tajikistan, the Qing Dynasty, Tajikistan is not a country, not only Tajikistan, the entire Pamir Plateau is the territory of the Qing Dynasty. The Tajikitan people who lived here at that time were only a tribe on the Pamir Plateau and had not yet formed a state.
As the Qing Dynasty declined, the Qing court gradually lost control of the Pamir region. Later, despite the establishment of the Republic of China, because it was too busy with the War of Resistance and the struggle with the warlords, it was even more unable to govern border affairs, so the Soviet Union took advantage of this period. In 1929, the Soviet Union forcibly occupied the entire Pamir Plateau, and Tajikistan tribes became part of the Soviet Union.
Even so, the government of the Republic of China at that time was helpless, and it had no ability to recover this land at all, and could only protest against it. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the tribes of Tajikistan officially became independent from the Soviet Union and became a separate state. And their territory also inherited the territory that the Soviet Union snatched from our country, a total of 28,500 square kilometers.
As for this land that has been our country since ancient times, no matter which government comes to power in our country, it will naturally not recognize it. After the founding of New China, China also negotiated with the Soviet Union and Tajikistan for a long time on the issue of the ownership of this land.
Finally, in 2011, Tajikistan decided to voluntarily return to China a piece of territory at the foot of the Sarekol Ridge, which covers an area of 1,158 square kilometers, which is far from the 28,500 square kilometers that china lost. However, to know that the entire Tajikistan is only 143,100 square kilometers, 28,500 square kilometers is equal to one-seventh of its territory, they also frankly said that "no more countries will be gone."
In the end, through diplomatic negotiations, Tajikistan returned 1,158 square kilometres of land to our country, and we pledged not to pursue other territories from it.
In 1963, for the sake of the long-term healthy development of China-Pakistan relations, Pakistan took the initiative to return 5,800 square kilometers of land in the Karakoram Corridor to China. Our country naturally welcomes those countries that can face up to history and take the initiative to return their national territory, and to this day, china has maintained quite friendly relations with Tajikistan and Pakistan. Only mutual respect can promote bilateral development, which is an eternal truth.