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China is waiting for the Russian Federation to collapse so it can seize a slice of land taken from it by Russia 200 years ago, it has been claimed.Beijing has been a crucial supporter of Vladimir Putin since he invaded Ukraine and was essentially cut off from the Western world due to sanctions.But Canadian journalist and author Diane Francis believes that China is also preparing to take back a slice of land in the far east of Russia.Speaking to Times Radio, she explained how the war in Ukraine may have just Beijing-Moscow relations.She said: "China was put in a terrible...

The United States has a history of putting rivals on the world stage in a corner economically, obligating them to make the first moves to war.One of the most famous examples of this strategy came on July 26, 1941.On that date, President Franklin Roosevelt introduced sweeping economic sanctions and asset seizures against Japan.Advertisement - story continues belowAs a result of those sanctions, “Japan lost access to three-fourths of its overseas trade and 88 percent of its imported oil,” according to History.Needing oil to maintain its military might, Japan had little choice but to declare war on the West and mobilize...

Manchukuo, Chinese Manzhouguo, puppet state created in 1932 by Japan out of the three historic provinces of Manchuria (northeastern China). After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), Japan gained control of the Russian-built South Manchurian Railway, and its army established a presence in the region; expansion there was seen as necessary for Japan’s status as an emerging world power. In 1931 the Japanese army created an excuse to attack Chinese troops there, and in 1932 Manchukuo was proclaimed an “independent” state. The last Qing emperor was brought out of retirement and made Manchukuo’s ruler, but the state was actually rigidly controlled by...

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

LONDON -- In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao stood together in the State Guest House in Beijing while their respective foreign secretaries signed an historic agreement defining the two countries' common 4,374-km border for the first time. The border was an issue over which several battles had been fought in the past. It took a while to close the deal because of disagreement over a few islands in the Amur, Ussuri and Argun rivers, which make up China's northwest border with Russia. Nobody spoiled the party by pointing out that this border is between Inner...

What ended World War II? For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan’s surrender. By the middle of 1945, the war in Europe was over, and it was clear that the Japanese could hold no reasonable hope of victory. After years of grueling battle, fighting island to island across the Pacific, Japan’s Navy and Air Force were all but destroyed. The production of materiel was faltering, completely overmatched by American industry, and the Japanese people were starving. A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead...

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

TALLINN, Estonia, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Moscow should act quickly and decisively to limit Chinese immigration into the Russian Far East lest the growing number of Chinese there "polarize" the country, weaken Russian national identity, and give Beijing a lever over Russia in the future, according to a Sakhalin native who works for an international consulting group. In an article posted on the Kreml.org website this week, Yevgeniy Kolesnikov says that that the number of Chinese residents in the Russian Far East has jumped from 2,000 in 1989 to just under a million now, only one-quarter of whom are officially...

Mains water supplies in the Chinese city of Harbin have resumed five days after they were cut due to a toxic chemical spill. Provincial governor Zhang Zuoji took the first drink after supplies were reconnected, Xinhua news agency said. An 80km (50-mile) stretch of contaminated water passed through the city of 3.8m people after 100 tonnes of benzene spilled into the Songhua river. The contaminated water is due to reach Russian cities downstream in two weeks. Beijing has begun an inquiry into the spill caused by an explosion at a petrochemical factory on 13 November. For the last five days,...

http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/japdeny/tokyo_trial.html The Failure of the Tokyo Trial Wu Tianwei "No. One War Criminal" Not Brought to Trial. " "The Majority of Class A War Criminals Not Tried but Released." "all the uncondemned Class A war criminals were set free by Gen. MacArthur in 1947 and 1948. Most of them immediately returned to the Japanese political arena, which was again dominated by the same Fascists and militarists though clad in democratic cloak in disguise." "All Killers of "Human Experimentation" At Large. " "Hundreds of doctors of the former Unit 731 are still practicing or living in retirement in Japan today. "...

The struggle over Palestine, with contradictory promises made by Britain to both Jews and Arabs, fueled four Arab-Israeli wars, brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, contributed to the use of oil and terrorism as political weapons, and was used as a pretext (amongst others) for Islamists dedicated to Israel's and the West's destruction.

BEIJING, July 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The 2005 International Beer Festival will combine Munich characteristics, according to the festival organizers. The festival will introduce a Munich beer tent. Both the inner side and outside decoration will display characteristics of the Munich Beer Festival, such as German-style wooden chairs, German cooks and German bands. The festival has already attracted 30 international and domestic beer manufacturers, with over 100 kinds of beer. The annual beer festival was launched in 1999 and moved from Beijing to Dalian in 2002. It has already become one of the most influential beer festivals in the world. The...

The Ancient Yan and the Ye-maek Chosun   wthong@wontockhong.pe.kr   The Ancient Yan and the Ye-maek Chosun Yan Initiating the Korean Iron Age Wontack Hong Professor, Seoul University The proto-Turko-Mongol populations, who had first settled around Transbaikalia across the Great Altai, dispersed further across the Greater Xing¡¯an Range to become the proto-Xianbei-Tungus in Manchuria, and an offshoot of them tracked a warmer and moister climate down through the Korean peninsula to become the rice-cultivating farmers. The Korean peninsula is an extension of central Manchuria towards the sea, having a long strip of plains in the west flanked by high...

China puts Korean spat on the mapBy David Scofield The controversy over whether the ancient, ethnically Korean kingdom of Koguryo was historically Korean or historically part of China simmers, and it divides historians, politicians and patriots on both sides in Northeast Asia. The kingdom stretched well into present-day Manchuria in the north and encompassed most of what is North Korea in the south. And, to roil the waters, some academics suggest that China's recent cartographic interest in the Koguryo region has a precedent in Beijing's relatively late public claim that Taiwan is and always has been an inalienable part...