 If you were here for last week's video, you will have heard me discuss the history of China and its demographics, the current ethnic makeup of the country, and what falling birth rates will mean for its future. Today, I will show you how China can secure its holdings in its west and northeast through tactics that they have used throughout history, and how the Chinese diaspora make up a very important group in world politics. Migration and Development Throughout the country's long history, the Chinese have established permanent footholds in lands previously out of their control by waves of migrations that were made possible by their sheer numbers and level of development in comparison to locals. Today, ethnic Han Chinese number around 1.3 billion people within China alone. However, as I mentioned in my last video, the Han are mostly crammed in the eastern densely populated portions of the country, while the west remains sparsely populated and ethnic minorities live in far greater numbers. But we know that some of these regions have been under Chinese control for thousands of years, so why aren't the Han the majority already? Let's take a case study of the region of Xinjiang, literally meaning New Frontier in Mandarin. The region has been under on and off control of successive Chinese dynasties since the Han dynasty. In most cases, the protectorate served to give China full access to parts of the Silk Road east of the Tian Shan Mountains, and also to subdue possible invaders. However, control over the region was very weak. Aside for some more temperate regions in the highlands on the edges of the territory, the vast majority of the land was unsuitable for large-scale settlement, due to the hostile terrain and climate of the Taran Basin. This alone is an issue, but the sheer distance from the Chinese homeland caused some logistical problems of its own. Today, things are a lot different. As Xinjiang is far more securely controlled by China, this in part has to do with the greater presence of Han Chinese in the region, but this itself is in part due to technological advancements, such as railroads and airplanes, and appliances that make living in extreme climates less unbearable, like air conditioning and heating. Still, the largest city, Urumqi, is outside of the Taran Basin, and in a more temperate montane climate. Though Xinjiang has been home to many diverse groups of people throughout its history, the Uighur Turks have been the majority in the region for about a thousand years, up until very recently where they now barely form a plurality against the Han Chinese. To be precise, the numbers are 45% Uighur, 42% Han, and the other 13% belong to a wide array of minorities, many of them Turkic, like the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. Though the numbers of Han have fluctuated in the past 150 years or so, new technology and a hope for secure and insured control of the province in the future may prompt even more Han to move to the province, and turn Xinjiang Han majority. There is a similar pattern that could easily occur in the lightly populated autonomous province of Tibet. With only 3.5 million people in the entire province, the local population has the potential to be completely swamped by the Han majority. New railways such as the Xinjiang Railway built in 2006 are said to be speeding up this process. The importance of holding Tibet for China is almost critical in modern geopolitics, as China not only has secured the origin for its own rivers, but those of several downstream countries, and having life or death control over this water supply is a major card China can play on its neighbors and adversaries. Controlling Tibet is most advantageous in their defense against India, which has the potential to rival China in a short time, due to their growing population, economy, and influence across South Asia. And if China didn't control Tibet, it would be India that would have the most influence over them, due to their strong historical and cultural connections, and therefore India would control China's water also. To prevent any risk of uprising, it seems likely that China will continue to build up infrastructure in the province and move more Han there. It would only take 5 million new settlers to have an outright majority in the province, so the challenge is not insurmountable at all. In fact, it's almost too easy. Expansion Northwards I've talked about this a lot on my channel too, but if we take a look at the population density difference between the Chinese and Russian sides of their border, we can see a striking difference. While Russia's side is essentially barren, except for a few midsize cities, China has built up their northeast into a hub of population and development. The entire Russian Far East Federal District has around 6.2 million people. The prefecture-level city of Harbin has more than 10 million, and the three northeastern provinces, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, have a population of around 110 million. Russia should be very worried about this. It seems inevitable at this point that some major demographic changing event will happen in this part of the world. Though China cannot just straight up flood its people into the Russian Far East. Well, I'm theory it could, but it would prompt mass action from the Russian federal government, possibly involving nukes. It has to wait for the right opportunity to make such a move. I've also described in more than one video about my doubts for Russian stability in the future. Though I also believe the current regime in China has due for a collapse within the century, I think Russia would collapse first due to its much more divided population and at the moment weaker institutions in geography. The moment Russia gets roped into some kind of internal conflict, as I described in that video, China will have the ultimate opportunity to take back its lost lands. The Chinese would face no serious opposition due to the internal conflicts. China could realistically move about 25 to 35 million to this new territory and build up infrastructure to cement their rule. This position would give them greater leverage not only over Russia, but the Koreas in Japan too, due to their greater control of waters in the region. Russia after such an event, especially the whole of Siberia, would likely be subject to extensive Chinese economic influence, as the region tries to rebuild its economy. We could see a couple million Chinese move up to this part of the world too, due to economic opportunity. Global warming would also make this land more suitable for habitation, leading more people to resettle there. Also, without Russia to counter such a move, China could begin demographic conquests of Mongolia too, and just moving a million Chinese to the country would completely upend the demographic balance in the country, by giving them a significant minority of 25%. The Chinese diaspora The Chinese people have been shown time and time again to succeed economically in foreign countries they reside in, despite pushback from the main local populations. Being such a large ethnic group, it is not surprising that there are many countries across the world with a significant Chinese population, and often this population controls a disproportionately large percentage of the country's economy. Not too far from China as Thailand, which with Chinese ancestry included, has over 9 million Chinese people residing there, or about 14% of the population. The Malay world also sees a significant portion of its population originating from China, with 6.6 million, or 23% of Malaysian citizens being Chinese, and a similar number live in Indonesia, but they make up a much smaller percentage of the population, just around 3.5%. The United States has over 5 million ethnic Chinese, about 1.5% of the population. Other countries with more than a million Chinese include Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Canada, Burma, and South Korea. Numbers in the hundreds of thousands live in France, the UK, and Vietnam, while New Zealand and Brunei have over 5% of their populations being ethnic Chinese. The country outside of the main sinosphere with the majority Chinese population is Singapore, about 76% Chinese, not including Chinese nationals, and around 3 million in total. Though certainly not the case in every country with a Chinese minority, it is kind of a given that China has the potential to pull on its minorities in foreign countries to give themselves more leverage. If countries like Malaysia or Indonesia do things that could be seen as persecutory to the local Chinese population, the People's Republic could take action, either in the name of trade sanctions, or becoming more militarily aggressive to these states. As the Chinese economically succeed in these countries where they are than the minority, the majority populations have a greater ability to cause economic and or political restrictions on their Chinese populations in the name of nationalism, so a scenario where China comes and saves its people somehow is not completely out of the question. It is less likely that China will be able to use its foreign populations in the West to project its own power, however, due to the distance between them and their home country, and the nature of Chinese relocation to the West, which is mainly to seek economic opportunity not to take down the countries from within. Gender imbalance. In most countries, there is a very slight male surplus at birth, but once a population gets to the middle age, the gender imbalance evens out, but turning into a female surplus once the population gets elderly. The U.S., a country with relatively normal demographics, sees the population turn from majority male to majority female and around the age of 40. In China, that switch happens at the age of 65. Why? China has always been and is currently a very, very male-dominated society. Looking at the top members of the Chinese Communist Party, we can see that they are nearly all men, but perhaps more striking than this is what happens at birth. China is one of the country's worst affected by sex-selective abortion, something that has become a greater issue since the 1980s, due to the one-child policy giving Chinese families only one chance to get a male child, and ultrasounds being able to detect the gender of the fetus slash baby came out around this time also. Adoption from China has also contributed to the gender imbalance, as some Chinese send their girls to orphanages when they are very young, or sometimes straight up abandon them because they want boys instead. Though the gender ratio is not nearly as pronounced in the most recent adoptions from China, most years show that the vast majority of adoptees from China were girls, staying above 75% girls until 2010 and above 90% until 2007. These numbers come from US adoptions. The country's gender imbalance is going to lead to some major issues, but most of these don't in fact have to do with the lower count of women, but rather the surplus of men. There are about 25 million more men in the country, which has led and will continue to lead in a surplus of single men as time goes on. An issue of this scale has the potential, as it has done throughout history, to create a mass upending of society, as a large number of socially outcasted and sexually frustrated men will feel that the society has treated them harshly and unfairly, and could turn to extreme methods to achieve their goals. However, certain actions or lack of actions have reduced this threat in the time being, such as the lack of enforcement of anti-prostitution laws, and the fact that the people can even rent girlfriends in China for a payment. Yet, it is really only a matter of time before we see some major upending of society due to this fact, along with the other demographic pressures I mentioned in this video in the last one. China's demographics will prove to be both a help and a hindrance to its future. Despite having the ability to expand its people in areas outside of their current homeland, demographic pressures, such as the low birth rates and gender imbalance, will prove to be one of the biggest challenges China will have to face in its modern history. Thank you all for watching, be sure to like, subscribe, and share this content with everyone you know. Let's try to get to 5,000 subscribers by the end of this year. 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