China Echoes Putin’s War for History to Justify Claims in Asia

China’s top diplomat voiced historical grievances Saturday to justify the country’s claims in the South China Sea, some of which have brought it into conflict with its neighbors, including—most prominently—the Philippines.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks, delivered at a security conference in Munich, Germany, recall the history lesson on Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Tucker Carlson in an interview earlier this month.

Though their geographical contexts and methods differ, Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, expressed a desire to recover lost territory or international prestige, particularly in the cases of war-torn Ukraine and Taiwan. Beijing also claims “historical rights” over large swaths of the South China Sea, including waters lying within its neighbors’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ), which are recognized under international maritime law.

“The South China Sea islands have been Chinese territory, and when China administered those islands, those surrounding countries had not even been established,” Wang said Saturday.

Wang accused these surrounding countries” countries of taking advantage of China’s distraction during its Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-70s to these features, largely considered to be low-tide reefs and rocks under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This led to the “disputes as we see them today,” he said.

China’s claims within its “dashed-line” overlap with the claims of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and Taiwan, as well as the Philippines.

It’s the latter that has been the most persistent in pushing back against China over the past year. Under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., China’s coast guard routinely blockade features lying within the Philippines’ EEZ, while its paramilitary fleet of maritime militia ships occupies these areas for days or weeks on end.

Newsweek reached out to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs with a written request for comment.

Unlike Moscow, Beijing has not gone to war in decades, but like Putin, the Chinese government frequently relies on narratives of past victimhood and blames foreign forces to back up expansive behavior.

In Putin’s historical account for Tucker Carlson, which was widely panned by many historians, he framed Ukraine as a Russian society that never coalesced into a single state in the early 20th century.

He elaborated on this belief at even greater length in an essay published seven months before ordering the invasion of Ukraine: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”

“I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy,” he wrote.

He pointed out that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians have in common historical roots, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and—”most importantly”—a similar language.

As for the frosty relations between Russia and its neighbor in recent years, he laid much of the blame on Western forces instilling anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine for their own geopolitical benefit.

China views Western engagement with the Philippines in the South China Sea, particularly Manila’s Mutual Defense Treaty ally the United States.

Beijing’s messaging alternates between blasting Manila as a U.S. puppet and criticizing it for recruiting foreign forces to assist in alleged violations of China’s sovereignty.

After a joint Philipine-U.S. patrol within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone Monday, China’s People’s Liberation Army issued a statement saying that “the Philippines enlisted foreign countries to stir up the South China Sea, organized so-called ‘joint air patrols’ and publicly hyped them.”