The Reason China Will Soon Fall

When the mountain training ended, there was no more opportunity or pretext to talk with Hoang. Thanks to the consecutive physical training in the morning and early afternoon, we were given time to rest in the afternoon. My roommate, Briar Churchill, went into the dormitory room dripping with sweat, but it seemed there were also people who weren’t tired but rather felt invigorated by “just this much” exercise.

3 PM. I chuckled as I saw Barbara Tikhonov riding a unicycle around the school grounds.

“Colonel Tikhonov.”

I called her quietly. Barbara Tikhonov turned her head sharply towards me and answered in Russian.

“Yes, do you need something?”

“Please, I beg you, speak in Chinese or English, or even Korean. Those are the only languages I know.”

That’s a lie. I’m actually better at Japanese and Russian than Chinese. If asked to recite poetry in Chinese, I’d struggle, but I could write poetry or essays in those two languages. So it’s not easy to control the instinct to understand and answer when I hear Russian.

“Ah, excuse me. When I exercise, I sometimes lose focus and my native language comes out. Being flustered, something like that.”

“Is that why you ride your bicycle around the school every day?”

“It’s a beautiful school, isn’t it? Russia is vast but barren, so there aren’t many such pretty neighborhoods. Of course, Moscow is a fantastic city, but the cold plains of the north can’t imitate the atmosphere of the south. Although it’s also true that southern countries have their own difficulty imitating the grandeur of the north.”

“If you ride your bicycle around so quickly, you’ll end up circling the entire school.”

“Is there a problem? I haven’t heard of any curfew being imposed.”

“Just a personal concern. The atmosphere is tense because a student died at the school, and if you, a Russian, and not even an anti-communist refugee but someone clearly holding Soviet citizenship, go around various parts of the school, I worry that friction with locals might lead to an accident. It might be okay at dawn, but now is when many senior students are also walking around the campus…”

“Hmm, that’s a reasonable point.”

Tikhonov got off the bicycle she had momentarily stopped at my words.

“Is it the Lieutenant’s instruction to endure exercise until early dawn?”

“Rather than an instruction, it’s more like advice, or a suggestion. Don’t take it too much to heart. It’s just words coming from concern.”

“Huhu, I suppose so. Katyusha didn’t tell me such things, so I hadn’t thought about it. I’ll be careful from now on. I heard you met privately with Katyusha recently? Did you talk about such things then?”

“I talked a bit about you with Lieutenant Duey. That you speak freely about world affairs and such.”

Approaching Barbara Tikhonov too quickly could be dangerous. But it’s clear that she’s wary of me anyway. Since headquarters asked me to find out about Tikhonov, rather than continuing to loiter around aimlessly, shouldn’t I listen to some of her thoughts directly?

“Neither Katyusha nor I have any reservations in that regard.”

“I got goosebumps when I heard you talked about smashing each other’s capitals. No matter how much of a joke it was, for people who agreed to be friends in private, it’s just too much…”

“A joke?”

Tikhonov’s voice suddenly turned cold. I tilted my head and asked.

“Then what is it?”

“It can’t be a joke for a soldier of a country to say they’ll completely destroy an enemy country in a full-scale war. I thought you would understand somehow, Lieutenant Shin Eun-young.”

“I’ve never once in my life thought about completely destroying another country…”

“We’re serious, Shin Eun-young. If the Soviet Union and France go to war, we’ll pour out the maximum destructive power we can towards each other’s countries without a moment’s hesitation. Yes. I don’t talk about turning Paris into hell with such trivial talk as jokes. If I were someone who would waste such talk on mere jokes, I couldn’t be an officer of the Soviet Union.”

It’s the kind of thing only a real soldier, and an extreme one at that, would say. Something feels contradictory. She previously prophesied that Marxism would no longer survive, that the Soviet Union couldn’t endure in its current state. When I heard that, I suspected for a moment that she might have a strong character as a kind of political soldier.

But now her words sound completely unrelated to politics, like the words of someone without political sense. Someone with political sensitivity would pass off even sincere words as jokes. They don’t insist that frightening words are sincere.

“It’s an uncomfortable topic. Shall we talk about something else?”

I said with a slight smile. Tikhonov also nodded lightly with a smile.

“Let’s do that. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”

“Colonel Tikhonov. You seem like someone who has… your own predictions about the world. Am I right?”

“Everyone has their own predictions in their own way. Don’t they?”

“I’m curious. Lieutenant Duey says you prophesied that China will fall.”

Tikhonov hesitated for a moment at my words.

“Everyone makes such predictions, don’t they? Chiang Kai-shek’s age is approaching three digits, and there’s still no outstanding figure in the party. At this rate, China will be ruined, people say such things all the time, don’t they?”

“Who would care if ordinary Chinese citizens babbled such things? But you’re a Soviet colonel. The fact that you speak freely about China in the heart of China is concerning. If you have grounds, I’d like to hear them. As a Korean, I can’t help but be concerned about the issue of China’s future.”

“The great trend of the world.”

Suddenly, a famous Chinese aphorism starts coming out. It felt strange to hear this silver-haired Russian reciting that sentence in Chinese.

“When united, it divides; when divided, it unites.”

“Have you read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms?”

“I’ve read about Chinese history. What kind of country China is, what kind of people the Chinese are. I’ve read. And anyone who knows about China would admit that this saying of Luo Guanzhong pinpoints China more accurately than anyone else’s words.”

“Are you saying China will split again?”

“China and civil war, they’re inseparable, aren’t they?”

“There’s no guarantee that will happen in this era. There has never been such a great China in history. Even the Song dynasty, which was the richest in the world, didn’t wield as much international influence as the current Republic of China, and the Great Qing, which created the current Chinese territory, was always technologically inferior to Europe. But there has never been such a powerful China before, are you certain that China’s civil war like in the past will occur now, in this era?”

I deliberately took a slightly provocative tone. As if I had some personal feelings of defense for China. If Tikhonov laughs and retreats at my words, that’s fine. But if she’s provoked by my words, I might be able to hear her more detailed thoughts.

“Dynasties that unified the Central Plains were always mighty. China’s absolute national power is at its peak now, but that’s a misunderstanding of the Chinese worldview. China was stronger in the past. Because in their worldview, they didn’t acknowledge any other great powers besides themselves at all. Rather, now that they acknowledge the existence of other great powers like the United States, Russia, and Britain, it’s the weakest era for China. Koreans are always accustomed to having a superpower next to them, but the Chinese are not.”

“Then wouldn’t the Chinese unite against those great powers?”

“Empires built on unjust causes fell in one generation. They gained power inadvertently, but if they couldn’t convince others of their cause, they fell to forces with a cause. Qin Shi Huang gained China through Legalism and fell in just one generation, Wang Mang overthrew Han and fell in just one generation. Sima Yan of Jin couldn’t gain any legitimacy of rule and fell in one generation, and the empire established by Yuan Shikai of Beiyang didn’t even last one generation before falling. That’s what China is as a country. It’s rather easy to unite, but it’s impossible to maintain it without just rule.”

“…Are you saying Chiang Kai-shek’s rule is not just?”

“The foundation of the Republic is in the Xinhai Revolution, right?”

“Certainly, that’s true.”

“Look at China now. Where is the republic and democracy that they wanted to create in the Xinhai Revolution? Everyone calls this country the most powerful Chinese Empire in history. But as long as a country that should be a republic has become an empire, the country cannot last more than one generation, or at most two. Koreans would understand that better. You’re a people who have endured for hundreds of years by predicting when China will fall.”

“Is that all? Are there no more specific reasons why you think China will fall?”

“Are my reasons not specific enough?”

There’s something she’s hiding. I don’t know her in detail, but she’s not the kind of person soft enough to be certain of China’s downfall with just such vague talk.

“Then what about the Soviet Union?”

“…What about the Soviet Union?”

“I’m asking if Russia is keeping Lenin’s cause while China has betrayed Sun Yat-sen’s cause.”

“Well.”

Tikhonov smiled slightly.

“What do you think?”