No, they field them because they are worried about Russia.
This does, however, raise an interesting hypotetical.
China is a country with a huge population surplus, demographically unbalanced towards males. Rapidly rising economy, densly populated, vast huger for natural resources.
Granted that their foreign policy has never been expansionist, and that they generally seem to want good relations even with countries that have historically and very recently been enemies such as Russia…
If they see Russia picking an obviously unwinnable fight in the west, might they be tempted to an opportunistic snip of some of Russias almost emprty, huge and resource-rich eastern territories? It would be excatly what they need.
If they are willing to get into trouble for flyspeck islands for oil, could they try for more while Russia is getting mauled in the west?
^^ I think this has long been a fear of Russia’s for precisely the reasons you mention. It doesn’t help that a huge portion of Siberia’s population is already ethnically Chinese; people who crossed over north.
China doesn’t see itself as expansionist. They feel they’re just trying to take back land that is rightfully theirs and which was stolen by other countries.
Here’s a map of China a couple hundred years ago. You’ll notice the border was farther north than it is now. As far as many Chinese are concerned, that’s where it should go back to.
The exact number of Chinese in Russia today is unknown. Politicians and the Russian press give various estimates, which are always high, ranging from 2 to 5 million. These figures are not confirmed by an analysis of the official data (the statistics of the State institutions that issue visas and residence and work permits, as well as those of the border checkpoints, plus the estimates of illegal immigration made by experts), which show that the total number of Chinese who settled in Russia between 1992 and 2007 does not exceed 500,000.
I can only refer you to the book “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”, and that is only an IIRC. I don’t really remember too much of the other Kennedy stuff I read (unless tied to the Conspiracy). There were other quotes, or, other people repeating the same quote.
What Kennedy told the people may, or may not, have been what he said in private.
