Far East! Far East!

After 1900, Russia's expansion in the Far East was hindered by Japan. Domestic conflicts were acute (remnants of serfdom, bourgeois demands, and the awakening of the proletariat). Czar Nicholas II tried to divert domestic conflicts through foreign wars. After Japan's Meiji Restoration, Japan's national power rose and it was eager to compete for control of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast China. The contradictions between the two sides were irreconcilable. Northeast China was caught between the competition between Japan and Russia. The Qing government was unable to control it. The people suffered from wars and plunder. The outer Northeast had been occupied by Russia for many years. The remaining Chinese in the area had close ties with the people in the hinterland of the Northeast and were eager to regain their homeland. Amid the raging war between the two countries, new vitality is slowly blooming in the fertile fields of the Northeast.