1995
************************************************** ********
With Deng Xiaoping having left the political scene in his old age the more-or-less inefficient Chinese central government begins to crumble on its own impracticality. The provinces, which have so far conducted their economies almost independently and grown richer as the central government has grown poorer, begin to systematically ignore Beijing's commands. Student pro-democracy movements, partially encouraged and funded by their wealthy foreign relatives as well as by the example of the Tiananmen Square protests over five years earlier, begin to organize peaceful demonstrations in China's university cities. These protests call for the transfer of power to the National People's Congress and for China to become a federal republic. The Chinese government, cornered like a rat and on the verge of panic, responds in the only way it knows.
On 5 February military units throughout China swarm from their garrisons into the cities to "restore order". The student protests are crushed by tanks, and the soldiers seize control of the provincial governments in the name of the Beijing government. However, with this act the government has unleashed a dragon it is unable to control. One after another, the military commanders in northern China refuse to pull their troops back into their bases, declaring martial law in their respective provinces. With southern China under the control of a military government - which had overthrown CCP rule in the South - almost a dozen separate civil wars brake out in the North as the northern provinces begin to settle their differences. No country recognises China' new (southern) government.
Having returned to Russian politics, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party is able to get new immigration laws passed in the Duma. According to the LDP, these laws will "secure the position of the Russian population in the Federation". In effect, these laws render minorities into second class citizens. Cossacks and other extremist Russians begin to now openly provoke the locals into conflict in other CIS states.
Zhirinovsky, who has become the new interior minister, again makes waves abroad by blurting out that if the Russian minorities' situation in the CIS and the Baltic states doesn't soon improve, the locals will "only have themselves to blame for the consequences." President Yeltsin, weakened by health problems and alcoholism (partially exacerbated by political pressures), no longer seems capable of keeping political opportunists and lobbyists under check. He manages to hold on to his office mostly due to his populist skills.
In Romania, ethnic Hungarian anti-government demonstrations in several Transylvanian cities are quashed by Romanian riot police, leading to loss of life. Again the Hungarian government protests the fate of the demonstrators, while the ethnic Hungarians themselves claim it is but the opening salvo of a genocide planned by the government in Bucharest.
In June, for the first time in four months, China lets itself be heard. The southern government has managed to get the northern military districts to stop their squabbling and to unite under one banner: the territorial question of Manchuria, which for over 100 years has been a sticking point in Sino-Russian relations, is brought back to life. With Russia still economically crippled as well as weakened by domestic unrest, the Chinese consider Russia to be malleable towards territorial demands. The Kremlin's answer is that it will not negotiate with China about anything until the country has a legally elected government. Russian forces are massed at the Ussuri River to prove the government's point, in an ominous replay of events 26 years earlier.
Anti-Turkish demonstrations continue for several days in Bulgaria. These were sparked by the death of a Bulgarian-born national in police custody after his attempt on the Turkish president's life. Though Turkey claims that the death was the result of natural causes the situation turns into a crisis, with Turkish nationals advised to leave Bulgaria.
In response to the regional instability, Germany announces that the treaty restricting the size and disposition of its armed forces is "outdated with regards to the current situation in Europe." Six eastern area defence brigades are immediately upgraded into sub-strength divisions, and the original nine divisions are expanded to 12. In case of possible mobilization more forces will be sent from western Germany. Poland protests and increases the readiness of several divisions in western Poland as well as starts secret talks with Belarus. These talks falter on the question of the border city of Bialystok, however, and Belarus publicly informs that Poland has tried to involve it in a "military operation" against Germany.
At the end of the year UN peacekeeping forces are dispatched to Sri Lanka in an attempt to constrain the civil war raging in the country.
|