driven into the river to be drowned. Those who could swim were shot by the Russian forces. Thousands died as a result. The massacre angered the Chinese, and had ramifications for the future: the Chinese Honghuzi fought a guerrilla war against Russian occupation and assisted the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war against the Russians in revenge. Louis Livingston Seaman mentioned the massacre as being the reason for the Chinese Honghuzi hatred towards the Russians: "The Chinaman, be he Hung-hutze or peasant, in his relation to the Russians in this conflict with Japan has not forgotten the terrible treatment accorded him since the Muscovite occupation of Manchuria. He still remembers the massacre at Blagovestchensk when nearly 8,000 unarmed men, women, and children were driven at the point of the bayonet into the raging Amur, until—as one of the Russian officers who participated in that brutal murder told me at Chin-Wang-Tao in 1900—" the execution of my orders made me almost sick, for it seemed as though I could have walked across the river on the bodies of the floating dead." Not a Chinaman escaped, except forty who were employed by a leading foreign merchant who ransomed their lives at a thousand rubles each. These, and many even worse, atrocities are remembered and now is their moment for revenge. So it was easy for Japan to enlist the sympathy of these men, especially when emphasized by liberal pay, as is now the case. It is believed that more than 10,000 of these bandits, divided into companies of from 200 to 300 each and led by Japanese officers, are now in the pay of Japan." Ongoing dispute The Republic of China (ROC), the successor of the Qing Empire, has never recognized the Russian occupation as legitimate. In the 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement, the People's Republic of China (PRC) renounced sovereignty of the 64 Villages. However, the Republic of China now based in Taiwan never renounced sovereignty of the area nor does it recognize any border agreements signed by the People's Republic of China with any other countries due to the restrictions imposed by Article 4 of the Constitution of the Republic of China and Section 5 of Article 4 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China. Therefore, the area still appears as Chinese territory in many maps of China published in Taiwan even though it is now administered