evidence: In August 2023, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources released a new edition of its "standard map." According to defenseanalysts, it showed Bolshoy Ussuriysky, the Russian part of the island, as Chinese territory. Moscow’s response came three days later. "The Russian and Chinese sides adhere to the common position that the border issue between our countries has been finally resolved," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. [...] Heixiazi/Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island has been a source of Chinese-Russian tension dating back to the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, under which Russia vastly expanded its Far Eastern territories at China’s expense. From the Chinese perspective, the Aigun pact is counted among the humiliating "unequal treaties" that the imperial government at the time was compelled to sign, granting technologically superior Western powers, including Britain, the United States, France, and Russia, broad economic and territorial concessions. [...] The case of Bolshoy Ussuriysky is more complex than it seems. "The island is, in some ways, a strategic beachhead because it gives greater access to Khabarovsk," Wishnick said. That city is the headquarters of the Eastern Military District, and an aviation regiment of the Russian Aerospace Forces is based there.