evidence: He first visited the island, known on the Russian side as Bolshoy Ussuriysky, in 2008. At that time, the Chinese had made major improvements to its side, building a large nature reserve, border defenses, including a watchtower, and a bridge from the mainland to the island, Iwashita told Eurasianet in an email interview. [...] 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.