Jack of Harts

The Russian Federation expansion did not generally use the traditional method of invading armies crossing borders, but it manifested itself through the simple expedient of calling on local peoples of Russian ancestry to ask Mother Russia for help. Mother Russia was of course happy to go and help them, and shoot all the nasty terrorists who threatened them. It was a simple matter after that to run new elections, and one region or entire nation after another joined Russia of its own free will. Russian observers were always happy to make certain that the elections were fair of course. It was all very legal. Very proper. Very Russian. The Russian Federation and all the Russian people were one big happy family again.

The Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere that entered space and then the stars was blessed with a ready supply of compliant lesser races they could send out to claim the wild frontiers. They moved entire populations off Earth to settle far off worlds and the true Chinese expanded into the empty lands. They built their greater Hegemony in the stars on the backs of the riffraff they didn’t want. It was an elegant way to dispose of the excess population while turning their corner of Earth into a paradise for the true Chinese people. China became the Middle Kingdom once more, masters of all the corners of Earth that mattered, and wealth flowed to Earth from the far off colonies. It was a Golden Age for China. One they planned to maintain forever.

China did not miss the opportunity that the Second Great Depression brought it. The general collapse of the Western economies gave China a chance to expand without minimal resistance, and they quickly took over many nations bordering them. Taiwan, Korea, and even Japan fell to their advance in short order. As did most other nations in South East Asia short of India itself. They even took over much of Indonesia before the Western Alliance managed to make a stand and stop them short of conquering Australia. That and India would have been the feathers in their cap, but China demurred when heavy resistance crystallized. It would take them generations to digest the nations they had already conquered. They were content to look to the future with that.