For most outside observers, the Russian Far East as a geographical region is pretty much indistinguishable from the vast Siberian landscape. This is hardly surprising when you consider that until 2000 the Russian Far East was lacking in officially defined boundaries❋. Historically, the Russian state in its various forms has tended to ignore the RFE region, commonly seen as a neglected outpost of empire, populated by hardy Cossack settlers, impoverished peasants and those detained there against their will. The population, at its highest point not reaching much beyond eight million, has dwindled since the end of the communist system◘.
(Map image: www.eurogeologists.eu)
In the early to mid 1990s there was some optimism shown by Russia’s rulers that much needed development could be injected into the country’s Far Eastern region. There was a belief or at least a hope in Moscow that the Russian Far East (RFE) could create a viable niche for itself, that it’s vast repository of natural resources could be utilised to target the growing Asian markets whose own raw materials had a finite life and would soon be running low. Some even touted RFE as potentially the “next Asian Tiger” [‘The Next Asian Tiger? Promoting Prosperity in the RFE’, (Lawrence DiRita), The Heritage Foundation, 18-Aug-1994, www.heritage.org].
Russia’s principal city in the east, Vladivostok, became the Free Port of Vladivostok, the host of a Russian-sponsored event, the Eastern Economic Forum, which it was hoped would provide a platform to attract foreign investment to the region. Rhetoric from Vladimir Putin, assuming the reins of the post-Soviet federation at the end of the Nineties, proclaimed that the development of RFE would be “a national priority for the 21st century”, [‘Accelerated Development of the RFE’, (Igor A Makarov), Russia in Global Affairs, 29-Oct-2018, www.eng.globalaffairs.ru].
Russia’s vulnerable eastern flank ~
Russia, with one eye on the geopolitical implications of an underpopulated eastern flank of the country and its underperforming economy, certainly had the motivation to develop the region. The hitch in the early 21st century has been, as ever, the pitfalls of implementation…a myriad of problems confronted Putin. RFE lacks for infrastructure and labour (
#resource rich but people poor). Moreover the country was experiencing an economic slowdown. Russia’s only option if it was achieve any meaningful development was external investment, it needed new partners to propel it. Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea however led to the imposition of economic sanctions by the West, which along with falling oil prices further harmed the nation’s economic situation [
Dhananjay Sahai, “Russian Far East and Central Asia: Impediments to Sino-Russian Partnership”, ORF Issue Brief No. 280, February 2019, Observer Research Foundation,
http://www.orfonline.org].
The People’s Republic of China, Russia’s new best “enemy-friend” ~ Russia’s unpropitious economic realities have steered its approach to the development of RFE. To get China on board Russia had to provide economic incentives to the Chinese to invest in RFE. Chinese businesses and migrants initially flooded into the region, at its peak in the 1990s there were over 200,000 Chinese living and working in the region. Chinese suppliers and retailers were also thick on the ground in RFE.
A Chinese market trader in Vladivostok (Photo: AFP)
Russia’s opening up to China was not without misgivings from Moscow, it had reasons to be wary of opening the door too far to China. The IMF calculates that the Chinese economy is 78 times bigger than Russia’s…Moscow is aware of the risks to its economic sovereignty of becoming over-dependent on its dynamic, powerful neighbour. Accordingly Russia has tried to balance China’s weighty imprint on RFE and Siberia by wooing South Korean and Japanese investment, and from India as well [ibid.; ‘Russia seeks to balance China in Far East; woos Indian investment’, (DR Chaudhury), Economic Times, 24-Jul-2019, www.economictimes.com].
The new Sino-Russian rapprochement has greatly enhanced the trade ties binding the two heavyweight Asian countries – Moscow now sells its natural gas and advanced weaponry to the Chinese and Beijing reciprocates mainly with manufactured goods. With the common enmity/rivalry towards the US a further bond, Russia in the present decade has unequivocally pivoted towards China✧.
Backlash against the Chinese presence: Fears of Chinese irredentism ~ The presence of the Chinese in RFR has prompted a backlash from local Russian workers and a pushback from local Russian media and politicians. Workers and the communities complained that the burgeoning numbers of Chinese workers deprived locals of job opportunities (Chinese companies tend to employ their own countrymen and women on their Russian projects) [‘Why Russia’s Far East Struggles to Lure Investors (Op-Ed)’, (Richard Cornelius), The Moscow Times, 25-Jan-2018, www.the.moscowtimes.com; Sahai, loc.cit.] . Subsequently, the Russian government decreed that 80% of workers employed on Chinese projects must henceforth be local (ie, Russian) [Chaudhury, loc.cit.].
New ‘besties’ Xi and Putin toast one another (Photo: AP)
Bilateral relations between China and Russia have been talked up recently…this year Chinese premier Xi Jingpin told Russian media that Russo-Chinese relations were “at their best in history”. Notwithstanding this upbeat tone, concerns about the encroachment of the contiguous Chinese in RFE continue to be held by Russians, and such disquiet is fuelled by some Russian media outlets. A suspicion and a fear that lingers here is one of “being demographically (as well as economically) swamped by the giant next door”⌂ [‘The Chinese influx into Asian Russia’, (Alexander Kruglov), Asia Times, 13-Jun-2019, www.asiatimes.com]. The existence of unknown numbers of illegal Chinese immigrants in the region adds to the resentment of local Russian settlers in RFE. The influx is often interpreted as “an expression of a China de facto territorial expansion” (invasion fear-mongering) [‘Chinese in the Russian Far East: a geopolitical time bomb’, This Week in Asia, www.amp.scmp.com].
How many Chinese in RFE? ~
The official numbers contradict the basis of this concern. According to the 2010 Russian Census, the number of ethnic Chinese residing in Russia had fallen to just 29,000 (a mere 0.5% of RFE population). However some estimates put the actual total of Chinese at between 300 and 500 thousand [ibid.]. Any figures for the region it should be noted are very fluid and quite speculative. A significant proportion of the population comprises temporary migration and shuttle trade, Chinese merchants who travel back and forth across the border to ply their wares without ever settling permanently in RFE [‘Ethnic Chinese in Russia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Conspicuous Chinese visitors now make up the largest sector of Russian tourism, especially to RFE and Irkutsk/Lake Baikal (only two hours from Beijing by plane). Local Russians are perturbed at the behaviour of Chinese tourists to Lake Baikal, patronising Chinese businesses only, their litterbug tendency to leave rubbish strewn around the lake…most worrying to the Russians about the Chinese influx is that it might presage Beijing’s designs on reclaiming the area lost to Tsarist Russia (see “Thorny issue” below). All this contributes to a growing strain of Russian ‘Sinophobia’ in the Far East region [Kruglov, loc.cit.].
Lake Baikal 
What probably ‘spooks’ the Russians the most are the stark demographics at play: the Chinese provinces bordering Russia’s Far East contain 110 million people, dwarfing the approximately six million Russians across the border [ibid.]. Dissatisfaction with Putin’s RFE policies are reflected in the 2018 gubernatorial elections in the region – voters rejected the Kremlin’s candidates, sending a clear message of disapproval to their federation president [‘Putin is losing Russia’s Far East’, (Leonid Bershidsky), Bloomberg Opinion, 24-Sep-2018, www.bloomberg.com].
Some scholars have sought to debunk the theory of a Chinese takeover, arguing that the Chinese population in RFE was being checked by several factors current in effect (an upsurge of regulation by the Russian authorities with new controls on Chinese markets; the overall poor economic prospects of the Russian Far East and a resultant shrinking consumer base for Chinese commodities) [‘The Myth of a Chinese Takeover in RFE’, (Xiaochen Su), The Diplomat, 19-Jun-2019, www.thediplomat.com].
〨 Heihe, Chinese boomtown in Dong-Bei region
Thorny issue on the Chinese side ~
The border areas surrounding RFE are a lingering cause for resentment from the Chinese perspective. Under the 1858 Treaty of Aigun Tsarist Russia coerced the Qing Dynasty into ceding more than 600,000 square kilometres of Chinese territory to it. This was followed in 1860 by the Convention of Beijing. The effect of both concessions was that the Russian Empire acquired territory on both sides of the Amur River, giving it control of the Primorye region. Known in China as the “Unequal Treaties”, the 19th century episode still engenders public resentment among the Chinese, sometimes fuelled by dissident groups such as Falun Gong (see also ‘Border clashes’ in FN) [Sahai, loc.cit.; ‘Chinese in the Russian Far East’, op.cit.]✠.
In the prevailing climate Russia and Putin’s commitment to the development of the Russian Far East remains hamstrung by the Russians’ inability to go it alone. Enlisting the help of China, though necessary, is deeply problematic for the Kremlin. It is in fact a delicate balancing game for Moscow, on the one hand it fears becoming economically subordinate to PRC, but it wants Chinese investment because it needs it to go forward. Yet the complexities of the RFE region doesn’t make for a seamless process, it doesn’t deliver the degree of Chinese investment required or desired [‘Russia struggles to attract Chinese capital to its Far East’, (Vita Spivac & Henry Foy), Financial Times, 05-May-2019, www.amp.ft.com]. In the meantime the shortcomings of Russian policy on RFE✪ are a hand-break retarding the region’s development.
Footnote: 1̳9̳6̳9̳ ̳B̳o̳r̳d̳e̳r̳ ̳c̳l̳a̳s̳h̳e̳s̳ ̳– i̳n̳c̳i̳d̳e̳n̳t̳s̳ ̳i̳n̳ ̳t̳h̳e̳ ̳S̳i̳n̳o̳-̳S̳o̳v̳i̳e̳t̳ ̳s̳p̳l̳i̳t̳
Chinese and Soviet troops engaged in a series of isolated military clashes on the eastern border during 1969 (beginning when Chinese platoons attacked Soviet soldiers stationed on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River (a reaction to long-standing grievances held by China over Russia’s 19th century acquisition of hitherto Chinese territory)❅. A ceasefire was negotiated by Beijing and Moscow late in 1969, but subsequent bilateral negotiations took until 2008 to settle the matter of who had territorial control of what in the region…as shown above however, the border issue continues to engender lingering grievances up to the present day.
Eastern border conflict (Image: History Forum)
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❋ the catch-all descriptor “Siberia and the Far East” (Rus: Сибирь и Дальний Восток) had hitherto been used to refer to Russia’s territories east of the Urals, making no clear distinction between “Siberia” and the “Far East” [‘Russian Far East’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
◘ under Putin’s Russia, Moscow enacted the Russian Homestead Act (2016) which was aimed at encouraging Russian and Ukrainian citizens to settle in the Far East okrugs with the incentive of obtaining 2.5 acres of free land
✧ in the process incurring a substantial loan debt to China
⌂ some of the Russian fears border on the irrational, such as the Siberian speculation that the Chinese want to annex Lake Baikal to monopolise all of its precise fresh water reserves exclusively for Chinese consumption (Kruglov)
✠ the dispute and custom leads some Chinese to continue to refer to the RFE capital Vladivostok by its old Chinese name ‘Hâisenhēnwâi’
✪ reforms affecting RFE have been only partially implemented; there is a paucity of enlightened new strategies to revive the region (eg, a genuine trade liberalisation is sadly lacking); and the planning round it is bereft of a clear, overriding vision for the region [Makarov, op.cit.]
❅ in the same year there was Sino-Soviet military clashes on the western border (Xinjiang/Soviet Central Asia) as well
From our mid-city hotel in Dandong we took a tour upcountry following the river road (S319) into Hushanzhen and beyond. At the northern outskirts of the city we stopped for our first glimpse at the Korean side of Yalu Hé. The spot we stopped at contained a memorial to the Korean War sacrifices (two statues of heroic Chinese servicemen) and a stall hawking the usual military-themed momentos and souvenirs. The crossing point here to North Korea was fairly narrow and was marked by the barely existing remnants of an old wooden bridge (the bridge itself was long gone with a few rotting planks visible where the posts of the bridge once stood). Little could be seen on the other side, a wasteland of grasses and vast meadows.
After a mandatory stop at Tiger Mountain to see the Hushan Great Wall (see separate blog), we ventured on to lunch at a pleasant roadside restaurant, one that specialises in the tourist trade, shuffling bus loads of lunching tourists in and out swiftly to capitalise on high turnover profitability. 
Further up the river we stopped again at another bridge, this one with stronger historical overtones of the Korean conflict. This bridge bore some similarities with the famous Dandong Broken Bridge in that it was also a disconnected structure. From the Chinese shoreline it looked like a normal bridge, but once on it you soon realised that it jutted out only about two-thirds of the way to the opposite mainland, ending suddenly and abruptly in the middle of the Yalu river! Many, many Chinese tourists took the stroll along the length of the abridged bridge reading the Korean War information boards on the side as they went. Having reached the point where the bridge ended, it was obligatory for all to pull out phone cameras and take photos of themselves with the North Korean remote countryside as a backdrop. 
In what seemed almost conspiratorial, the North Koreans on the other side had truncated their bridge in a similar manner (although what there was of it was not as long as the Chinese one). I have no notion as to why these two sides of the bridge don’t connect or why they were at some stage severed, but I’m sure there’s a back story to it, if I could avail myself of the necessary Mandarin. 
The site has plenty of tourists stalls, as well as an amicable fellow dressed in Korean War era uniform with a blackened face and a rifle who provided ‘atmosphere’ for the historic site, making himself available to tourists for ‘authentic’ looking photos. Next to the bridge there was a wharf from where we took a long boat trip out into the river. The boat charted a course around the waters veering into North Korean territorial waters…we got close enough to the Korean mainland to make out farms, the occasional building, a handful of motor vehicles, but saw precious few actual North Koreans. 
Our boat passed a desolate fishing boat reeling in its net in the windy waters and eventually disembarked at an another point down the river where we were entertained by an all-female music concert which included both Chinese singers in traditional costumes and a girl pop band with members dressed in a kind of retro-Sixties’ outfit. Back at the wharf we returned to the bus for the long drive back down the S319 through Kuandian County, reaching the outskirts of Dandong just in time to join the afternoon gridlock on Binjiang East Road.
Dandong in China’s North-eastern Liaoning province is 541 miles from Beijing, but only some 105 miles from Pyongyang, North Korea’s seldom seen capital. But Dandong is much, much closer to North Korean soil as a visit to the most eastern city in China’s Dong-Bei will confirm. From Dandong’s shoreline on the Yalu River, the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Korea (PDRK) is just the distance of one short bridge away. 
We, like millions of Chinese visitors from other parts of the vast country, paid the admission fee (¥30 per head) to tour the bridge open to the public
At night the Broken Bridge is at its most visually striking as the bridge cascading into a revolving spectrum of colours. Climbing on to the bridge itself (draped in Chinese flags) during the day allows visitors, some in guide-led tour groups, more opportunity to study the bridge’s intricacies in detail. The swing bridge signage contains detailed information explaining its unusual engineering specifics, a “Unique Horizontal-Opening Beam Bridge” (a special thrill for civil engineering tragics and graduating Lego enthusiasts alike). 
The bridge was very well attended on the afternoon/evening we visited, everyone making their way to the famously truncated section of the bridge to survey the damage close-up. The end-point, with people jostling for prime position, is also the best spot to peer into the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea, home of the colourfully unstable President Kim. Just across from here is the “ghost town” like city of Sinuiji…at night bereft of lights, and during the day scarcely little to be seen, a scattering of seeming abandoned grey old buildings, a strange orange dome-shaped structure that catches the eye and a dilapidated Ferris wheel, and precious little else. Eerily it is seemingly also bereft of observable human life. An added nationalistic touch for very many of the Chinese visitors was to snap a selfie with both the red Chinese flag and the Sinuiji “still-life” backdrop.
Of course back in Chinese Dandong you can find a North Korean presence right here. Several of the restaurants in riverside Binjang Middle Road are North Korean (run perhaps by economic refugees who had once taken the chance to hop over the Yalu at some point to find more profitable trade and opportunity on the Chinese side). 
