Manchurian “California” — the Zheltuga “Republic” of Adventurer-Bandit Prospectors

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Political geography, Regional History
Amur/Heilong River basin (Photo: WWF–Russia/Y Darman)

In 1883 in a remote region of Northeast China gold was discovered near a tributary of a tributary of the great Amur River by hunters from the local Orochen (or Oroqen) tribe➀. Once word got out, aspiring prospectors flocked to the location on the Zheltuga stream from far and near. The bulk came from Russia, peasants and workers from Siberia and beyond. Many chancers came from Blagoveschensk, by boat to the Cossack station at Ignashino, just across the river from the gold strike spot. Many of these were miners who had deserted from the Amur goldmining district (of which Blagoveschensk was the centre). The gold discovery also became a magnet for all sorts of criminal elements including escaped convicts and deportees from the Far East including Sakhalin Island.

A multi-ethnic mix
As more and more miners joined the hunt for gold, a community given the name of Zheltuga grew up, by 1885 there was around 10,000 miners in residence. Russians were the dominant group but the Chinese (mainly Manchus but also some coolies from Shandong province) made up possibly as much as 10% of the population. Others who joined the diggings included Koreans, Orochens, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, Poles, Jews and Siberians. The population of the mining community was very fluid, the chancers would dig frenetically for the precious nuggets and if favoured by fortune, they wouldn’t hang around, no one stayed long at the goldmining caper in the Zheltuga camp, a couple of months being about the average➁…the mining community was in “a state of constant flux” [Gamsa, Mark. “California on the Amur, or the ‘Zheltuga Republic’ in Manchuria (1883-86).” The Slavonic and East European Review 81, no. 2 (2003): 236–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213684].

Nine of the 10 headmen of Zheltuga (Photo: Earth Science Museum & Moscow State University)

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Administration and rough-hewn code of civic duties
Despite (or because of) the wildness of the camp and the dubious morality of many of its residents, Zheltuga didn’t function in an ungoverned, anarchical manner. To maintain order and keep Zheltuga’s rampant violence, murder and mayhem in check, a political structure was established with an elected leader and an executive of ten headmen or foremen. A code was promulgated with harsh penalties for breaches of the community’s law – execution for murder, flogging and banishment for lesser crimes. Major decisions affecting the community as a whole were made democratically, meetings of miners (Orlinoe poe) were held in the central field (Orlovo pole/“Eagle Field”) with the entire assembly voting on the matter at hand.

Colours of the Zheltuga republic’s flag

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Leaders (rather grandly termed “presidents of the republic”) also tended to come and go in regular fashion…the first leader went by the name of Adolf Karlovich Fass, a man with a mysterious background, variously thought to be German, Italian (Karl Fassi?) or Jewish in origin. Fass’ short tenure in charge was terminated when he was arrested by Cossack forces and disappeared. Briefly filling the void apparently was an equally shady figure from the Cossack stations named Sakharov. One of the camp’s last leaders was the better known Russian lawyer Pavel Prokunin who led armed resistance against the Chinese assault on Zheltuga before being deposed as well (Gamsa).

Photo: Earth Science Museum & Moscow State University

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Commerce in a frontier proto-state
As the camp’s population swelled, a rudimentary township grew rapidly. To service the burgeoning numbers on the goldfield there were 160 shops by 1885 including 18 hotels and taverns, bath houses, a theatre, a church, a hospital, a billiards saloon and even a circus. A sex industry for the miners (Zheltuga was decreed a male-only community) was set up on the Russian side at Ignashino. Also popular on the goldfield were the spiritonosy (“alcohol carriers”) merchants—mainly Jews and and “Old Believers” from Transbaikalia—who sold vodka to the miners. Businesses in the Zheltuga ’republic’ were required to pay tax [‘ Zheltuga Republic’, Wikipedia,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org].

With the mining of gold Zheltuga’s raison d’être the camp was inevitably tagged with the nickname “California on the Amur” in reference to the more famous, earlier American gold rush. Another name it acquired was Novaia Kalifornia (“New California”). Similarly Ignashino’s proximity to the Manchurian prospecting epicentre earned it the sobriquet Ignashinskaiia Kalifornia.

Source: MAMM / MDF / russiainphoto.ru

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Heightening political instability on the border
The Zheltuga gold mine was located within the northern frontier of imperial China. The Qing authorities’ slowness to act on this trespass on sovereign Chinese land was due to Peking’s ignorance of the goldmining activity. Russia conversely was well aware of the situation and the local region command tended to usually turn a blind eye to it. When the veil dropped from Chinese eyes, the governor (amban) of Aigun (Dongbei China) protested to the new Russian governor-general of Priamur region Baron AN Korff about the illegal gold mine on Chinese territory. Finally forced to take some action, Korff in 1885 moved to bring the community under rein…supplies were cut off and a Cossack cordon was imposed to block Russians passing to the Chinese side and the miners were compelled to sell their gold to the Cossack commander Prince Wittgenstein at a set price. (Gamsa).

Curtains for the “Amur California”
The Chinese Qing government issued warnings to the Zheltuga community to disband its operations on Chinese soil. Initially the miners retreated to the surrounding taiga (boreal forest), pretending to have vacated the camp, only to return to their diggings afterwards. Peking eventually got jack of the miners‘ refusal to heed its demand they vacate the camp, finally taking decisive military action. In early 1886 a detachment of 1,600 Chinese soldiers attacked the mining camp, dispersing the Russian miners who were allowed to skedaddle back over the Amur➂…the Chinese miners were not so fortunate, those caught while fleeing were summarily massacred by the troops. The camp was subsequently razed to the ground. The following year an officially-run Chinese gold mine was established nearby in the village of Mohe (today China’s northernmost city).


Postscript: Hóng-húzi, an imagined “Red Beard” republic of proto-communist Chinese brigands
A curious sidelight to the Zheltuga story is the mythical “Hóng-húzi republic”, the invention of two late 19th century French writers (Messieurs Ular and Mury) both of who travelled to the region and wrote separate accounts. Both concocted alternative versions of the Zheltuga episode as Chinese outlaw republics in northern Manchuria (Ular: ”Feltuga republic”| Mury: “Cheltuga republic”). The essentially “Russian enterprise with a proportionally limited, though nonetheless intriguing, Chinese participation” was recast as “an egalitarian republic of Chinese ‘red beards’” based on communist principles. The myth gained some traction at the time and persisted well into the 20th century. Mark Gamsa described the “Red Beard” saga as “a jumble of myth, rumour and unverified bits of factual information…(fuelled by) “an inventive spirit” [Gamsa, Mark. “How a Republic of Chinese Red Beards Was Invented in Paris.” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 993–1010. www.jstor.org/stable/3876481].

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➀ a Manchu-Tungus linguistic ethnic minority of forest hunter-dwellers in Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia

➁ some got no further than the local (Chita) casino, set up to relieve them of their hard-earned moolah (‘How Russians secretly set up their own ‘California’ in China’, Boris Egorov, Russia Beyond, 03-Feb-2021,
www.rbth.com/history/333347-russians-secretly-set-up-california)

➂ leniency was shown to the Russian miners as Peking didn’t want to antagonise Moscow and worsen relations with the Russian Bear

Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, a “Twin Cities” Odd Couple on the Sino-Russian Border

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Political geography, Regional History, Regional politics

Image: Moscow Times

The greater part of the boundary separating Russia from China comprises a 2,824-kilometre river – known as the Amur to the Russians on the northern side and Heilongjiang (meaning “Black Dragon River”) to the Chinese on the southern side. At the river’s confluence with the Zeya River is a curious juxtaposition of urban settlements on the border of the two great Asian powers – Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, facing each other across the river, two small cities similar in size and separated physically by less than 600 metres of water.

Image: russiatrek.org

Heihe, a prefecture-level city within the province of Heilongjiang, only came into existence as recently as 1980 (an earlier town called Aihui or Aigun was located in the vicinity, some 30 km south of contemporary Heihe). Blagoveshchensk«𝓪» is the capital of the Amur (Amurskaya) Oblast in Russia’s Far East with a controversial back story. Cossacks built the first Russian outposts here (then called “Ust-Zeysky”) in the 1850s, on land that under the terms of the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk between the Russian tsar and the Qing Dynasty that Russians had been evicted from. Blagoveshchensk (or ‘Blago’ as it is often shortened to) came into being after an opportunist Russia forced China to acquiesce to the inequitable Treaty of Aigun in 1858…the Qings lost over 600,000 sq km of territory in Manchuria including the Amur River site of the future city of Blagoveshchensk. The resentment felt by the Chinese at the unjust 1858 Treaty was magnified in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion when the Russian authorities in Blagoveshchensk forcibly deported the city’s Chinese community resulting in around 5,000 of the fleeing refugees losing their lives in a mass killing. In modern times Heihe/Blagoveshchensk has been the scene of violent confrontation between Soviet and Chinese troops. In 1969 the two countries fought a battle close to the ”twin cities” over a disputed island in the Amur/Heilong river – at the cost of hundreds of casualties.
Amur/Heilong River (Source: worldatlas.com)


By 1989—the year in which the border between the USSR and China reopened after being closed for much of the century—Heihe was still a small village. During the following thirty years Heihe has witnessed the rapid growth and accelerated development associated with many Chinese cities (eg, Shenzhen), a flurry of commercial activity with mercantilist purpose, a flourishing of modern high-rise apartments and even some greening of the city. Conversely Blagoveshchensk, older and more settled, looks “sedate and almost stagnant” by comparison…seemingly resistant to the modernising example of its nearby neighbour. [Franck Billé, ‘Surface Modernities: Open-Air Markets, Containment and Vertilcality in Two Border Towns of Russia and China’, Economic Sociology, 15(2), March 2014, www.repository.cam.au.uk].

Blagoveshchensk tertiary institution
Spatial contrast in architectural styles ༄࿓༄
Heihe and Blagoveshchensk over contemporary times have evolved diametrically different urban landscapes. Blagoveshchensk’s taste in architecture tends toward a kind of “horizontal functionalism” (Franck Billé). It’s structures which includes some classical public buildings as well as surviving grey concrete remnants of the Soviet era adhere mostly to a flat, horizontal form«𝓫». Urban planning is faithful to a rigid grid format and retains a “Roman fort” quality. Heihe, on the other hand, in its modernisation projects the iconic vertical model of the Chinese mega cities to its south (high-rise on overdrive, modern shopping malls, etc). Structures like the large Heihe International Hotel sit jutting out prominently on the riverside promenade (Billé).

Heihe lightshow (Photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Light and dark ༄࿓༄
Heihe’s vibrant exterior can be viewed as a pearl set against the beigeness of Blagoveshchensk’s static oyster. At night Heihe’s waterfront becomes a glittery cornucopia, a spectacular colour light show advertising itself to the other side. The stark contrast between the two towns is reminiscent of a similar chiaroscuroesque nocturnal effect observable with the northern Chinese city of Dandong and its barren ill-lit North Korean neighbour 500 metres across the Yalu, Sinuiju. While Heihe’s edge sparkles, Blagoveshchensk’s riverbank remains largely underdeveloped. Notwithstanding the drabness of Blagoveshchensk many of its citizens remain unimpressed by their showy twin’s persona. Blagoveshchensk skeptics describe Heihe as a “Potemkin village”, a flash exterior hiding a poor and dirty reality below the surface, and the evening light show a transparent bait to lure Russian visitors and their roubles from across the Amur [Joshua Kucera, ‘Don’t Call Call Them Twin cities’, Slate, 28-Dec-2009, www.slate.com].

Sculpture of a kiprichi (Source: Indian Defence Forum)
The “suitcase trade”
༄࿓༄ The proximity between the Russian and Chinese towns has led to patterns of interaction, especially after the 1989 border opening when Blagoveshchensk day-trippers began making shopping expeditions to Heihe to buy cheap consumer goods, clothing, the latest electronics, etc. Some Russians segued this into a nice little earner, commuting to the Chinese side, buying in bulk and transporting the goods back to Blagoveshchensk in suitcases to resell at a profit. They were known as kiprichi, also acquiring the less flattering nicknames of “suitcase traders” and ”bricks”. The bottom fell out of this two-way trade however in 2014 when the value of the Russian rouble disintegrated against the yuan. The suitcase trade was no longer profitable for Russians, finding their main source of trade with Heihe had disappeared down the gurgler. The devaluation also had a deleterious effect on many Chinese traders who had set up business in Blagoveshchensk (Kucera).

Russian dolls in Heihe (Photo: Zhang Wenfang/chinadaily.com.cn)
The kiprichi aside, the Russian side of the river has showed marginal if any interest in forming grass-roots connexions with Heihe…most of the running has fallen on the Chinese side to try to create a welcoming “Russian feel” of sorts in Heihe. Street signs in the Chinese city are written in Cyrillic as well as Chinese, but other attempts have been less convincing, eg, the erection of faux-Russian architecture and shop decor; the appearance of matryoshka doll garbage cans on the street (a counter-productive innovation as it caused offence with some Russians).

Mutual development?
༄࿓༄ The potential for larger scale cross-border exchange between the two cities has been slow to take root, not for lack of commitment or effort on the side of Heihe. Blagoveshchensk has repeatedly dragged its feet on initiates for joint commercial and industrial projects proposed by the Chinese, this is despite China being the Amur region’s largest trading partner! A case in point is the highway bridge connecting Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, essential to expand north Asian trade by integrating the two sides’ road networks. First mooted in 1988, the Russians procrastinated and procrastinated regarding committing to the project which it was envisaged would increase the flow of goods and people between the two towns exponentially…work only commenced in 2016 and construction finalised in late 2019 (still not opened in 2022 due to the ongoing pandemic). Heihe city became a free trade zone in 1992 and boosted by funding from Beijing as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has strived to forge local (Dongbei/RFE) economic integration with it’s Russian twin town (even tying it to Moscow’s Siberian gas pipeline plans) [Gaye Christoffersen, ‘Sino-Russian Local Relations: Heihe and Blagoveshchensk’, The Asian Forum, 10-Dec-2019, www.theasianforum.org ].

Russian Far East demographic vulnerability ༄࿓༄
Blagoveshchensk’s reluctance to wholly engage with Heihe as partners in joint developments tap into prevailing Russian fears and anxieties about its giant southern neighbour, with whom it shares a porous 4,200-km border. With the Russian Far East being population poor and resource rich, Russian concerns about the possibility of future Chinese future designs on the vast, sparsely-populated territory—including the perceived threat of ‘Sinicisation’«𝓬» (being culturally overwhelmed by the far more numerous Chinese), Chinese expansionism and the balkanisation of the RFE—are never far from the surface. Concerns which are made sharper by awareness of the persisting sense of injustice felt by China at the 1858 Treaty (Billé).

Image: http://gioffe.asp.radford.edu/

Postscript: Siberian exports, casino tourism ༄࿓༄
Over the last several years there have a few optimistic signs that Blagoveshchensk is tentatively opening itself up to more trade with Heihe. In the last decade Amur Oblast’s exports (mainly soy, timber, gold, coal and electricity) to China have risen by 16% , and in the same period Chinese visitors to Blagoveshchensk increased tenfold aided by the hosts putting more effort into creating a more attractive environment for tourists, eg, the introduction of casinos in Blagoveshchensk to cater for Chinese gambling aficiandos. Of course, as with the new cross-border bridge, COVID-19 has stopped all of these positive developments dead in their tracks for now [D Simes Jr & T Simes, ‘Russian gateway to China eyes ‘friendship’ dividends after COVID’, Nikkei Asia, www.asia.nikkei.com ].

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«𝓪» = “Annunciation”, literally meaning in Russian, “city of good news”. The traditional Chinese name for Blagoveshchensk is Hailanbao

«𝓫» with some exceptions such as the 65-metre tall, hyper-modern Asia Hotel

«𝓬» Kitaizatsia in Russian

The Russian Far East: Russia’s Far Flung Territory in North-East Asia 2

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Political geography, Regional History

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)

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↝↜↝

❋ 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