By Tiger Huang
As the aftermath of the U.S. election and crises in the Middle East monopolize the world’s attention, signs of tension are quietly emerging in the remote hinterlands of northern Asia. On the banks of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, an age-old dilemma between Russia and China is resurfacing on the two countries’ 2, 500 mile border.
Although today many see Russia and China as strategic partners or even allies in the making, their border has historically been one of the biggest sources of tension between the two countries. Once stretching from the Pamirs across the Steppes and towards the western Pacific Ocean, the contiguous land border between the two states has, for centuries, been the longest in the world, as well as the setting of numerous conflicts.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked a peaceful period for the border. However, by the next century, an expanding Russia and a weakening China heightened tensions. Through a series of “unequal treaties”, the Russian Empire acquired massive swaths of sparsely-populated land from the turmoil-stricken Qing Dynasty. Most notably, the Convention of Peking (1860) saw the bloodless transfer of 600 thousand square miles of Qing territory to the Russian Empire in Northeast Asia, pushing the border south to its location today.
Conflict continued into the twentieth century, as successive Chinese and Russian states vied to redefine the border in their own favor. A series of wars broke out in frontier regions in 1921, 1929, 1934 and 1944, as well as the Sino-Soviet War of 1969, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war [1].
By the time the Soviet Union showed signs of strain, bilateral and border relations improved significantly. In 1991, the two countries surveyed and demarcated their border in Sino-Soviet Border Agreement, and in 2004, the Chinese relinquished all historic claims to the region in return for the recognition of sovereignty over certain disputed islands. Geopolitically, the newly-independent Central Asian countries also served as a buffer zone between the two giants.
Towards the new millennium, cross-border trade, tourism and foreign-direct investment proliferated on both sides of the Amur. Since 1991, Chinese businesses have invested in numerous industrial, agricultural and forestry projects in the Russian Far East, totaling over 2.4b USD. Since 20134, China has become Russia’s biggest source of international tourists , and, in the same year, bilateral trade reached 95.3b USD [2]. Internationally, Russia and China have also collaborated across a number of diplomatic, military and developmental issues.
However, as China’s economic power continues to grow, Russia will eventually have to confront the reality of increasing Chinese influence in its Far Eastern regions.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has experienced a mass population exodus from the entire Far Eastern Federal District, declining from 9 million in 1991 to 6.2 million by 2010 [3]. With over 90 million people living in the three provinces of Northeastern China, the Russian side of the border would be likely to feel strong demographic pressure in the upcoming decades [4]. As Chinese migration into the Russian Far East continues, the Federal Migration Services has predicted that ethnic Chinese could become the dominant group in the region in the next few decades.
Despite the lack of official statistics, the Putin administration has nevertheless begun to take steps of precaution.
In June 2016, the Russian State Duma passed a law that would provide citizen moving to or currently residing in the Far Eastern Federal District with 2.5 acres of free land for any purpose, as well as a tax-break for five years [4]. With over 6,000 applications submitted by September, Russia's Far East Development Minister Alexander Galushka believes the program has capacity to greatly boost the population of the region.
To boost economic growth in the Far Eastern region , Putin’s administration has also approved a number of investment projects. The Vostochny Cosmodrome, a 2.4b USD project near the Chinese border, is scheduled for completion in 2018, and launched its first spacecraft in April 2016. Furthermore, in an effort to redirect potential political tension towards economic cooperation, Russia has negotiated billion-dollar investment projects with Japan and China in the region.
While, in the immediate future, the Sino-Russian border is unlikely to cause conflict, it remains a significant obstacle in the relations between the two giants this century. If left ignored, the vast hinterlands of the Amur could very well switch hands without a single shot being fired, just like it did in 1860.
Tiger Huang is a sophomore studying International Relations and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.
[1] List of Conflicts in order: Mongolian Revolution (1921), Sino-Soviet Conflict (1929), Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang (1934), Ili Rebellion (1944)
[2] Data from the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China
[3] Russian Federation Population Census, 2010
[4] Zeihan, P., “Russia’s Far East Turning Chinese,” ABC News (July 14, 2016)
