Letter from the Sino-Russia border

by James Macadam

The town of Blagoveshchensk has more charm than others in the Russian Far East. Rugby Union is not as big here as in Krasnoyarsk. Nor does it have a Lenin head on anything the same scale as Ulan Ude (seven metres high). But it has one thing which is putting it firmly on the map – China. Across from the Mayor's office lies 750 metres of river water and then Heihe, a Chinese border town that has doubled in size over the last few years on Russian tourist trade. No bridge connects the two border cities. To get across you board a ferry after negotiating customs. When a bridge project was first mooted in 1993 the Russians vetoed it. The worry was that it would simply encourage China's annexation of the region.

Borders are odd places. Currently around 30% of them are contested worldwide. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are passive and permeable, mere signs on the roadside. Others are obvious and dangerous demarcations. Among the oddest is the Russian-Chinese border, which runs for a large part along the main channel of the mighty Amur River. Until 2004 it was the subject of one of the world's longest running disputes and today the legacy of ethnic cleansing, Soviet military build-up, and changing historical trends converge to produce a line of contradiction.

Russian worries about the 'yellow peril' might not sound as mad as all that. The history of the region is complex and bloody. Blagoveshchensk itself was the site of the bloody Boxer rebellion in which, fearful of Chinese incursion, Russians rounded up all resident Asians and drove them into the Amur. Few could swim.

Later, after the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s the border experienced a huge military build-up. Thanks to some cartographic jiggery-pokery by Russian diplomats based on a treaty of the 17th century, the Soviets claimed the whole river as sovereign territory; the Chinese believed it had to be shared. As the international geopolitics soured between the former communist friends, Russian border guards were instructed to prevent any Chinese fishing or boat transit. Beijing resisted and the war games that ensued were on the grandest scale. In winter fortified trucks cruised the icy surface of the river up to the reels of razor wire that the Russians placed up and down the banks. Periodically Chinese or Russian troops were kidnapped, gagged, beaten as warnings. Some disappeared.

The inevitable clash came in 1969 on what is now Zhenbao Island further south on the Ussuri River. Mao seems to have replaced his frontier guards with battle hardened troops and told them to choose their battlefield. Though several hundred people died in that and subsequent skirmishes, and war seemed imminent, the two powers just managed to step back from the brink. It was as close as the communist world came to civil war. But for those living in Blagoveshchensk it was a transformative moment - they became the eyes and ears of the state. When in the winter of 1970 a 50 metre high poster of Moa was unfurled on the Chinese side of the bank, the Russians responded by sending patrol guards onto the river with building materials and constructing permanent towers on the thin ice above the freezing torrent. Soviet propaganda ran day and night on loud speakers across the river. The Russians put in a 20 yard area of ploughed earth along the border with which to detect the footprints of insurgents. Shelling was periodic.

The embodiment of the new frontier ethos were the frontier guards themselves. In inimitable Soviet style they were branded as strong, durable, very Caucasian defenders of the realm. Writers lauded them for their bucolic lifestyles. Their soft footfalls were even featured in an operetta which garnered the Stalin Prize. Instead of Scouts, Russian boys became members of the Young Friends of the Border Guards. They were taught vital skills to help tracking the Chinese Other. On the 28th May they joined in the National Border Day festivities. Those that lived in Blagoveshchensk dreamt of repeating the exploits of Nikola Karatsupa – a border guard responsible for liquidating 129 spies and saboteurs with the help of his German Shepherd Ingush (after whom all guard dogs in the Vietnam war were named).

Despite the collapse of the USSR, increasingly amicable relations, and the resurgence of China onto the global stage, the suspicion about Chinese intentions in the regions has not faltered. The most recent governor of the Amur region has just cracked down on Chinese trade in the region. Hitler's birthday still provokes a few racist beatings. Chinese people are forbidden from owning property in the region. This is in spite of a growing need for greater economic integration. Few Russians are in doubt that the future of the sparsely populated and economically backward Russian Far East lies in trade with China, but the terms must always ensure that Chinese influence is resisted.

The result is a strange sort of economy for Blagoveshchensk. Smuggling across the river, especially in clothes and cheap electronic products goes on with the explicit acknowledgement of the authorities. Girls waddle off the ferry from China, struggling to walk normally because they are wearing several pairs of jeans. One even produced a Dolce and Gabbana knock-off handbag from her crotch. The use of Chinese labour, though desperately needed, is heavily limited to particular sectors (notably construction). And while illegal Chinese workers are involved in agriculture, particularly the production of watermelons, it is always in nominally Russian owned camps far out in the Taiga where the electorate never visit. Russian nationals need no visas to cross the Amur while the Chinese require reams of identification. This is cross-border integration without a human (or in this case an Asian) face.

Further downstream is the Jewish Autonomous Republic. This little known quirk of Stalinist planning was a supposedly a great Jewish homeland built to accommodate 150,000 of the USSR's Jews. When the 30,000 or so who eventually made it across the continent arrived, few of them were impressed. Birobidzhan, the capital, sits in a swamp surrounded by silver birch. The mosquitoes were terrible and the population were given little assistance. Nowadays most of the Jews who stayed have moved to Israel. Less than 4000 or so remain, enough to populate the city's small synagogue. Here too, the border is opening up in curious ways. The first ever bridge to link the two countries may be built here across the Amur in the next two years, but in keeping with Russia's policy it will purely take freight (mainly iron ore). Passenger traffic, with all it would mean for Russian sovereignty and integration, is a while away.

In the 1990s there was a popular theory that globalization heralded a new dawn in which borders were being rendered irrelevant as capital and people moved with a new fluidity. We were now in a "global village". Such arguments may work for Europe, but several thousand miles away in Asia they seem at best naive. The Amur River border still profoundly matters to people despite growing economic integration. Most borders are still fraught national spaces which evoke strong emotions. They are cut through with notions of "us" and "them". Because of the quirks of Soviet geography and the demise of the Russian indigenous peoples the Amur River divides two peoples that look and talk different. Though they both know the future lies in integration, the long history of mutual suspicion makes it difficult. One leading Russian businessman summed it up well: "I'm not worried about Chinese migration. We should let them all over here to help. If it gets bad we can always round them up and send them back. It happened like that many times in the past".