On the slim likelihood of a Chinese takeover of the Russian Far East

For some time, it's been taken for granted by many--see bloggers here and here and here--that China, with its growing population and its booming economy, is destined to take over the Russian Far East, usually the southern portions of said territory around the cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, on account of said region's post-Soviet decline. It was Chinese territory up until the mid-19th century, after all--why shouldn't it become part of Zhongguo again? Kim Iskyan proposed in Slate in 2003 that Russia should sell the territory while it can.

Seven million people live on the frozen resource-rich taiga of Russia's Far East, a region nearly as large as the contiguous United States. Roughly 1.3 billion Chinese are packed like pickles next door, where corruption, spiraling unemployment, environmental disaster, and growing rural unrest are taking the luster off the Chinese economic miracle. Unfortunately for China's dire need for new demographic and economic horizons, Russia isn't eager to share its chilly sandbox with the neighbors. The struggle between Dr. Malthus and Doctor Zhivago> threatens the balance of power in the Far East. But economics—rather than a Tom Clancy-style showdown—will likely decide the winner.

[. . .]

The endless horizons of the RFE would create new opportunities for land ownership for tens of millions of unemployed Chinese rural dwellers. Unlike Russia, China has the ingrained entrepreneurial spirit, as well as the incentive and cash, to make the best of the Russian Far East. The RFE's natural resource wealth—especially oil and gas on Sakhalin—would provide Beijing with a significant measure of energy-security comfort. Moving in on Vladivostok, Russia's only temperate Pacific port, would at once end Russian trade in the Pacific; terminate any lingering relevance for Russia's Pacific navy; and enable China to pose an immediate threat to Japan. Russia's focus, though, long ago shifted west, just as its influence in East Asia has long been on the wane.

[. . .]

[F]or Moscow, the RFE is a distant underperforming colony that is gradually slipping into economic and demographic irrelevance. China needs an outlet for simmering rural unrest, and it has historically had designs on the Russian Far East. Admittedly, the likely difficulties of negotiating a fair price (the $2.5 trillion suggested by a usually sane Russian legislator as Russia's price for turning over the disputed Kurile Islands to Japan suggests that Moscow would aim high) is one barrier to the transaction. And Vladimir Putin would have a spot of trouble trying to convince the Russian electorate that selling off the motherland's crown jewels is a good thing

But a Far East version of the Louisiana Purchase—the Siberian Bargain, to take a bit of geographical license—would allow Moscow to get rid of its Far Eastern headache and raise some cash to see it through the next dip in commodity prices, and it would pave the way for China to buy a few more decades in its capitalist experiment. Occasionally, economic rationality prevails. Might Russia and China see the (snow-blinding) light?

Call this vision a Russian version of Eurabia.

But does this vision hold up? Sergei Prosvirnov, writing in the latest issue of (vol 37 no 2) Far Eastern Affairs, an English-language version of a Russian journal on China, argues fairly convincingly in his article "On the Migration Between Amur Region and China at the Turn of the 21st Century" (62-72) that this vision is wrong, certainly inasmuch as it assumes that hundreds of thousands or even millions of Chinese live in these territories now. "[O]ne Ishakov, the Russian President's former representative in the Far Eastern Federal District, said in a December 2006 interview that some 350,000 illegal Chinese migrants lived in the region, in addition to the legal presence of 150,000 Chinese who had the required legal status. In another interview, the former presidential representative went as far as claiming that one in ten residents of the Far Eastern Federal District was a Chinese" (63).

Is this true? According to Prosvirnov, certainly not in the Amur region, as actual statistics demonstrate. "Estimates made by experts for Amur Region and Blagoveshchensk do not go above 5,000 Chinese citizens residing within their boundaries. They are, in particular, traders, most of whom have businesses in Blagoveshchensk. For their part, Chinese sources estimate the number of Russian citizens living every day in Heihe, across the Amur River from Blagoveschensk, at between 3,000 and 4,000" (64). Chinese migrants are present in some number, but make up only 4.4% of the Amur region's employed population, working in areas like trade and forestry and farming, often on short term contracts (66). The author goes on to argue that, in fact, administrative issues are even hindering Chinese tourists.

Who is crossing the border? Russian bordercrossers, in fact, are more numerous than their Chinese counterparts, as they cross to shop and to visit tourist attractions and commute and even live in order to take account of the lower cost of living (65-66). Heihe, the Chinese city located on the other side of the Amur from the Russian province's capital of Blagoveschensk, has benefited accordingly. "Chinese public service officials are glad to have Russians in Heihe. A good illustration of this is the admission made by Yuan Yuxiang, chief of the construction department at Heuihe, at a meeting with a Russian delegation in 2006. "Once we have a bridge across the Amur completed, you will be able to live here and commute to work in Russia. Many Blagoveschensk residents would willingly embrace this idea, not least because the cost of living on the Chinese side is much cheaper. In December 2006, a woman pensioner made the country's headlines after she had moved to live in China. On the heels of that sensation, local and central press continue to publish regular features about Russian citizens buiying real estate in China in the subsequent period" (66).

Will this change in the future? It's unlikely. Quite apart from growing anti-Chinese xenophobia (69-70), the likes of which has been extensively documented, the Russian Far East isn't all that attractive. "A forecast of possible Chinese migration to Amur Region in the short term must take account of the situation in China itself. For example, a number of Russian experts do not see the Russian Federation as a priority for global Chinese migration for such reasons as China's economic growth and rising living standards in the country that do not contribute to Russia's attractiveness to Chinese migrants. Foreign researchers give Russian Far Eastern territories a transit role on the route to European capitals. Another consideration is that the 'one family one child' policy, experts argue, will result in a faster aging of China's population than is the average for the world at large" (70).

It's worth noting in this connection that just before a relatively thinly-populated territory is adjacent to a relatively densely-populated territory a population shift isn't inevitable. There has been no massive Euro-Canadian or Danish influx to Nunavut or Greenland, no mass migration to Tibet (the Chinese migrants seem to be concentrated in Lhasa and are usually temporary besides, contra perceptions). There was a massive Soviet-era settlement of the Far North of that state, but that was driven by political imperatives and has been--as the Far East demonstrates--in decline since the end of these subsidies. If areas of the Russian Far East once part of China had stayed part of China, doubtless these regions wouldn't be much differing from Heilongjiang, but the post-Chinese development of the region is such that temporary migrations by ambitious traders or contract workers, exploiting the resources of a relatively marginal area, seem plausible. Besides, as Prisvirnov points out, there's not much of a choice between--say--Blagoveschchensk or Berlin.