Chinese people in Russia

Ethnic group
group=Chinese people in Russia
poptime=998,000 Estimated [http://www.ocac.gov.tw/english/public/public.asp?selno=1163&no=1163&level=B]
popplace=Moscow, Russian Far East
langs=Chinese, Russian
rels=Not known
related=Overseas Chinese

Chinese people in Russia numbered 34,577 according to the 2002 census. [Rosstat 2002: Table 4.01] , this however, is disputed as several sources cite ranging anywhere from one million to three million people.

History

Chinese settlement in what is now the Russian Far East is believed to have begun as early as the 7th century A.D.; however, under the 1860 Convention of Peking, China's Qing Dynasty ceded these eastern territories, then known as East Tartary, to Russia.Alekseev 2006: 111] Large-scale Chinese immigration to territory actually under the control of the Russian Empire did not begin until the late 19th century. From 1878 until the early 1880s, thousands of Hui Chinese escaped from Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia over the Tian Shan Mountains to Central Asia, fleeing persecution in the aftermath of the Hui Minorities' War; they became known as the Dungans. [Rimsky-Korsakoff 1992] Separately, other groups of migrants, mostly Han Chinese, went to the Russian Far East; the Russian Empire Census of 1897 showed a total of 57,459 Chinese speakers (47431 male and 10,028 female); 42,823 (74.5%) lived in the Primorye region alone. [Demoscope.ru; the 1897 census did not distinguish speakers of Dungan language] [Savaliev 2001] Chinese and ethnic Koreans living in the Russian Far East were deported to other areas of Russia in 1937 for fear that their communities could be infiltrated by Japanese spies.Alekseev 2006: 97]

Starting from the time of Russia's 1917 October Revolution and continuing up until the 1950s-1960s Sino-Soviet split, many aspiring Chinese Communists went to study in Moscow, including Liu Shaoqi, future President of the People's Republic of China, and Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek. [Yu: 112] There was a great deal of factional infighting among them, and a group was labeled as Trotskyists. [Ladany 1992: 156]

The most recent wave of immigration traces its origin back to 1982, when Hu Yaobang visited Harbin and approved the resumption of cross-border trade; immigration remained sluggish until 1988, when China and the Soviet Union signed a visa-free tourism agreement.Larin 2006: 49] However, visa-free travel was terminated only six years later.Bedeski 1999]

Russian perceptions

The expanding Chinese presence in the area has led to yellow peril-style fears of Chinese irredentism. Russian newspapers published estimates of between two and five million Chinese migrants in the Russian Far East, and predict that half of the population of Russia would be Chinese by 2050. [Alekseev 2006: 98] Vitkovskaya 1999] Russians typically believe that Chinese come to Russia with the aim of permanent settlement, and even Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying "If we do not take practical steps to advance the Far East soon, after a few decades, the Russian population will be speaking Chinese, Japanese, and Korean." [Alekseev 2006: 95] Russians perceive hostile intent in the Chinese practise of using different names for local cities, such as "unicode|Hǎishēnwǎi" for Vladivostok , and a widespread folk belief states that the Chinese migrants remember the exact locations of their ancestors' ginseng patches, and seek to reclaim them. The xenophobia against Chinese and exaggerated concerns over the Chinese influx and are described as being less prevalent in the Russian Far East, where most of the Chinese shuttle trade is actually occurring, than in European Russia.

Demographics and distribution

The two main Chinese communities of Russia are those in Moscow and those in the Russian Far East. The community in Moscow is estimated to be the largest, numbering 20,000 to 25,000 people; Chinese community leaders give even higher estimates in the 30,000 - 40,000 range. They come from most provinces of China. Moscow has the highest proportion of long-term residents (those living in Russia for more than three years), at 34%.Gelbras 2002: 106]

In the Russian Far East, the major urban centres of Chinese settlement include Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Ussuriysk, though the total combined Chinese population in those three cities is less than that in Moscow.Gelbras 2002: 104] Most Chinese workers in the region come from the northeast of China, especially Heilongjiang, where they form an important part of the province's strategy to gain access to natural resources in Russia to fuel their own economic developmentFact|date=September 2008. Between 1988 and 2003, 133,000 contract workers from Heilongjiang went to work in Russia; most were employed in construction and agriculture. Though some immigrants come from Jilin as well, the provincial government there is more interested in developing relations with Japan and the Koreas. Population pressure and overcrowding on the Chinese side of the border are one motivation for emigration, while the chance to earn money doing business in Russia is described as the major pull factor. [Larin 2006: 50] Aside from resident contract workers, 1.1 million Chinese also went to the border areas of the Russian Far East on tourist visas from 1997 to 2002. Despite the perception that many remain illegally in Russia, since 1996, over 97% of Chinese arriving on tourist visas departed on time by the same border crossing through which they entered Russia, and many of the remaining 3% either departed by other border crossing, or were arrested and deported.

See also

* Chinese in the Russian Revolution and in the Russian Civil War
* Japanese people in Russia
* Korean people in Russia
** Sakhalin Koreans
* Vietnamese people in Russia
* Sino-Russian relations
* Yellow Peril

References

Notes

Sources

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* See section "Japanese Communities within the Russian Far East and Their Economic Activities"
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