ABSTRACT
The demarcation and demilitarisation of the border under El’tsin was a mixed blessing: the opening of the border brought an increase in cross-border trade on both sides. However, the increase in trade also brought an influx of Chinese traders, a number of whom, according to some, were settling in the Far Eastern regions of Russia. Moreover, there were reports of criminal activity by Chinese gangs, which increased anti-Chinese feeling. Those who wished to make political capital out of these developments seized on the demarcation of the border as proof of an overall plan by the Chinese government to colonise the Russian Far East in order to solve the problem of China’s population growth. They charged that the border agreement originally signed between the Soviet Union and China in 1991 was unequal and left China with the greater share of territory. The fact that some areas of the Russian Far East had once been under Chinese rule, some argued, could imply that China still harboured territorial ambitions vis-à-vis Russia. Conversely, the goods made available by trade across the border were vital for many of the citizens of Russia’s Far East who could ill afford more expensive imports. During El’tsin’s tenure another factor was that the governors of some of these border regions often had their own agendas, whose aim was to assure the continuation of their political careers rather than to raise the living standards of their populations.
