ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a long historical view of the Sino-Russian distrust landscape. It presents situations of déjà vu through comparisons between present day and longue durée perspectives on cross-border interactions. Even aside from such historical and contemporary encounters of mutual distrust, Russia and China themselves are both societies with low levels of public trust. The cases of misuse of Chinese labour in Russia presented here clearly demonstrate that deficiencies of legislation and institutional weaknesses in both countries facilitate the criminalization of the transactions involved (e.g., human trafficking, illegal migration) and create conditions for co-ethnic abuse in the low trust environment of the Sino-Russian borderlands. Analyzing this situation, the chapter explores non-Western understandings and vocabularies of trust, such as Russian doverie and blat and Chinese guanxi, kekeo, and xinyoung, and indicates how these are used in economic encounters.
