The Weak Foundations of Sino-Russian Relationship at the Grassroots Level

At the Aigun Historical Museum, patriotism is the main theme.  Situated on the ruins of the Aigun fortress, the walled city that was destroyed by Russians, it documents how the land north of the Amur River was lost and the details of the atrocities against Chinese civilians perpetuated by Russian troops.  The underlying message is one that ask visitors to contribute to strengthening of the Chinese nation so that the Chinese people can no longer be bullied by foreigners in the future.  The museum's collection of pictures detailing national leaders who visited the site allude to official support for the project.

Having such an overtly anti-Russian museum right next to the Russian border is rather discomforting.  The region today thrives off cross-border trade and tourism (both by Russians and domestic Chinese seeking to experience Russian culture), so hostility toward Russians obviously cannot be shown visibly.  But the fact that such a museum can exist as a major tourist attraction for domestic tourists illustrate just how beneath the thriving trade, historical conflicts continue to bite.

Indeed, any animosity between the two peoples are repressed, not resolved.  Despite the Chinese and Russian leadership officially demarcation their land borders years ago, the museum continue to present the Russian side of the Amur River as historically Chinese territory.  It notes that it has become devoid of Chinese people not through Russian rule, but only Russian coercion for the Chinese to leave, and massacring Chinese civilians in the process.  Such a historically view cannot be anymore one-sided as at the same time, the Boxer Rebellion saw Chinese people willingly, massacre Europeans across the country.

The coercion to leave and the massacres that follow display not only almost permanent historical stain in Sino-Russian relations, but also failure of both China and Russia as multiethnic, multicultural states.  While both have in some ways accommodated the other (small populations of Chinese citizens of Russian ethnicity and many more Russian citizens of Asian background exist today), they ultimately cannot escape the tendency to portray those across the border as the permanently other with whom geographic territories (and all the natural resources on and under them) are to be competed.

And that conception of the permanent other continues today, in the minds and hearts of people on both sides of the River.  While the Chinese museum ensures visitors remember the humiliation and pain that Chinese people suffered in the hands of the Russians, the Russian museum across the River instill among the locals the pride that come with prevailing over the Chinese in the contest for territory.  If the interactions among Chinese and Russians take place with the continued mentalities of humiliation and hatred vs pride and condescension, how deep and intimate can those interactions get?

Perhaps the local taxi driver on the Chinese side describes the Grassroots situation the best.  "The Russians come over here and enjoy our sightseeing spots, but over there they discriminate against us and see us as lower beings," he passionately declares, "I will gladly take their money but I cannot possibly treat them so well." And this is from Chinese people who regularly interact with Russians and know many Chinese people doing business across the border. Imagine most Chinese people who only hear about Russians and Russia from patriotic textbooks and news.

Not that the Russians are without guilt on creating such a perception among the Chinese. The Russian citizenry continues to aspire to remain a part of the European world (some even argue themselves to be the purest Europeans culturally in the context of Muslim migrant invasion of western Europe) and inadvertently display their belittling of Chinese culture in their daily interactions with the Chinese. The flat refusal for Blagoveshchensk and other border cities of the Russian Far East to even consider introducing some pseudo-Chinese elements like Heihe has done with the Russian attests to this cultural disdain.

In the era of Chinese and Russian leaders openly speaking about a strategic partnership, the cultural dissonance throws into question whether there are any possibility of the partnership ever going beyond the political elite level. With two people that share little in terms of values and repressing a host of cultural and historical animosity, it can be said that whether good-natured relationship that do exist today is based entirely on flimsy grounds, based on mutual interests that conveniently converges now. When those interests diverge in the future, Sino-Russian partnership will fall apart just as quickly as it was formed.