Buryat ethnicity in three countries (Russia, China and Mongolia)

Interactions and identifications at the border: Siberians in China and Chinese in Siberia

In recent years many Russian economists and politicians have been raising “alerts” about the gradual separation of vast territories to the East of Baikal from the European part of Russia. The re-orientation of Siberia is caused by weakening economic and cultural ties with central Russia. It goes hand in hand with the process of depopulation, migration of Russians from this region to Central Russia, birth rate decline etc. “Desolated” living space has become a target for migrants from overpopulated and poor regions of Central Asia, Caucasus and neighboring China.
The reaction of Russian media to the plurality of new economic opportunities and to the rising number of Asian migrants varies from reiterations of xenophobic “existential fear” and invocations of the “Yellow threat” to political discussions on regional development strategies and Siberian separatism. As “Whites go away and Asians come in”, the economic options of Siberia seemingly change from predominantly “Moscow-orientated” development towards more diverse re-orientation to the South, Far East and South East. And neighboring China seems to be the most attractive and historically proved direction for many Siberians, as is exemplified by the “Northern Silk road”, which existed for several centuries as caravan trade transit route from China via Siberia to Russia before the Chinese-Russian border was sealed during Socialist time.
Now Siberians are actively discovering China as an alternative place to do business, to travel, to have family holidays and to educate their children. Chinese towns in the proximity of Siberia are booming thanks to the influx of Siberians, who come here to do business and to spend money. Profit is the main motivation of these visitors and migrants. They create a new bizarre border society where political, cultural and social identities fuse and coexist, where diverse economic and cultural systems combine with conservative political societies, where people engage in complex negotiations without knowing each other’s language (like multi-ethnic groups of smugglers). This project will investigate the increasing contacts between Siberians and Chinese, new forms of mutual economic and cultural penetration and permeability, and the impact of border on the surrounding communities.
Research on this project can be done in two steps:
Step One. Locally focused research in the China-Russia frontier area east of Lake Baikal as local border discourse can reflect the mosaic picture of the Chinese-Russian economic and cultural penetration. This includes a nuanced description of the border society on the Chinese side, with special emphasis on the activities of Siberians in China, their group affiliations and identifications (for example, chelnoki, shuttle border traders from all over Siberia, and verbliudi (“camels”), dwellers of frontier area villages, hired by “chelnoki” to cross the border and carry the maximum duty-free amount per person of the goods bought by the “chelnoki”, or pomogaika (a new category of very poor Chinese who work as personal servants for visitors from Russia during their trip to China). From an anthropological point of view, the border is the material and metaphorical representation of the state, its law and its might. The Chinese-Russian border society is an excellent example of how contrasting official policies are negotiated locally. The exhibition of China’s economic and technology developmental success stands in sharp contrast with the desolated and forsaken provincial border towns in Siberia.
Step Two is an exploration of Chinese activities in East Siberia (the Trans-Baikal region). It addresses the following questions. Does China have a special ‘Northern’ policy toward Siberia? To what extent is the influx of Chinese into Siberia with their enterprises (commerce, construction projects, Chinese restaurants etc.) determined by this policy? Can one say that, with the contemporary rise of Chinese economy and its active policy of mineral resource extraction all over the world, Siberia is becoming an object of Chinese colonization? Will Russia’s attempts to colonize the northern and western parts of China in XIX century be mirrored by Chinese attempts to colonize the ‘North’ in future decades or centuries?
I want to contextualize this investigation in to anthropological writings on frontiers and borderlands. Frontiers and borderlands have been topics of anthropological research for a long time and their relevance is yet growing (e.g. Wendl and Rösler 1999). The Chinese-Russian border was a subject of much politicized attention in Russian (Soviet) and Chinese historiography, owing to the recent political problems of border line demarcation, but it has so far not received much attention in anthropological research. Most of the Siberian sociologists and social anthropologists focus on the activities of Chinese migrants in Siberian cities (Diatlov 2006, 2007), but do yet not consider the growing number of Siberians in China as a research topic. My project seeks to address this shortcoming: it is a complementary study of interactions and identifications at the border and on both sides of the border.
This research project is a part of the Siberian Studies Centre’s Research Program for 2008-2012, “Conditions and Limitations of Life-Style Plurality in Siberia”.