Opening Plenary Panel: The Russia China Interface One Border, Two Regions

Chair: Alec Murphy University of Oregon, USA
Speakers: Franck Billé, University of California Berkeley, USA
Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge, UK

China and Russia share one of the longest borders in the world as well as one of the most unusual. Unlike most international borders that slice across an ethnic and cultural continuum, the Russia-China border represents a civilizational fracture, with entirely different populations on either side. These differences are sustained and further compounded by scholarly and disciplinary traditions that study China and Russia separately, with very little focus on their common border. In our recent book, as well as through the book series we edit, we have sought to challenge this division and attempt to treat Northeast Asia as a single region with its own characteristics and challenges. Using insights from our recent fieldwork, we describe in this lecture some of the current dynamics seen at the border. If people at the border consistently describe themselves as living “on the edge” of the state, emerging collaborative, commercial, and mimetic processes increasingly tie the two sides together in ways that are not always consonant with metropolitan view nor visible in macro analyses.