Russian Far East Can’t Do without China Trade, Vladivostok Orientalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 11 – Moscow’s closure of the border with China to combat the spread of the coronavirus and China’s anger about about the possibility that Russia has become the source of infection for China (rbc.ru/society/13/04/2020/5e94475a9a7947999165c239) highlight the fraught relationship between the People’s Republic and Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District.

            On the one hand, many in Moscow encourage Chinese visits to and investment in the Russian Far East and Siberia, seeing that as a major contributor to the economic development of those regions. But on the other, many in these underpopulated regions are afraid of being overwhelmed by an influx of Chinese.

            Andrey Ostrovsky, a specialist on China at the Institute for the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that for China, its trade with Russia is relatively small – only two percent of all foreign trade – but for the Far East, relative to the size of the population there, it is enormous and something our Far Eastern regions can’t do without.

            For example, if trade between China and Primorsky Kray were to cease, Ostrovsky says, prices for fruits and vegetables would rise through the roof because they would have to be shipped from European portions of the Russian Federation and be beyond the reach of the population there (eastrussia.ru/material/regiony-dfo-ne-smogut-bez-kitayskoy-torgovli-/).

            Thus, there is an imbalance: “China can peacefully exist even if it does not engage in any foreign trade and works only for the domestic market,” the Russian specialist continues, while the Russian Far East can’t. It has to trade or it will suffer. That gives China certain advantages but Russia has no choice.

            Ostrovsky says the region and indeed all of the Russian Federation could benefit if Moscow did not impose so many restrictions on imports. China could flood Russia with the medical equipment and drugs it needs if only Moscow would lift testing requirements on all imported medications.

            In response to the pandemic, China acted quickly and well by isolating the outbreak and limiting its spread. Russia did much the same. It successfully closed the border with China, but it allowed flights from Europe to continue to operate for some time, giving the virus another channel to come into the country.

            As far as the Russian Far East is concerned, the low density of its population has kept the infection from spreading. “By Chinese measures,” he says, “no one lives there.”  But the Russian reaction to the coronavirus has had a negative impact: tourism is off and will remain so, and Russian firms have raised rather than cut prices in contrast to firms in other countries.

            That and not China is the source of the region’s biggest problems now, the orientalist says.