Fear and Hate in The City of Friendship and Harmony. The Intermediary City of Manzhouli and Its Influence on Perceptions of Chinese Migration in Russia

Abstract

The article explores the influence that an intermediary border town has in the formation of alarming forecasts about the consequences of migration. There are two aspects to this issue: cognitive and cultural. These aspects are examined through ethnographic data collected in the intermediary city of Manzhouli on the Russian-Chinese border. The success of Chinese regional authorities in creating intermediary cities along the border, with open marketplaces orientated towards Russian entrepreneurs and the hope of living together, should have dispelled all doubts and 'disarmed' the disturbing memory of Soviet-Chinese confrontations. However, the success of cross-border urbanism in the region has led to a considerable increase of concerns. Today it is worth talking not so much about the strengthening of old phobias, but about the emergence of new ones. The intermediary cities that have emerged on the border have fallen into the trap of their own mimicry under the imaginary model of the Russian city. Their border localization and focus on Russia made it possible to extrapolate
the experience of living together with Chinese entrepreneurs to possible scenarios for the development of Siberia and the Far East. These extrapolations combine two matters: anxiety about the rapid impoverishment of the region and old fears of 'an awakening Chinese dragon' at the borders of Russia. The article assumes that mass perceptions of Chinese migration in this region are formed on the basis of negative experience rooted in a particular place. This knowledge is not just present in the background, it plays a key role in 'empirically confirming' latent and exposed concerns about the true motivations of Chinese migrants.