Russian in China

　No one knows exactly how many foreigners there are living in China. In Beijing alone, estimates range from up to 50-100,000 people.

" I like the attitude of the people in Beijing, they're very friendly and I can't say that about my own city, Moscow," says Natalia Karelova, who went to school in Beijing and now manages the Traktirr Restaurant there. "When you talk to the older generation, they try and remember the Russian they were taught in school. There was an expression in China years ago that 'Russia is our older brother'. Now it is 'Russia is our friend'. China isn't the younger brother anymore, but the people are still friendly."

　　But the vast majority of Russians who come to China now do so for work and,although a group of Russian Orthodox priests who arrived in 1684 as missionaries can claim to be among the first Russian residents in China, it has always been that way. The key date is 1897, when construction on the China Eastern Railway, designed to link the Russian Far East to Northern China and now known as the Trans-Manchurian Railway, began.

　　There were already Russian traders in Harbin, many of them Jews escaping the pogroms of Tsarist Russia, but it was the building of the railway, which ran south from Vladivostock through Harbin to Dalian, that transformed Harbin from a sleepy village on the banks of the Songhua Jiang River into a boom town. Thousands of Russians arrived to work on the railway and not even the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, which saw the Japanese push Russia out of Port Arthur (now Lushun), and take over control of much of the south of northeast China, could halt the city's rapid expansion.

　　Today, there are still plenty of Russians working in Harbin, known as Kharbin to Russians, along with others who visit as tourists, and the Daoliqu District of the city, with the restored Russian Orthodox Church of St. Sophia and other buildings with distinctly un-Chinese spires and turrets, is a visible reminder of the city's Russian heritage. But in the early 1920's, there were close on 200,000 Russians living in Harbin. Known as Harbinets, three generations of them, the last of whom left in the mid-1960's, would call the city home.

　　It was the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 that sparked the biggest wave of Russian immigration to China. Tens of thousands of White Russians arrived in China via the Russian Far East. Others crossed the border into Xinjiang in the West. Some were aristocrats, others soldiers from the Tsar's old armies and supporters of the monarchy.

　　Certainly, few of the White Russians in Shanghai were rich; some were forced into prostitution to support their families and more than a few did succumb to the three 'D's': drink, drugs and debt. Others parlayed their military experience into jobs as bodyguards and guns for hire for local gangsters and warlords across China; a whole White Russian regiment ended up fighting in Xinjiang in the 1930's.

　　"We survived quite well. A lot of people did. I think my parents regarded their time in China very favorably. My father was very engaged with China; he was virtually a native speaker. My mother was less interested, but she embraced the life of a foreigner in Shanghai. They had terrific memories of the shops on Nanjing Lu, even if they couldn't afford to buy anything, dancing at the French Club, going to the movies and so on."

　　　　There are hardly any concrete reminders of the White Russian community in Shanghai now. One old Russian Orthodox church has been turned into a restaurant, but the bars and cabarets where the taxi dancers, so-called because one US dollar bought three dances, plied their trade are long gone, along with the milliners and fur shops that once lined the streets of the French concession.

　　So integrated were they that Tanya became a Young Pioneer, the old Soviet Union's politically-orientated version of the Scout movement. "We did a lot of sport and social activities but on April 22nd, Lenin's birthday, we'd all march to Lenin's statue and there'd be a big ceremony," she recalls.

　　Like all the Russians in China, they feel a deep connection with their homeland and clearly miss it, even if life is much safer in Beijing than it is in Russia. It's one of the reasons why the Russian community in Beijing is so tight-knit and so often found in the Russian restaurants near their vast embassy off Dongzhimennei, reputedly the largest embassy in the world, or in the Ritan Park area, the site of the first Russian and foreign restaurants in China and where the shop signs in and around Yabao Lu are in Cyrillic rather than Mandarin.

　　"Russians here like to go to the Russian restaurants because they like to feel at home. They get everything they want: Russian food and drink, loud music," smiles Tanya. "Most of the Russians in Beijing aren't here because they like China. They're not like the other foreigners who come here because they like China, or they're interested in it and want to learn the language. The Russians are here for the money."

　　Last month, the Russians and Chinese governments reached an agreement on their long-disputed northern border. The presence of the Russia and Chinese foreign ministers in Vladivostock to sign the agreement, as well as Chinese president Hu Jintao's recent visit to Moscow for the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII, is a sign of how healthy the relationship between the two countries is now. With trade links increasing all the time, that relationship will become even closer. The next chapter in the history of the Russians in China hasn't been written yet, but it's a story that will run and run.

Ethnic Russians (form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, according to the ethnicity classification as applied in mainland China.^[1] Those in mainland China are the descendants of Russians who settled there since the 17th century, and hold PRC rather than Russian citizenship.

There are currently over 15,000 ethnic Russians in China holding PRC citizenship; however, at least 70,000 Russians are residing in China while keeping their Russian or other nationality.

The Shanghai Russians were a sizable Russian diaspora that flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 it is estimated that there were as many as 25,000 Russians living in the city, the largest European group by far. Most of them had come from the Russian Far East, where, with the support of the Japanese, the Whites had maintained a presence as late as the autumn of 1922.

CHINESE IN RUSSIA There is a Chinese population in Moscow, and recent events (including the closure of Cherkizovsky market) have brought some aspects of the relationship between the Chinese and Moscow into the public eye. The Moscow City government, while benefiting from Chinese cheap labor to fill Russia's labor gap, has largely ignored Moscow's estimated 100,000-strong Chinese diaspora. By contrast, the Chinese government, with an interest in aggressively expanding trade with Russia, has facilitated the growth of Moscow's Chinese workers through financial assistance. This is a win-win situation for the two governments, but many of the Chinese who are living illegally in Moscow suffer a bleak existence. While the Chinese mafia remains active in Moscow, the corrupt Moscow city government turns a blind eye to a range of illicit Chinese activities.

Chinese investors are another group that the Russian government would like to encourage to invest in Russia. In August 2009, the Russian-Chinese Center for Trade and Economic Cooperation signed a billion dollar deal with Jin Yuan, a Chinese real estate company, which plans to invest in commercial real estate in Moscow. Chinese investors also have questionable business practices, but could be a source of needed investment in areas like construction or commercial development at a time when many Russian companies cannot

access financing to complete projects.

A third category of Chinese in Moscow is the construction workers and other low-wage workers in "legitimate" economic areas, some of whom appear to be trafficked, while others appear to have come of their own volition looking for economic opportunity. They perform a

function that Russian workers do not want to perform; heavy manual labor at a low wage. This group benefits Moscow when

the economy is growing, but not when the economy slows down.

Finally, a fourth group is the Chinese workers trafficked into Russia. This group includes brothel workers and, it is rumored, a number of individuals in construction

and other low-wage jobs. This group gets no respect from either the Russian or Chinese government, and appears to be at the mercy of the Russian and Chinese mafia and coyotes.

Madjumder confirmed that the Chinese mafia, a highly organized billion-dollar business, is active in Moscow. He cited the example of Moscow city, where Chinese work, but

live in harsh conditions, such as in enormous crates located on Moscow city property.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-24