Nesting the Sino-Russian Border and the Tumen Project in the Asia-Pacific: Heilongjiang’s Regional Relations

Abstract

Abstract: Scholars studying China’s relations with Asia-Pacific regimes, Northeast Asian regimes, and the Sino-Russian border have treated each regime as independent and separate from the others—as parallel institutions with incompatible rules and norms. This article argues that China’s capacity to create parallel institutions is limited by the norms of the regional and subregional regimes that make up the East Asian international system and transnational linkages developed at the local level. An evolving Chinese definition of national interests in regional cooperation is the result of international learning, involving processes of bargaining domestically and internationally. The Sino-Russian border regime and the Northeast Asian regime forming around the Tumen River project are shaped by domestic center-local bargaining and differences. Heilongjiang Province has sought to be the center of China’s participation in regional economic cooperation in competition with and Jilin provinces, redefining China’s international comparative advantage, changing the nature of Chinese participation in the Tumen project, and provoking a local Russian backlash in the Russian Far East.