{"id":11213,"date":"2022-11-12T07:30:30","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T07:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=11213"},"modified":"2025-05-08T09:43:44","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T09:43:44","slug":"colin-thubron-on-the-historical-value-of-the-amur-river-to-russia-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/colin-thubron-on-the-historical-value-of-the-amur-river-to-russia-and-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Thubron on the value of the Amur River"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Amur River, also known as the Heilong River, forms the border between Russia and China and has been a point of contention and exchange for hundreds \u2013 if not thousands \u2013 of years. A new book by Colin Thubron offers a unique traveller\u2019s perspective on the present and future of a region where two of the world\u2019s superpowers face each other<\/h2>\n

Colin Thubron has long been one of Britain\u2019s most widely travelled, well read and prolific writers. His travels to Russia and China have been chronicled in Among the Russians<\/em>, The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia,<\/em> and Shadow of the Silk Road<\/em>. The intersections of the two great nations have long been one of his main focuses and he felt the urge to revisit the region again.<\/p>\n

In his 80th year, Thubron embarked on a 3,000-mile journey down the tenth-largest river in the world, straddling Mongolia, Russia and China, known as the Amur to the Russians, the Heilongjiang (or Black Dragon River) to the Chinese. Along the way, he converses with Chinese traders and Russian fishermen, monks and Mongolian herders. What he then offers in his beautifully written new book, The Amur River: Between Russia and China<\/em> (Chatto & Windus), is a unique traveller\u2019s perspective on the region where two of the world\u2019s superpowers face each other. Paul French caught up with Thubron, now safely back home in London and about to release the paperback edition of the book.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The China-Russia border along the Amur River\/Heilongjiang is just about China\u2019s longest border. It\u2019s got quite the contentious history too …<\/h4>\n

Over 230,000 square miles north of the river were forcibly annexed from the enfeebled Chinese Qing dynasty by Russia at the 1858 Treaty of Aigun. Since 2004, the borderline has been officially resolved (charting a middle course down the river), but the Chinese have never rescinded their definition of the treaty as \u2018unequal\u2019. The 19th century colonial acquisitions by Britain, France and others during China\u2019s \u2018century of humiliation\u2019 have been returned, of course. Russia alone has not done so. The so-called \u2018patriotic education base\u2019 that I entered at Aihui, the site of the Aigun treaty (Russians are forbidden here), bluntly showcases the seizure of Chinese lands, along with the Russian massacre of some 6,000 Chinese civilians at Blagoveshchensk in 1900.<\/p>\n

What do you think is the primary \u2018strategic value\u2019 of the Amur\/Heliongjiang today to each nation?<\/h4>\n

The strategic value to both countries is largely economic: in particular, the purchase and transport of Russian timber, oil and gas. Until recently, the importance of the region to the Chinese was also as a market for their (mainly domestic) goods, selling to local Russians. But with the decline of the rouble against the yuan, this commerce has steeply declined.<\/p>\n