After closing in the 1960s amidst the hostilities of the Sino-Soviet split, the Sino-Russian border only reopened in the 1980s, in the waning days of the Soviet Union. The reopening of the border provides ample opportunities to study how different social groups, after a long period of state-mandated mutual hostility and isolation, conducted business in the absence of established trust. Given the changing political and economic relationship between China and Russia in recent years, this collection of research on the Sino-Russian borderlands is especially timely and insightful.
This volume uses participant observations and semi-structured interviews of residents in the borderland region to successfully establish a foundation for discussions on Sino-Russian relations at the grassroots level. The results of the observations and interviews are interpreted using conceptual tools from previous academic research ranging from political science to sociology, to economics to anthropology. Together, the data and their interpretations support the main theme: how does the level of trust among different groups fluctuate in accordance with culture-specific behaviors and the actions of individual actors? Ethnographical studies of other borderlands should take note of this volume's method of examining intercultural communications from the perspectives of different ethnic groups. Moreover, the concluding remarks, which suggest an increasing shift of business transactions to online platforms, contribute to knowledge production on how trust can be strengthened through the ingenious use of technology.
Having said this, I suggest that the greatest strength of the book is the extensive discussion and analyses of trust and other related terms. Trust-related terms in Russian, such as doverie and avos’, are analyzed critically by Martin (Chapter 7) and Humphrey (Chapter 8) respectively, providing readers with a well-rounded psychological understanding of why Russians hold suspicious attitudes toward foreigners, Russian state institutions, and some of their co-ethnics, during business transactions. Russian trust is portrayed as temporary and irrational, originating from blind faith in higher powers grounded in religious thinking. It is contrasted with Western trust, which is a long-term behavior based on what Francis Fukuyama calls “cultural heritage” and sustained by what Adam Smith calls “human passions.” Defining Russian trust as religious faith explains why Russian informants make major investments without formal contracts, as illustrated in case studies of real estate purchases in Chapter 8 and online shopping in Chapter 10. These conceptual analyses make what seem to be economically questionable behaviors more comprehensible.
Indeed, the behaviors and actions of the informants themselves are demonstrated as being highly dependent on their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Several contributors to the volume spent years delving not only into Russian communities and businesses, but also those of other players like the Chinese (in Chapter 2 by Namsaraeva), Mongols (in Chapter 4 by Bayar), Koreans (in Chapter 5 by Park), and the Evenki (in Chapter 9 by Safonova, Santha, and Sulyandziga). Empirical evidence of the different ways different groups approach business in the borderlands illustrate how easily cultural misunderstandings create an entrenched lack of trust. For example, Bayar's case study (Chapter 4) on business partnerships between ethnic Mongols in China and those from Mongolia demonstrates that ostensible physiological and cultural ties cannot necessarily advance trust needed for sustained business relationships. Park (Chapter 5) argues that different cultural upbringings can generate outright mistrust even among people of the same ethnicity, through ethnographic accounts of business conflicts between ethnic Koreans of Chinese and Russian nationality. Such cases provide empirical evidence to back up the idea that trust is not definite even among co-ethnics. Sustained trust can only be established by overcoming suspicions and misunderstandings that come with intercultural communications.
The book also has merit in highlighting trust as shaped not just by individuals but also by government authorities. Across nearly all chapters, the Russian state is portrayed as maintaining central control and border security, at the expense of open cross-border trade and a flourishing private sector. Such an attitude on the part of the Russian state is a primary factor underlying the uncertainties of business continuity. The rapid tipping of economic balance in the region from Russia to China in the last decades as well as the emergence of global trends, such as e-commerce, discussed by Ryzhova (Chapter 10), brings about further unpredictability for businesses and consumers. Distrust is entrenched when individuals cannot clearly predict the borderlands’ future economic directions. The capriciousness of the overall conditions beyond individual control reduces long-term trust among individuals with little cultural and social linkages.
However, the volume is not without its faults, particularly in terms of the selection of which issues and perspectives to cover among what is undoubtedly a plethora of different possibilities. One particularly glaring omission is a relative dearth of Chinese perspectives in the analyses of borderlands businesses. While Russian cultural definitions of trust, in the form of doverie and avos’, are extensively analyzed by Martin and Humphrey (Chapters 7 and 8, respectively) and cited in Namsaraeva (Chapter 2), Safonova, Santha, and Sulyandziga (Chapter 9), and Ryzhova (Chapter 10), the Chinese equivalent of such psychological and linguistic analyses does not go beyond cursory mentioning of relevant terms, such as xiangxin and kekao by Namsaraeva (Chapter 2). Even on the empirical side, there is a clear imbalance; a large number of Russian informants are quoted on their views of the cross-border trade and of the Chinese, while comparatively few Chinese residents and businessmen are quoted for their opinions on the Russians.
The Russo-centric nature of the volume is further exacerbated by the absence of ethnic Han Chinese presence in both the research team and among the informants. Of the Chinese informants interviewed in field research, ethnic Mongols and ethnic Koreans dominate, while the ethnic Han Chinese, who make up the majority of the Chinese at the border, are relegated to secondary status in the fieldwork. In addition, no ethnic Han Chinese researcher is present in the list of contributors to the volume, further limiting the ability of the book to present the Chinese psyche and understanding of trust and distrust from an “insider” view. The result is a work that implicitly and erroneously presents the Sino-Russian borderlands as a region where the Han Chinese have comparatively little agency at the individual level, either to express or mitigate the fundamental lack of trust toward players of other ethnicities.
The Chinese government is also not presented as an active player in the China–Russia borderlands. While the Russian government plays a major role in the changing conditions of businesses in the borderlands, through control of economic and migration policies, the Chinese government is largely depicted as being hands-off and passive. Namsaraeva points out that Chinese officials intervene only when conflicts between individuals cause media-exposed diplomatic problems (Chapter 2), Peshkov portrays the Chinese government as encouraging cross-border commerce but, in essence, leaving the overall direction of economic development of the borderlands to the private sector (Chapter 6). Such portrayals neglect how the Chinese government, through the deployment of state-owned firms in Siberia and the Russian Far East, extract Russian resources for export to China with tacit approval from the Kremlin.Footnote 1 Interviews with those working for Chinese state-owned firms and central decision-making organs in Beijing could have conveyed the voices of Chinese officials to this study.
While the Chinese are underrepresented in this volume, Central Asians are completely absent from the ethnographic documentation. The absence of Central Asians is regrettable considering that both Humphrey (Chapters 1 and 8) and Park (Chapter 5) note that the increase in the Russian government's control over business activities of Chinese and Mongolian citizens residing in Siberia and the Russian Far East creates an opportunity for Central Asians to play a more important economic role in the region. The Central Asians’ understanding of Russian language, culture, and most importantly, their greater ease in entering Russia as legal migrant workers would potentially provide them with unique abilities to dominate the Sino-Russian borderlands economically in the near future. Park (Chapter 5), for instance, points out that Central Asians already exist as a visually distinct and numerically significant economic group in the Russian Far East, to the extent that his informants, who are ethnic Koreans with Chinese citizenship, already have a commonly used Chinese term, heimaozi (literally “black people”), for Central Asians.
As such, Central Asians can be central to trust in the borderlands. Their understanding of the Russians, ethnic ties through a large Korean Central Asian population, and lack of direct national ties with people on either side of the border provide them with concrete resources to act as trustworthy mediators. As Ms. Kim, the primary informant for Park's case study in Chapter 5, points out, Central Asians can be even more trustworthy than ethnic Russians and certainly more than her own co-ethnics from across the border. Analyzing elements that allow Central Asians to acquire trust in, for them, a completely foreign region would be a highly welcome addition to the overall conceptualization of trust and distrust in this volume.
