"Extra! Extra!" REDS PRESS FIGHT ON CHINESE BORDER; AIR BOMBINGS SPREAD TERROR; MANCHURIA SEIZURE FEARED

What a difference four score years makes. The foregoing appeared on the front page of the New York Times on September 11^th, 1929, as Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on the icy Heilongjiang River, at the very tip of China's chicken beak. The shooting eventually died down, but yet another low-simmering border dispute was born, centered on who owned a few puny islands stuck in the confluence of the Heilongjiang, or ‘Amur' if  you're name's Igor, and the Ussuri River, which stretches south to the Sea of Japan.

Last week Russia officially ceded 174 square kilometers of these islands to China, a watershed moment that passed with remarkably little fanfare. China and Russia have been buddying up recently with a zest not seen since, well, since a conflict barely mentioned in last week's general reportage.

Stories on the island hand-over kept referencing the 1929 battle as a mere "border skirmish", the way two burly uncles will speak of their drunken family reunion brawl as "a little misunderstanding" once they sober up. But a few hundred klicks down the Ussuri marks the site of a 1969 battle considered the culmination of the Sino-Soviet split, a rent that both Russia and China now seem intent on mending with all practical haste.

But let's go back to the winter before the Summer of Love. In early 1969, Beijing was decrying its northeastern border arrangements, made a century earlier, as "unequal". That March, PLA were reportedly spotted skulking around the island of Zhenbao, Damansky to the Russians. A contemporaneous Time Magazine article describes the action thusly:

 

"Chinese soldiers crossed the ice to the island and dug foxholes, apparently trying to provoke a response. Reinforcements arrived the next day, shouting Maoist slogans. The Soviets approached in trucks, dismounted and locked arms, attempting to block the Chinese advance. According to Russian accounts, the Chinese pulled aside, revealing a second, armed line of troops who opened fire with submachine guns. After a two-hour clash, two dozen Soviet soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese were dead. Yevgeny Yevtushenko composed a poem to warn that Russia was ready to crush the Chinese as it had the Mongols at Kulikovo 600 years earlier: "There will be enough warrior knights/ For many more Kulikovos."

 

A second incident erupted March 15, this time started by Russians. Chinese casualties apparently totaled in the hundreds. Subsequent clashes occurred in Xinjiang, and belligerent rhetoric heightened fears that war might ensue."

We bring up the omission not to stir up acrimony, but rather to point out the significance of Russia and China putting this Islands in the Stream nonsense officially behind them. It helps to think outside of the Communist box we always package their relationship in. After all, for far longer than they were comrades, they were imperial giants, Manchu and Romanov, sharing the longest frontier border in the world, today some 4300 kilometers long.

That's why the resolution of this border dispute is hardly tying up old business. More likely, it is a token of earnest to launch a regimen of bilateral bodybuilding already impressively pumped up. Their trade numbers have been growing at over fifteen percent per year since 2000, and they're recent co-blocking of a UN sanction against Zimbabwe show their willingness to combine muscle in smacking aside what's left of American hegemony.

It's oil, however, that's really lubing up their mutual desire for increased intimacy. This border overture sets the mood for some serious pipe-laying, a 2100 kilometer line that will pump over 350 million barrels of crude a year from Siberia to energy-needy China. An $18 billion project for a natural gas pipeline is also in the offing.

But enough realpolitik. Suffice it to say that Liu Guchang, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, has confirmed that the islands will not be garrisoned, but rather developed into a port for border trade, dispelling rumors that the PLA would fortify the area.

So what's China like up at the end of its beak, where Vladivostok is considered a balmy southern destination? Lots of snow-swept stands of poplar trees and all that? Yes and no. The western side of the archipelago, collectively known to Zhonguoren as ‘Heixiazi', is a realm of waterfowl reigning over little more than hardy elms, poplars, and swamp grass. The eastern portion, however, is marginally developed in Siberian style, with a few lonely rows of vacation villas and the weekend smattering of Russians at play. Fishermen operate off of this edge as well, and many a Chinese fish monger hies over to load up on massive river carp for three kuai per half-kilo.

Westerners remotely familiar with this far-flung corner think of Khabarovsk as the only civilization of note by this bend in the river. Once capital of the Soviet Far East, Khabarovsk bears reminders of both its communist and czarist past. Residents spend little time mooning at the local Duma however, congregating on Amursky Boulevard, a bustling stretch of shops and outdoor markets. A slew of night clubs and pubs hard by beckon winter-weary locals and the otherwise large of liver. Chinese visitors to the city have been increasing to over a million a year, while Japanese and Korean businessmen flock to the city to hone their business-drinking skills.

Unsurprisingly though, the Chinese bank of the Heilongjiang boasts a much larger concentration of humanity. Jiamusi has over two million residents to Khabarovsk's six hundred thousand. Last in the headlines as one of the cities left without drinking water after the Jilin chemical plant explosion in 2005, Jiamusi nonetheless hath charms to soothe the weary China traveler, an ongoing absence of McDonald's among them. Even locals admit the place is unprepossessing, yet it is warm in the universal hospitality of northern peoples with little to do eight months of the year but toast each other's health.

Such boozy goodwill towards all seems in limited supply on China's message boards, where netizens share anything but a consensus in line with the official stance of open arms toward Russia.

Russian Warship cruising on the island

We leave you with some representative comments.

-How much have we regained? And on earth how much have we lost?

-Settling the boundary long in dispute should be good news. It doesn't matter whether we've regained more territory or less. Only stability can push development.

-Shameful. Not worth feeling happy while losing half the island. It's a shame for all Chinese people. Why not leave the issue to descendants and let them settle it? Wouldn't it be better solved when China becomes more powerful? At that time, China would regain whatever should be regained.

-Very happy at the handover.

-Perhaps many lost territories of our country can be regained as China becomes more powerful.

-The whole Heixiazi Island should be given back to China!

-With all Chinese people united, we can regain the territories belonging to us when appropriate.

-I hope the friendship between China and Russia lasts forever...

From a  Russian inhabitant living on Heixiazi:

- We anticipate that bridges and all kinds of pipelines for living can be built quickly, because we who live here can't be isolated. There're no helicopters, just nothing. The cost of living on Heixiazi Island is 3 times higher than that on the mainland. We're short of  necessities, and shut off from the world all winter. If (after return of the west side of the island to China) a free economic zone could really be established, life here would definitely improve a lot.