The Chinese Diaspora of the Russian Far East: History, Modernity, and Prospects

Abstract

This article presents the results of the process of sporadic formation of the Chinese diaspora in the Russian Far East, revealing the most controversial elements of this process. They are the difficulty of defining the meaning of the concept of “Chinese diaspora” and the date of the origin of the diaspora in the Russian Far East; also, the discussion about the size of the Chinese population in the Far East at the boundaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth-twenty- first centuries. The author conducts a cluster analysis of the regions of the Russian Far East regarding the functioning of the Chinese diaspora there using data on the area of the Russian Far East regions, population, GRP per capita, and the number of murders per 100,000 people. Each of these indicators characterises the key areas of development of the regions of the Russian Far East. Based on the results of cluster tree construction, the identification of three groups of subregions of the Far East and map zoning of the region, it is revealed that the geographical proximity of these sub-regions to the Chinese territory has a much stronger influence on the formation of the Chinese diaspora than the economic factor. Yakutia, which accounts for 42 percent of the Chinese diaspora in the Far East, can be singled out separately.