For decades, the Chinese town of Manzhouli, perched on the desolate border with Russia, was frozen in a remote corner of the Cold War. As an ideological schism between the two Communist giants escalated into a full-blown conflict — bloody clashes erupted along their 4,300-km border in 1969 — the poor residents of Manzhouli had little contact with their Russian neighbors huddled in the Siberian cold only a few steps away. A mere trickle of state-sponsored trade passed through the heavily fortified border, leaving Manzhouli’s citizens dependent on a local coal mine for jobs.
Today, however, Manzhouli is a testament to the wealth that can be created by connecting the world’s great emerging economies. As relations thawed between Moscow and Beijing after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the border opened, private businessmen jumped into importing and exporting, and the fortunes of the two communities merged. Trade between Russia and China reached $55 billion in 2010, seven times more than in 2000. Timber and oil flow into resource-hungry China, while China’s roaring factories ship machinery, textiles and other manufactured goods back in return. About $9.8 billion of goods passed through tiny Manzhouli in 2010, more than twice
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
