A separation of powers

In 2014, Beijing and Moscow signed a US$400 billion deal to deliver Russian gas to Chinese consumers. Construction of the Power of Siberia pipeline began last summer on the banks of the Amur river, known in Chinese as the Black Dragon river. It marks a rapprochement between two powers who have warily eyed each other across the frigid water of the Amur, which forms the border, for more than three centuries. According to Beijing’s man in Moscow, ‘China and Russia are together now like lips and teeth.’

In Black Dragon River, Dominic Ziegler attempts to explain how they got there. Following the 2,826-mile course of the Amur, the world’s ninth-longest river, the Economist’s Asia editor unravels the complex history of a vast region peopled largely by nomadic tribes but long dominated by the great empires of Mongolia, China and Russia. It is a fascinating story that begins with the rise of Genghis Khan, takes in Russia’s eastward push over the Eurasian landmass, and follows the rise and fall of the Manchu empire. These historical shenanigans in a remote corner of the world, Ziegler contends, are a key to understanding the complex relationship between Russia and China today.

The critical date, etched into the Chinese consciousness, is 1689. That year, envoys of Peter the Great and the Kangxi emperor met near a tributary of the Amur to delineate the land border between the fledgling Russian and Manchu empires. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, China’s first with a western power, allowed the Kangxi emperor to lay the foundations of a Chinese empire unmatched in reach before or since. Crucially, it was negotiated with strict equality — in contrast to the ‘unequal treaties’ humiliatingly forced on the crumbling Qing dynasty by European powers two centuries later.