Trade, study, and tourism have ground to a halt between the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk and the Chinese city of Heihe since Russia closed the border amid coronavirus fears.
Latvia attracts the most Chinese investment of any Baltic member of the European Union, but that does not always mean that Chinese migrants find it easy to settle here. Following a 2014 clampdown on visas, many have left. Chinese restaurateur and hotel owner Tao Ma, who came to Latvia more than 20 years ago, has integrated into Latvian society, but says that doing business is still a challenge.
If fully developed, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been projected to cost more than $1 trillion. But in neighboring Kazakhstan, Chinese investment doesn’t impress everyone. This autumn has been marked by protests across the country against Chinese loans and investment, including 55 planned Chinese enterprises. With trade and financial ties growing yearly between the economic superpower and the resource-rich Central Asian nation, these demonstrations could well continue.
In a distant corner of Russia’s Far East, along the border with China, the world’s only official Jewish territory other than Israel has existed peacefully for the last 85 years. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1934, ostensibly to provide a homeland for ethnic Jews living in the USSR.
Russia's remote Altai region is not just about a tentative gas pipeline to neighboring China. People here are now heading to the mountains in thick snow to cash in on other riches that literally grow on trees: pine nuts. Russia is the world's largest supplier of pine nuts. For locals, it's a rare chance to make money, but the work is hard, cold, and dangerous.
Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov has opened a new police command center in the capital, Bishkek, which is using Chinese CCTV cameras with facial-recognition technology. China reportedly provided the equipment for free.
The Ukraine crisis coincided with a Russian crackdown on independent online media. New laws since then have brought new restrictions, and the Internet adviser to President Vladimir Putin tells Current Time that China is the model for further online regulation. This story is part of a documentary series, InterNYET, by Current Time that explores the history of the Russian web.
China is one of the main creditors for all of Central Asia's countries. How much do these countries owe to China and are they completely equal partners?
Despite recurring protests in Kyrgyzstan against the alleged detention of ethnic Kyrgyz in Chiina's reeducation camps, Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jerenbekov underlined at a December 19, 2018 press conference that Bishkek “should respond very gingerly, delicately” to the issue.
Beyshekan Kamza, a 38-year-old resident of the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, cannot stop thinking about China. A relative there told her that her father and sister have been incarcerated in a reeducation facility in the country’s northern region of Xinjiang -- part of a wave of recent detentions of Muslim ethnic minorities in the region. But without government help, she, like so many others, has no way of knowing her family's whereabouts for sure.
As Vladimir Putin heads to Beijing, it is becoming clear that China isn't the savior Russia had been hoping for.
