Podcast with Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey, authors of “On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border”

Blagoveshensk-Heihe bridge (Wikimedia Commons)

The border between Russia and China is one of the world’s longest, spanning thousands of miles. It’s one of the few extended land borders between two great powers, subject to years of history, conflict and cooperation. Yet for such an important division, there are surprisingly few crossings, with not one passenger bridge in operation.

 

 

On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border, Franck Billé, Caroline Humphrey (Harvard University Press, November 2021)
On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border, Franck Billé, Caroline Humphrey (Harvard University Press, November 2021)

On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border, by Caroline Humphrey and Franck Billé, is an in-depth study of this border. Looking at the divided island of Bolshoi Ussuriiskii and the border towns Blagoveshchensk and Heihe, On the Edge gives a picture of how people live, work and trade along this little-studied border.

Franck Billé is Program Director at the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author and editor of three books about East Asia, including Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity.

Caroline Humphrey is Fellow of King’s College, University of Cambridge, and founder of the university’s Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. She is the author of several books about the anthropology of Inner Asia and recently edited and contributed to Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the China–Russia Borderlands.

We’re also joined by Yvonne Lau, who became interested in Russia and China’s long history and complex ties, and has been tracking developments along the Sino-Russian border ever since. In this interview, the four of us talk about, well, the border, and the people that live on either side of it.


Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.