Can Manzhouli work its magic on the South China Sea disputes?
Cool weather of city once at centre of border disputes between Russia and China helps to keep the temperature down in talks between China and Asean
Travel guides describe it as “a place on the edge”. Ironically, participants at a meeting between China and Southeast Asian nations last week in Manzhouli were also on edge. And yet the dusty little city could not have been more appropriate.
Sitting at the edge of China, Russia and Mongolia, it is about as far away as one can get from the choppy waters of the South China Sea that have bedevilled relations between China and the regional grouping of Asean.
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As Liu Zhenmin (劉振民), China’s vice-minister for foreign affairs who hosted the session, said: “It’s very important that we are coming to a city that is far from the South China Sea … where it is not so hot that it enables us to have a cool-headed talk.”
Far from the roiling maritime disputes, Manzhouli is an inland city known for its vast grasslands that stretch to the edges of the brightly coloured Russian-style buildings in the centre. As a land port responsible for nearly 70 per cent of all trade with Russia, the streets of Manzhouli are full of shops with signs written in Russian and crawling with Russian shoppers. But Manzhouli wasn’t always as peaceful. Its surrounding borderlands used to be as tense as the South China Sea is today, until China and Russia reached a border agreement in 1991. The same spirit of negotiation, the Chinese officials were hoping, would suffuse the current talks.
“Through bilateral negotiations, China and Russia not only solved the border issues, but also achieved common prosperity through cooperation and development,” said Liu in Manzhouli. “I hope this experience can be applied to our cooperation in the South China Sea.”