Russia-China relations are an important dimension (and question mark) of the contemporary international arena.  Moscow and Beijing have often touted their strong—even “eternal”—friendship in public speeches by key government figures, but skeptics abound.  The key impetus in the relationship has been one of pragmatism, with strategic considerations predominating interactions. While good ties between the upper echelons of the respective governments are a solid starting point, cultural exchanges are also important in building a sustainable bond.  This is especially true given the suspicions harbored on both sides of the border. Education is an excellent sphere in which to develop better, stronger, more lasting relations.

           In the 1700s, the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission was introduced in Peking in order to help Russia learn about its newfound neighbor to the south.  Nonetheless, it was only some 300 years later, in 2015, that the government added Chinese to the national end of high school examination. Indeed, Russia as a civilization has traditionally viewed itself as a member of the West—that is, superior to Asian and other non-European societies.  China and Asia were secondary considerations resorted to by Eurasianists when things soured to the west. With this as the context, my project aims to interview college students enrolled in either Sino Studies or the Chinese language, in order to understand the motives for studying the Middle Kingdom.  The second facet of my project is to interview said students to ascertain their views of Chinese migrants in Russia and compare this to attitudes among the general populace. There has been research on how Russians think of Chinese in Russia (as well as Chinese views of their Russian counterparts), and I wish to expound on this by incorporating data from Russia’s next generation of China experts.  The overarching goal is therefore twofold: to understand the reasons for studying China in contemporary Russia, and to assess whether Sino scholars provide a more favorable evaluation of Chinese in Russia than does the average citizen in Irkutsk, a major Siberian city with a sizeable Chinese population.