Khabarovsk Krai

Khabarovsk Krai exists because the Amur River exists. This 788,000 square kilometer territory hugs Russia's border with China, its 1.3 million residents occupying what imperial competition once contested and economic logic now integrates. The trade statistics tell the story: between 2014 and 2023, commerce between Russia's Far East and China's northeastern provinces doubled to billion, with Khabarovsk Krai among the largest corridors.

The infrastructure now under construction will transform corridor into conduit. The May 2024 Putin-Xi roadmap for Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island development plans a checkpoint handling 1.5 million passengers and 1.3 million tons of cargo annually by 2030. The Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang railway and Heihe-Blagoveshchensk highway bridge accelerate what geography already suggests: economic integration across a political boundary that Cold War logic made impermeable.

Chinese investment follows trade routes. Over 53 Chinese companies operate in advanced development territories across the Russian Far East, with planned investment exceeding 816 billion rubles. Forestry illustrates the pattern: a joint Russian-Chinese fund acquired 42% of Russian Forest Products Group, Khabarovsk's leading timber company. The September 2025 visa-free policy allowing Russians 30-day China visits for tourism and business signals that movement, not restriction, now defines the border.

**By 2026**, Khabarovsk Krai will test whether economic integration requires political alignment. The Development Plan for China-Russia Far East cooperation expired in 2024; its successor will define whether Khabarovsk becomes a genuine node in Sino-Russian economic space or merely a transit zone where Russian raw materials flow to Chinese processing. The brain drain that depletes Russian Far East population while Chinese business expands creates demographic asymmetry that economics cannot indefinitely ignore.