Ersatz Twin City Formation? The Case of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe

Border studies posit that twin cities represent aspirations to proactively and deliberately become one entity resulting in fundamental changes to the social, economic and political identity of the two communities involved. While some twin cities in the EU and between EU and Russia do follow this pattern, this is not the case in the Russian Far East. The cities of Blagoveshchensk (Russia) and Heihe (China) claim to be twin cities even though they have deliberately confined their twinning activities to trade and tourism and specifically excluded any change that may involve administrative boundaries or national security. Based on interviews and examination of public documents and relevant studies, we argue that the case of Blago and Heihe can be characterized as ersatz in the sense that their city twinning effort is deliberately compartmentalized. We argue that this approach is the local officials’ response to obstacles generated by nationalism, history, vast divergence in economic trajectory and population trends, and close scrutiny by respective national governments. In spite of these, the two cities regard twinning as a valuable marketing tool and have progressively, though asymmetrically, adopted this brand. We further argue that pursuing the rhetoric of city-twinning allows the officials to advance claims to opportunities in trade and tourism and potential access to additional national resources without tackling the difficult questions of more comprehensive cross-border interactions.