Ersatz Twin City Formation? The Case of Blagoveshchensk and Heiheстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 30 декабря 2016 г.
Аннотация: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.