On the Edge documents life in its multiple everyday manifestations along the Russia–China border. Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey carefully unpick the processes that on the surface appear to be bringing China and Russia closer to each other. The clearest sign of the superficiality of China–Russia friendship has been the absence of bridges across the rivers marking the border. The “phantom bridge,” the decades-long programme to connect Blagoveshchensk with Heihe that had not been realized when the book went to print, is the subject of the authors’ opening and concluding reflections. They point to the political symbolism of the bridges over the rivers and attribute the slow progress on such projects to mutual frictions, mistrust and national security concerns.

The border bridge is no longer a phantom. In June 2022 the bridge across the Amur (Heilongjiang) river went into operation. The timing of its opening is significant. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine with mounting economic sanctions and international isolation of Russia, China has continued to express its muted support for Russia's actions. Although the full impact of the invasion is still to be comprehended, one of the immediate effects is Russia's growing dependence on China in material and symbolic terms. The book traces the complexity of this uneven and tumultuous relationship in long historical and deep ethnographic perspectives. Billé and Humphrey show how over the years Russia and China have been pushed closer to each other out of necessity and convenience rather than mutual respect and trust.

The book offers rich ethnographic exploration of the border encounters covering history, territorial disputes, economic, ecological and urban developments, and ethnic and personal relationships. One key finding is the divergence in China's and Russia's conceptions of the border. Russia approaches it as a uniform and rigid line of separation. China's vision of the border, by contrast, comprises fuzzy overlapping spheres of influence deriving from the Chinese imperial tianxia cosmology.

Billé and Humphrey trace how these different conceptions materialize in contrasting border-development strategies. China invests in infrastructure to connect its border areas to the centre through the network of roads and railways. Unlike China, Russia leaves border areas largely free of infrastructural developments. China's borderlands are densely populated and urbanized in contrast to Russia's sparsely populated areas of restricted access controlled by the Federal Security Services. China's approach to ruling the border areas is flexible and multi-layered compared to Russia's monocentric and hierarchical style of governing. Furthermore, resentment over past events looms large on both sides of the border (p. 141).

One of the historical silences that China remembers – but does not openly remind Russia of – concerns the 1900 massacre of Chinese residents in Blagoveshchensk that led to 5,000 deaths (p. 198). The authors reflect on their visit to the Aihui museum dedicated to the tragic events. The museum does not allow Russian citizens in, and it remains to be explained why. Is this driven by the fear of hurting the collective feelings of the Russians or the anxiety of inciting more Sinophobic sentiments among Russian visitors? The muffled dislike of the Russians for their historical mistreatment of the Chinese is not widely expressed and, as the authors note, has not translated into the sentiment of Russophobia in China.

In contrast, the Russians tend to view China as culturally and developmentally inferior. The contradictions in Russian perceptions of China are informed by the fears of China's expansion into its territory and Russia's growing role as China's “resource appendage.” The Russian dominant approach to managing the border has been informed by its territorial security concerns, whereas China's priorities have been economic development, tourism and expanding trading links. The frictions emerging from the different conceptions of the border and perceptions of the neighbours are evident in the areas of mutual interest. For example, Billé and Humphrey characterize the Heixiazi (Bolshoi Ussuriiski) island as having undergone metamorphosis, where the Chinese part of the island became “a showcase for environmental policies” (p. 67), while the Russian part has been determined by the sense of territorial loss and nationalist tendencies of religious and military associations committed to preserving the sacred Russian land. The Chinese co-opt the Russian cultural elements and emblems into their border economy, while Russia puts stress on national sovereignty by territorializing the Amur River as Russian (p. 220). Different cultures of capitalism inform exchanges on the border, including in farming, jade trade and sea fishing. The ethnic Hezhe on the Chinese side benefit from investments and development opportunities while their kin group Nanai in Russia lag behind. Finally, the themes of nationalism and sovereignty are key in the contrasting urban borderscapes. Blagoveshchensk appears as quintessentially Russian unlike culturally liminal Manzhouli and Heihe, with their supersized matryoshka dolls, alluring city lights and glitzy high-rise towers.

The recent completion of the Amur (Heilongjiang) bridge shows that the mutual fears and mistrust have been put aside for now. Yet, the collective feelings and competing sovereignty conceptions underlying Chinese and Russian divergent border strategies and views of each other remain strong and are likely to resurface in unpredictable ways. The book should interest scholars of international politics and Chinese and Russian studies, as well as the general reader keen to understand what lies beneath the apparently friendly relations between Russia and China.