Border Tourism on the Russian-Chinese Border

Abstract

The paper focuses on the tourism development strategy of the Amur Oblast called "Twin Cities". Said initiative became the first attempt of the Russian Far Eastern regions to create the hospitality industry towards Chinese tourists in the Sino-Russian borderlands. Bringing together such sub-disciplines as border tourism, urban planning and territorial development helps to find out the peculiarities of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe relations among other adjacent settlements along the Russian-Chinese border. Detected features give the ground to define "twin-cities" rhetoric around the border city pair under the scrutiny as a touristic brand construction. On the basis on Blagoveshchensk and Heihe investment plans analysis, the author argues that studied initiative might reshape unbalanced one-sided structure of current tourist flow across the Russian-Chinese border.