How Russians and Chinese see each other

THE HIGH SPEED train from Changchun to Vladivostok would be a fine symbol of Sino-Russian friendship, if someone would finish it. The line’s Chinese leg is a modern marvel: a silk-smooth ride through a blur of birch trees and red-roofed farms. Then the line ends at buffers in Hunchun, a border city near Russia.

At first Hunchun’s residents are wary of discussing why their home town—a drab but friendly city of fewer than 230,000 people—is the terminus of a high-speed rail line from Changchun, the nearest provincial capital. The line, which cost 42bn yuan ($6bn), opened in 2015. Public records show that the surrounding province, Jilin, invited Russia to help lay the track as far as Vladivostok, the Russian Far East’s largest port. Russian selfishness scotched that plan, Hunchun’s residents mutter. “Russia said, ‘If you want it, you can build it,’” alleges a Chinese business owner. It will take 20 years for high-speed trains to cross that border, he sniffs.