Among Ghosts and Tigers: The Chinese in the White Terror

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of Cossack warlordism on the Chinese community in the Far Eastern regions during the Russian Civil War. Leaders of the White movement targeted the Chinese diaspora, carrying out a series of thefts and diplomatic blunders which provoked a harsh response from the Chinese, from merchants to consular officials. This response was directly linked to existing geopolitical tensions surrounding the heavily-contested SinoRussian border. It fed into the Chinese rhetoric of “national humiliation”, in which the Whites were seen as inheritors of tsarist arbitrariness and arrogance. Crucially, it was this nationalist discourse that drove the Chinese towards the Reds.