When the Soviet Union collapsed and the border between Russia and China opened up, predictions were rife of a massive wave of Chinese heading north. And it seemed that was possible: there were numerous opportunities in that part of Russia, the easternmost part of Siberia known as the Russian Far East. There just weren’t many Russians to take advantage of those opportunities.

Indeed, according to a United Nations survey, Russia’s population could fall by a third over the next 40 years. And the prospects in Siberia and the Far East are even grimmer, as residents move in droves to the warmer climate and better economy of European Russia: the population of Russia east of Lake Baikal dropped from 8 million to 6 million from 1998 through 2002, and has continued to fall since.

Meanwhile, just across the river, China is bursting at the seams. The three provinces of north-eastern China–Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning–have 110 million people between them.

And China’s supercharged economy means that those people need ever more fuel for their power plants, raw materials for their factories, and land to grow their food–all things in abundance in the Russian Far East. The area contains nearly all of Russia’s diamonds, 70 percent of its gold and substantial deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, timber, silver, platinum, tin, lead and zinc, as well as rich fishing grounds and vast expanses of unpopulated land.

Such a wealth of resources has restoked perennial fears of a Chinese takeover of the Far East. After all, anti-Chinese sentiment has a long history in Russia. It wasn’t long after the easternmost part of Russia was settled in the 1800s that Russians first began to speak of a ‘yellow peril’ posed by Chinese immigration to the area. In 1900, in retaliation for a Chinese bandit attack on a Russian outpost, Russians in Blagoveshchensk drove, at gunpoint, all 3000 Chinese then living to the city into the Amur River. Most of them drowned.

But for most of the lifetime of the Soviet Union, the border was effectively closed. When it opened again in 1988, the fear of the ‘yellow peril’ resurfaced, based on a simple demographic reality: that Russians are hugely outnumbered by Chinese. Says Mikhael Kukharenko, head of the Chinese-government run Confucius Institute in Blagoveshchensk: ‘It’s a law of physics; a vacuum has to be filled. If there are no Russian people here, there will be Chinese people.’

The Russian government, too, has taken notice. During a recent visit to the Far East, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that ‘if we don’t step up the level of activity of our work [in the Russian Far East], then in the final analysis we can lose everything.’

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But after fleeing their war-torn country after receiving death threats, they now they say their biggest fear is that they’ll go insane waiting to hear whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) can resettle them in a third country.

‘We’re suffering mentally from this,’ says Nazir, who along with his wife has been waiting 18 months for some sort of resolution. His wife chimes in that she gets physically sick every time she receives a troubled email from her mother, who is still in Afghanistan. But for them, there’s no going back.

Unable to work legally, they spend their days hanging out at a community centre and shelter for foreign refugees in this small mountain town in West Java province, about an hour’s drive from Jakarta. The two-storey building is clean and, compared with what its occupants previously endured, safe and pleasant. There are daily social activities, Internet access, sewing and language classes and a kitchen that serves drinks and snacks.

‘We decided to start a new life. If they can resettle us as soon as possible we would thank them,’ Nazir says. However, he suggests they will also consider ‘other measures’ if they have to wait much longer.

These ‘other measures’ — paying a smuggler up to $10,000 to send them in a rickety wooden boat to the northern coast of Australia — have become a headache for Rudd, as well as Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It’s also become a source of friction between the two Asian neighbours.

Indeed, Nazir and Zahra are just the tip of the iceberg. In 2009, more than 2500 refugees came to Indonesia, either by boat or commercial jetliner, compared with only 369 in 2008. More than three dozen boats were intercepted last year, with most of the refugees hailing from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Burma — countries at war or run by oppressive governments.

Of course, these people didn’t choose Indonesia for its sandy beaches and temperate climate, nor do they want to stay here. Their ultimate destination is a stable Western country, where they can live without fear, get jobs and eventually obtain citizenship. But the refugees’ motives are at the root of the problem facing Indonesia and Australia, a problem that’s likely to continue well into 2010 and beyond as more arrive.

The conventional wisdom is that Asian refugees set out with the sole purpose of reaching Australia and obtaining a work permit, using Indonesia as a convenient stepping stone. There are plenty of places to temporarily hide in a 17,000-island archipelago, and no shortage of smugglers willing to load them onto a boat bound for Down Under.

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It’s a hazardous journey fraught with danger. Pirates intent on robbery and rape target refugee boats, while some shoddy vessels have sunk, drowning some or all of the occupants. In 2001, 353 people were drowned when a boatload of refugees in a vessel now known as SIEV-X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel — X for unknown) sank in international waters 70 kilometres off the coast of Java.

But even if all goes to plan and they are rescued from their leaky boats, many refugees find themselves interred in primitive foreign detention camps for months or even years. There they face the constant threat of repatriation to the very country from where they first made their escape. To embark on such a voyage is a dark lottery. Desperate measures for desperate times.

Some Australians, though, question their bona fides, suspecting that many are not genuine refugees at all but are merely ‘queue jumpers’ in the immigration process, preying on the largesse of the Australian taxpayer.

Indeed, invoking the image of queue jumpers, the former leader of the Opposition in Australia last week asked one of many of the questions that have been raised on the subject in the Australian House of Representatives.

Bringing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s attention to the ’surge’ in numbers of boat people (55 boats with 2450 asylum seekers) since ‘[Rudd] weakened Australia’s border protection laws’, he went on to ask: ‘Is the Prime Minister aware that these unauthorised arrivals will take up around 20 per cent of all of the places in Australia’s generous humanitarian immigration program?’

But although the figures are correct, the underlying assumptions aren’t.

Australia’s intake of refugees per capita is not particularly generous in international terms – in fact it’s considerably lower than countries in Europe and is nothing like the burden carried by states that neighbour the world’s trouble spots. Ironically, these are often countries that are themselves poor and so least capable of effectively managing the influx. In some border camps, refugees can be counted in the hundreds of thousands. This has come against a backdrop of deteriorating situations in places including Sri Lanka and Afghanistan (there was an 85% increase in Afghan asylum seekers alone in 2008).

The opposition’s message has been that the tough border control policies — especially the internationally condemned ‘Pacific Solution’ (mandatory detention offshore) — were responsible for the decline in boat people trying to reach Australia after 2001. But tough Australian controls were not the only reason for the decline over this period. For example, while the number of boat people seeking asylum in Australia dropped from 2161 people in 2001 to 63 in 2003, the drop in numbers mirrored a global picture where, among Afghans, for instance, asylum applications dropped from 52,927 to 14,216 over the same period.

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Leaving her family in Guangdong, China, Li (who asked her real name not be used) says adapting to what she calls a ‘pseudo-Western’ lifestyle has been difficult. But she says that although her new lifestyle has been an awkward fit, what has been hardest is overcoming the hostile attitude of natives in a country known for being a melting pot of different cultures.

‘I disagree with some of the practices and habits of Singaporeans, but I’m here to make a living’, she says, adding that her feelings about her host country, and the prejudice she says she has encountered, are to her quite separate issues from trying to make a successful career.

Li says her working day usually begins at 7 a.m., when she begins manning a cart selling trinkets outside one of Singapore’s private universities. She says the job isn’t glamorous by Singaporean standards, but that the wages are high enough compared with what she could earn in China to allow her to send enough money back to help her parents out. And she says her job is better than what many of her compatriots are left doing–long hours in karaoke lounges, waiting tables in the city-state’s restaurants and hotels–work she says is traditionally shunned by native Singaporeans, who have seen immigration as a way of filling such vacancies.

But although she admits she has it better than many immigrants (adding that life has been made much easier since she acquired Permanent Residency status through marriage, something that gives her most of the rights of a citizen) she says she doesn’t see her long term future in Singapore. ”One day, I’ll just go back to China because China is prospering’ she says.

Li’s comments reflect a growing tendency among many Chinese and Indians to view Singapore as a temporary home and springboard that helps them further their educational and material pursuits while reserving the option to return to their home country. But such views are increasingly causing resentment among native Singaporeans, a frustration that was given full voice by Singaporean bloggers last month after a former resident who had returned to China resident flashed her permanent residency card in front of Chinese camera crews during China’s National Day celebrations.

China-born Zhang Yuanyuan, who had studied in Singapore for five years and landed a lucrative job here, caused outrage among Singaporean netizens when she flashed her residency card while apparently proclaiming her loyalty to China, an act many saw as indicating a lack of gratitude for the opportunities afforded her in Singapore. But even before the so-called Zhang Incident, a prominent former civil servant, Ngiam Tong Dow, had already penned an op-ed warning over the island’s ‘liberal’ immigration policy, writing that Singaporeans risked becoming ’strangers’ in their own country and expressing concern that the island was being seen simply as a ’stepping stone’ by many immigrants.

According to a recent government report, Singapore’s population had risen to 4.99 million (of which 1.37 million were said to be foreigners), meaning the tiny country, which is far smaller than the tiny US state of Rhode Island, has almost 7,000 people per square kilometre squeezed into its borders.

But the tight physical squeeze is only part of the problem facing policymakers as many newcomers find themselves facing growing accusations of job-snatching and claims they are changing local areas for the worst. ”I don’t recognise Geylang any more.I’m beginning to wonder which is the real Chinatown?’ one reader wrote recently in the Straits Times, commenting on the transformation of a one-time Malay (the indigenous people of Singapore) area, before going on to note the replacement of English signposting on some restaurants in Geylang with Putonghua (Standard Mandarin) typefaces.

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