The impact of economic globalization on sustainable development has been more and more perceptible since the 21st century. Regions of Russian Far East and Northeast China are the important regions affecting the sustainable development of the world because of their rich natural resources, good environment condition, and large potential for economic development. Due to a number of historical and geopolitical reasons, the cooperation between Russia and China in the region of Northeast Asia is progressing, but at a quite slow speed and in an unsustainable manner. The chapter addresses some problems and challenges of sustainable rural development in the Heilongjiang Province, P.R. China and neighbor cross-border regions of Russia (Far East Federal District and Siberian Federal District), investigates similarities and differences of rural way of life in those regions, and discusses measures to promote the cooperation between the two countries and ensure sustainable rural development and food security in the macro-region of Northeast Asia.
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In some of the emerging economies, including Russia, understanding of food security differs from the internationally accepted one of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Thus, in some governmental documents and the works by Nechaev (2008), Ushachev (2013), and Shagaida and Uzun (2015) food security is treated as increasing of domestic food production up to the certain threshold set by the government. Spoor and Robbins (2012) point out the high political background of food security issue in Russia and countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which is confirmed by recent governmental decisions on food import bans taken in Russia in purpose to support domestic food producers.
A similar point of view is found in the Chinese sources. Many researchers, including Luan, Cui, and Ferrat (2013), Ghose (2014), and Jianhua (2011) food security treated as food independence or food self-sufficiency. More attention is paid to such dimensions of food security as ensurance of physical and economic access to food products of high quality and sustainability of such access in the long-term. While FAO considers food security as access by people to enough food on domestic market by means of both domestic production and import, some Chinese experts argue that increasing scale of international trade threatens food security of China (Zhu, 2016; Yu, Elleby, & Zobbe, 2015; Yu, Feng, Hubacek, & Sun, 2016; Zhou, 2010).