Beijing vs Moscow... Which one do you like better?

[Tom Lennox 70]

Originally Posted by konfetka

Moscow is generally considered as an economic center of Russia, while it's former capital - Saint-Petersburg is more of a cultural center. This is where you will find the royal palaces, and Hermitage museum, the former imperial palace, which houses the largest collection of paintings in the world and is second only to Louvre with it's three million artworks.

The city is built on canals, and is known as the Venice of Russia. The soviet architecture doesn't dominate the downtown, like in Moscow:

"Unlike in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg the historic architecture of the city centre, mostly consisting of Baroque and neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved" - Wikipedia

Although there is much to see in Moscow, I would describe it as being more fast-pased, busy and crowded, and Saint-Petersburg as being elegant, beautiful and historic.

So I would encourage the visitors not to judge Russia just by Moscow, and not to miss out on a visit to it's other historic and cultural capital.

I've hear that its actually St. Petersburg that is unique in Russia because of its Western architecture and Western influences while other Russian cities look more like Moscow. I know a lot of other Eastern European cities like Bucharest, Minsk, and Kiev are also dominated by communist-era architecture. Its impressive a lot of St. Petersburg was preserved or restored given the siege of Leningrad by the Germans in WW2.

Beijing and Moscow both are humongous cities with 10 million+ in each of the two cities. (19.6 million in Beijing and 11.5 million in Moscow). Compare that to the already huge city of New York City which has 8.2 million people!

Another similarity is that Beijing and Moscow are also both political capital cities for their countries that have had communist governments that recently in the past two decades became more capitalist economically. (However, historically I think Chinese communism is still expressed differently from Russian communism.)

They also both have some of the most huge subway systems in the world with some of the highest annual amount of passengers.

Other than that, both cities have a mix of historic and modern architecture, but definitely more historic. They are both huge cities but they don’t have that many skyscrapers.

They are both also located in the most geographically big countries in the world.

But of course with those noticeable similarities, they still both have plenty of differences. (Other aspects of culture, Language, Food, Music, How the People Look Like, Many aspects of their history).

Plenty of people might be surprised though by some of the similarities both of those two cities have!

Overall, it is almost a tie, but I think I would pick Beijing over Moscow. Beijing seems more visitor friendly and diversity friendly than Moscow. However, Moscow still seems fun to visit and I am sure there are still plenty of great people there too.

I wonder what is Chinese-Russian relations like? It is not something that is not really talked about in the media. Are both of these countries close with each other and get along with each other in the past decade?

[Bettafish]

Originally Posted by

I wonder what is Chinese-Russian relations like? It is not something that is not really talked about in the media. Are both of these countries close with each other and get along with each other in the past decade?

In the past decade, quite well. Sometimes bad news came out, such as: Chinese run business in Siberia but don't hire locals; some Chinese bribe Russian cops and sell illegal items; some Russian prostitutes are caught in XXX province of China.... However in general the two peoples are friendly to each other.

Before the 1900s, Russia and China never had any good relationship. Chinese have a derogatory and racist term for Russians in particular, but not for Americans, British and French (except terms for all the "westerners"). China (Qing Dynasty) ceded a huge land to imperial Russia after losing a war.

After the communist revolution, China and the Soviet Union became comrades and had a very good relationship. Soviets helped China build a lot of factories, and even gave China (some) nuclear technology. At that time, students in China learned Russian, not English in general.

However, Mao did not like Khrushchev. On the one hand, Khrushchev criticized Stalin, which Mao did not approve. On the other hand, Khrushchev did not like Mao's policy in China. Mao is also very nationalist and arrogant, and could not just be a "little brother". He invited Nixon to China in 1972.

In 1978, (USSR-supported) Vietnam invaded Cambodia. China then invaded Vietnam.
In 1979, USSR invaded Afghanistan. China supported Afghanistan and did not participate in Moscow Olympic Games in 1980 (but did in 1984 in LA).
In 1989, Gorbachev visited China, just before the Tiananmen "massacre".
In 1991, USSR collapsed.

[Trimac20]

^ NYC metro with 22 million still exceeds Beijing metro with 19.6 million.