The surrounding areas in China to the west are populated, but relative to other parts it's not much population. You gotta go awhile to hit big cities: mudanjiang is tiny, yanbian is a weird place only growing because of the military presence near NK, and jilin/changchun are only big because of the relatively warm river. It's really damn cold up there otherwise (source: s/o is from there, we go back a lot).
It's like wondering why MN/ND aren't more populated, but then you go there for a winter and get stuck in a -40F wind chill and literally die, and can't wonder about the population any more on account of being dead (source: my family is from MN and ND).
If memory serves, just a bit further south the ports are ice free. Russia had a port in Lüshunkou (then called Port Arthur). It is just west of Korea, and without ice. It was the subject of the Russo-Japanese war.
While looking that up I also saw that the Ming dynasty banned Han chinese from settling in the north for 300 years. So, that likely also had an impact.
During the first two centuries of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, this part of China, the traditional homeland of the ruling Manchus, was, with few exceptions, closed to settlement by Han Chinese civilians, with only certain Manchu Bannermen, Mongol Bannermen, and Chinese Bannermen allowed in.
> The surrounding areas are so hugely populated and it’s a coast.
To elaborate: "It's a coast" doesn't help much when there aren't warm-water ports (ie, ports that can be used year-round). Even nowadays, shipping by water is the cheapest way to deliver goods, making warm-water ports still incredibly lucrative.
As it turns out, a large portion of European history can be explained simply by the fact that Russia need(ed) warm-water ports, and understanding the actions that they took in pursuit of them.
A related fun fact: in Civ V, if you start as Venice, you're much more likely to spawn on a starting tile that's near water - that's documented and well-known among players. While it's not documented, I'm fairly certain from personal experience that if you start as Russia, you're more likely to spawn on an inland tile, meaning that you'll have to expand in order to be able to establish seafaring routes.
> "The surrounding areas are so hugely populated"
I dont think it is? that area is largely unpopulated. hokkaido is t he biggest population center in the area that I can think of, with japan being pretty dense and that area being rather large, has about 5 million people.
that area is very cold, though vladivostok has a 'large' population considering the area of 600k.
Question for everyone saying it’s cold. It’s the same lattitude as northern Japan and Oregon or even New York City. Cities up to even Maine or north have warm water ports. At least by eying it. I figured it wouldn’t be that bad.
The East Coast of the US has the advantage an oceanic current cycling warm water from the Caribbean north, which does a lot of mediate the temperature. The Russian coast has no such current (as far as I'm aware).
> I never understood why Russia’s coast land north of China isn’t more populated?
Because of its harsh climate? It's why mongolia, yukon, scandinavia, etc are sparsely populated.
> The surrounding areas are so hugely populated and it’s a coast.
No it's not. The two chinese provinces ( heilongjang and inner mongolia ) bordering RFE are two of the least populated chinese provinces. And north korea has a small population compared to south korea.
Even before the russian stole the territory from the chinese, koreans, japanese, siberians, etc, that region was never heavily populated because of the harsh climate.
One of the reasons why russia was able to take the land was because it was inhospitable and sparsely populated.
The real question is why it's so heavily populated right now? Why are there millions of russians on the other side of siberia when russia proper is thousands of miles away. The answer is that the tsars and then stalin forcibly moved millions of russians to the region. At one point, the russians wanted to "deport" all their jews to this region.
