Borderland Economic Resilience under COVID-19: Evidence from China–Russia Border Regions

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the global economy and trade, and border regions have been hit severely because of their high dependency on foreign trade. To understand better the economic impact of COVID-19 on border regions, we developed a COVID-19 economic resilience analytical framework and empirically examined 10 Chinese-Russian border cities in Northeast China. We quantitatively analyzed five dimensions of economic resilience, distinguished four types of shock, and examined the determinants of economic resilience. The results show that: (1) the COVID-19 pandemic has wide-ranging impacts in the border areas, with import–export trade and retail sales of consumer goods being the most vulnerable and sensitive to the shock. The whole economy of the border areas is in the downward stage of the resistance period; (2) from a multi-dimensional perspective, foreign trade and consumption are the most vulnerable components of the borderland economic system, while industrial resilience and income resilience have improved against the trend, showing that they have good crisis resistance; (3) borderland economic resilience is a spatially heterogeneous phenomenon, with each border city showing different characteristics; (4) economic openness, fiscal expenditure, and asset investment are the key drivers of economic resilience, and the interaction between the influencing factors presents a nonlinear and bi-factor enhancement of them. The findings shed light on how border economies can respond to COVID-19, and how they are useful in formulating policies to respond to the crisis.