That's why Baikal region, with its silver and gold mines, is an important thing.
http://fai.org.ru/forum/topic/34112-amurskaya-voyna-1680-1689/
A three-page discussion with the link to other discussion on topic.
Very interesting discussion but, as far as gold mines are involved, isn't this time line a little bit too early? In the early XVIII even the gold of Ural was not known and Peter sent that insane expedition into the Central Asia on the rumors that there is gold somewhere in the area of Aral Sea.
But let's assume that information became available and was properly digested and reacted upon. Then, if this is a top priority, the adequate military resources should be sent into the area (preferably backed up by the settlers but the friendly locals also would do for a while)
prior to all that mess started by the Cossacks. Manchu government could have greater numbers but these numbers never were above 10,000 (which was a lot against 300 - 500 on the Russian side), judging by some descriptions of their fighting methods and by the time it took to besiege Albazin (BTW, as you can see, configuration of its fortifications is quite "western" there would be no need in 1:1 parity. Of course, in the OTL the Chinese used "psychological pressure" by sending troops into the area but let's not forget the personality factor. Feodor Golovin clearly had very flexible backbone managing to stay on a good side of both Sophia and Peter but his adequacy for the positions he held under both regime is a big question mark and so is his personal bravery. His greatest naval "adventure" was to lead some galleys to Azov (AFAIK, no heroics during the campaign) but Peter made him admiral-general (well, the 1st one, Lefort, did not have even that). He was made the 1st Russian fieldmarshal without any record of the generalship and fled from Narva with Peter, which probably was the reason for becoming the 1st Russian count (title given by emperor Leopold on Peter's request) after which he never held a military command. As a head of the Russian diplomacy he takes questionable credit for the arrangement which led to the GNW. So, it seems that at Nerchinsk he simply freaked out. Fortunately for him, Sophia's government just wanted
any peace on that border.
BTW, by the time of the 2nd siege of Albazin there were, seemingly, numerous settlements around it (with an adequate amount of grain being produced).
To make the long story short, going this direction would be possible with a serious commitment perhaps even at the expense of other projects.