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IOTL, in the 19th century, droves of Han Chinese started pouring into Manchuria, violating the Qind Dynasty's edicts in regards to settlement and thus forcing them to be revised. The region then saw a boom in population and industry, and is now a quite developed and majority-Han part of China.
But what if it hadn't been that way? Say, if the Han immigrants decided to stay home as a result of better economic conditions, or if travel to Manchuria was better restricted, maybe through the Russians conquering the regions north of Liaodong (a different border treaty in 1860?) or the Qing making an exception for Liaodong in their settlement-exclusive area. Liaodong had already been majority-Han for a long time anyway. "Non-Han Manchuria" ends up encompassing the OTL states of Jilin, Heilongjiang, and northeastern Inner Mongolia.
How would the region end up looking like, ethnically, demographically, culturally, and economically?
My senses tell me that some Han Chinese would still end up north of Liaodong, even if sometimes illegally. But the region could technically have been less Han, with the population vaccuum being instead filled by Manchus, Koreans, Mongolians, and, primarily, Russians and other Slavs. If Russia controls all of the Amur Basin, could this result in the Russian Far East being more viable as an entity for settlement? With industry being directed towards Russia and Siberia rather than China proper, which industries in population centers like Harbin could see more priority?
Could Russian Orthodox missionaries have more success in converting locals ITTL?
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