In the summer of 1857, the
Russian Empire offered monetary compensation to
China's
Qing dynasty government if they would remove the native inhabitants from the area; however, their offer was rebuffed. The following year, in the 1858
Treaty of Aigun, the Qing ceded the north bank of the Amur to Russia. The estimates published between the late 1870s and early 1890s varied between 12,000 and 16,000, peaking in 1894, at 16,102 (including 9,119 Han Chinese, 5,783 Manchus, and 1,200 Daurs). and 5,400 Chinese miners in the
Amur Oblast as it existed at the time, as well as 4,008 Chinese urban residents in Blagoveshchensk and probably elsewhere. During the
Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Qing forces attempted to blockade Russian boat traffic on the Amur near
Aigun, starting from 16 July, and attacked Blagoveshchensk along with Chinese
Honghuzi bandits. In response to these attacks the military governor of the Amur region, Lieutenant-General
Konstantin Nikolaevich Gribskii, ordered the
expulsion of all Qing subjects who remained north of the river. ==Ongoing dispute==