The term Harbin Russians or Russian Harbinites refers to several generations of Russians who lived in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang, China. Russian settlers were responsible for turning Harbin into a Russian city with the majority of the population being from Russian ethnic groups, from approximately 1898 to the mid-1960s. Harbin, a major junction city on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), came successively under the control of the Qing dynasty, under Russia's sphere of influence, the Republic of China, Japanese puppet state Manchukuo and the People's Republic of China in this period.