Due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector and the decline of its economic growth and population, the region is often referred to as China's Rust Belt.

Its use is considered controversial by some historians such as Mark C. Elliott, Norman Smith, and Mariko Asano Tamanoi who question its legitimacy.

[16] Northeast China was the homeland of several ethnic groups, including the Koreans, Manchus (or Jurchens), Ulchs, Hezhen (also known as the Goldi and Nanai), Sushen, Xianbei, and Mohe.

During the late Qing dynasty, Northeast China came under influence of the Russian Empire with the building of the Chinese Eastern Railway through Harbin to Vladivostok.

With the encouragement of the Soviet Union, the area was used as a staging ground during the Civil War for the Chinese Communists, who were victorious in 1949 and have been controlling this region since.

Northeast China historically had a significant Han Chinese population, reaching over 3 million by the end of the Ming Dynasty, but they were subjected to eviction and assimilation by the conquest of the Qing Dynasty, who then set up Willow Palisades during the reign of Shunzhi Emperor and prohibited any settlement of Han Chinese into the region.

The region has experienced difficulty distancing itself from a planned economy, a legacy that began in 1905 with the establishment of the Japanese sphere of influence there.

Harbin, more than any other city in China, possesses significant Russian influences: there are many Orthodox churches that have fallen out of use since the Cultural Revolution.

The rural population heavily concentrated in the warmer southern part of the Northeast, where very warm to hot summer weather permits crops such as maize and millet to be grown with high yields.

The Anshan Iron and Steel Works was the most important industrial enterprise in northeast China until the discovery of the Daqing oil field in 1959.

[28]: 16 In recent years, the Chinese government has initialized the "Revitalize the Northeast campaign" to turn this region into one of China's economic growth engines.

[32] It is very closely related to Standard Mandarin, though with unique phonological and syntactic features,[33] and has noticeable vocabulary differences, with some terms originating from Russian.

[35] Ethnic Manchus speak mostly Mandarin, and the Manchu language is almost extinct due to widespread assimilation to Han culture over the last four centuries.

Northeastern Chinese cuisine reflects the region's ethnic diversity, blending Northern Han, Manchu and Korean cooking styles.

In 2019, the term Dongbei renaissance was coined by the rapper Gem to describe a revival in interest in the culture of the Northeast after his song Yelang Disco went viral.

Artwork associated with the Dongbei renaissance often incorporates nostalgia for the "corny" aesthetics of the 1970s boom period of the Northeast, self-deprecating humor, and speculations on the decline and potential future of the economically depressed region.

Notable works associated with the movement include Shuang Xuetao's fiction collection Moses on the Plain and the Diao Yinan film Black Coal, Thin Ice.