Russian Far East Will Become Chinese in Due Time

In the Japanese English-speaking newspaper "Japan Times" there was an article of the researcher of Institute of East Asia of the Cambridge University, the employee of the London fund "Chatham House" David Uolla, devoted to the Chinese expansion to the Russian Far East. The readers can read it in translation.

The Kremlin Is Afraid For Its Far East

I do not think that you read in the Russian newspapers a material about the work of customs on a boundary transition Poltavka in Octyabrsky Region of Primorsky Krai. And it was a very interesting article about the case of founding out of a party of contraband flowers in the lorry which arrived from China.

The lorry contained huge quantity of roses and some boxes with orchids, chrysanthemums, carnations and lilies instead of cheap decorative greens for bouquets. It’s tremendous!

Startling was the fact that the lorry was stopped and it was told about it in newspapers. Usually in such situations the small sum paid by the driver would guarantee the crossing of a border without any problems. Exposure of this event was used to show the readers that the world had changed.

Probably, you have already understood that the world has changed because you read about it in the Russian newspapers which published public speeches of politicians in the Kremlin who declared that the foreigners would not be allowed to supervise markets in Russia or to stay on the markets organized by the Russians.

Sakes alive! The mayor of Vladivostok exaggerated saying several months ago that 100 percent of retail trade and 50 percent of sphere of services were supervised by the Chinese. However the Russians in this and three other frontier regions in many respects depend on the Chinese dealers selling the foodstuffs, clothes and other base consumer goods.

Several weeks ago the Kremlin declared that the Russian citizens wishing to get into a border zone making 30 kilometers in Primorsky Krai and 5 kilometers in other regions adjoining China, would need visa to receive which uneasy.

In November the president Vladimir Putin made everything to warn potential aggressors that Russia had enough modern nuclear weapon "to destroy" them. Actually, he hinted on "destruction" of China but the protocol demanded not to name the country. No other country is capable to frighten Russia to such an extend - and Moscow knows that it cannot "destroy" the USA.

The Russians, especially, those who sit in the Kremlin are frightened by the intention of China to intrude Russia and to take External Manchuria away - that is Khabarovsk territory, the Amur area and the Jewish autonomous region together with Primorsky Krai. As a matter of fact, many consider that intrusion has already begun. They also consider that it is sponsored and supported by the Chinese authorities. Probably, it is really so.

Strong imperial Russia took away boundary areas and island Sakhalin from weak and tended to decline Tsinskay dynasty under two contracts, imposed to China in 1858 and 1860. At that time Russia did not wish to lag behind other countries which were tearing off slices from China. Britain grasped Hong Kong; Japan, Germany, France, Portugal and the USA - other territories. All of them have been already returned to China except for the big territory rich with oil and gas which is still occupied by the Russians. This information can give you every Chinese schoolboy. The Chinese want to return it. This information can you every Russian schoolboy and adult. The Russians don’t want to return it back.

The Russian authorities try to develop ways of non-admission of the Chinese to the territory which was taken away from them in the middle of XIX century. The problem is that actually the Russians do not wish to live there and try to leave it as soon as possible. The majority of them found out themselves there because Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (and his successors) sent them there, into cages or involved by good salary so that they "looked after" people whom he had sent to the cages.

the powerful contingent of armies has been placed on the border with China. Sometimes border disputes ended in armed conflicts. After disintegration of Soviet Union owing to the new open economic policy of the Chinese the volume of frontier trade has sharply grown. The Kremlin is horrified with the prospect of intrusion of the Chinese into External Manchuria. They consider that the Chinese have already starting intrusion. Undoubtedly, the Chinese would like to connect economy of northeast China (Internal Manchuria) with the Russian Far East (External Manchuria), it would be rationally.

The Chinese suggested to construct new railways with double width of a track from northeast China up to a coast to save pair thousand kilometers and in appropriate way to reconstruct the part of the Transsiberian highway from the Chinese border up to Vladivostok.

The Chinese asked to transfer them for renting and to enable to develop two ports on the Russian coast so that to save some thousand kilometers at transportation of cargoes. The Chinese suggested to construct some new bridges through the boundary rivers dividing two countries – there aren’t enough bridges alongside 4300 kilometers. The Chinese suggested to create some transboundary trading and tourist zones - and had already started their construction from their part of the border.

The Chinese actively develop transboundary trade for satisfaction of needs of the Russians living in External Manchuria. Recently the Kremlin has imposed this trade 300 percent tariff having raised it from 100 percent - the amendment has been made because two thirds of commodity circulation, in its opinion, are imposed charges. The Kremlin blocked all three offers that had negative influence on life quality of the Russians in External Manchuria and created even more powerful stimulus to resettlement which was going on at full speed. The Kremlin introduced new policy resembling a gesture of despair trying to attract migrants-Slavonians from the Central Asia to the “strategic border” that in protocol’s language means China. The governors of four regions do not want their arriving - at least, they have declared that they would accept in the nearest four years only 40 000 - instead of more than one million of the Russians which have already left. They say that they do not want arrival of too big number of people because it will create a threat of an organized crime making profit on poverty and the Kremlin is perfectly aware of it.

The Chinese

do not hurry up, they know, that, eventually, they will receive back External Manchuria - the Russian Far East. Meanwhile, they with pleasure use Putin's desperate desire to be friendly. It allows them to supervise United Nations Security Council making the world more Chinese while the president of the USA George Bush and the prime minister of the Great Britain Toni Blair are playing senseless wars which are impossible to win.

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From editorial staff: There is in the article obviously erroneous statement that Russia ostensibly "can not destroy the USA" and "knows about it". Actually the strategic nuclear potential inherited from the USSR and still partially kept till now is quite in a condition to guarantee repeatedly destruction of the USA in case of nuclear war.

But in all the rest the problem is put truly. Regions of the Far East and Eastern Siberia which constitute the area of more than two thirds of all Russian Federation during last 15 years have been left by about two millions of the Russians. Now to the east from Yenisei lives 13 and a half million Russians and from one up to two millions Chineses.

Undoubtedly, that "creeping" penetration of citizens of the Heavenly Empire backs on informal support of the government in Pekin and has an ultimate goal to change demographic structure of the population in extensive Russian territories, to make them Chinese-like. Peaceful or non-peaceful revision of the administrative and political status of these territories, their actual transfer under control of China sharply requiring power resources and new lands would be the next absolutely natural step.

The author of the article noticed rightly that suffering defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, humiliated by Iran and Northern Korea, undergone "the Iraq syndrome" Americans and their allies hardly can and would want to resist to the Chinese expansion to northern direction. More likely, on the contrary, they, probably, will try to agree with Pekin having gone to it on concessions due to Russia.

As a result in due course there will be an integration of economic power and the milliard population of dynamically developing China with huge, rich with all kinds of resources eastern part of Russia. It, undoubtedly, will mean restoration of bipolar architecture of the world and will create fatal threat for the USA and the West.

It is necessary to say, and it is mentioned in the article that they realize in the Kremlin newly arisen threat and even somehow try to resist to it. But they do it absolutely inefficient, as however, everything the present Russian authority undertakes to do. Russian tsars and after them Stalin mastered Eastern Siberia and the Far East leaning on huge state investments and involving rigid command levers. We don’t observe anything similar now. On the contrary, petrodollars instead of being spent on the development of economics and social sphere of the country “are being sterilized” in stabilization fund in the USA. Instead of the rigid control and management from the Kremlin, the decision of questions of eastern Russian territories is assigned to the corrupted officials from federal departments and local administrations. It is clear that they they will not solve any problem and will plunder the means given.

Thus the conclusion drawn in the article that the Russian Far East will become in due course Chinese seems to be absolutely justified.

Ruslan Saidov, political scientist