In last week’s NewsLanc article “Does the future of Russia’s Far East depend on China?”, I wrote about the fast growing Russian-Chinese business relationships, including Russian decision to lease to China for 49 years 115,000 hectares of Russian farmland. This week it became known that Russian government plans to lease to China at least 200,000 more hectares.
On June 20, 2015, the International Economic Forum took place in St. Petersburg. It was announced at the forum that 29 new Russian-Chinese projects worth over $20 billion are already approved, and the total number of joint projects has increased to 58. Currently signed agreements between Russia and China signed agreements amount to over $1 trillion.
Russian state controlled TV praises this developments. But democratic newspapers and Internet react diferently. Here are typical comments from Alexei Tarasov, a columnist of Novaya Gazeta:
“The season of sales is started: our main eastern partner gets 115 thousand hectares in the Trans-Baikal Territory for half a century.
“Our enormous territories, abandoned by Russia, are presented as virgin land, waiting to be picked up and mastered. Rabbits invite boas to eat them. They take offence if the boas ignores their invitation. The rabbits have gotten a new religion: they believe that their salvation will come from China.”
The tone of the many comments in Russian social networks is even more emotional. Here are some examples:
“During ten years I was repeating: ‘For bribes they finally will give away Russia to Chinese! And now it happened!’ To give for a half a century a huge piece of land, thousands of hectares, 100 thousand it seems, to China!
“It will become a part of China not in a half of a century, but in five years! Or even faster. This is instead of supporting domestic producers!”
“First these rulers had stolen all the available enormous national riches. I assume for the 15 years they sharked 5 trillion dollars.
“Then they sell the land itself – to be deforestated by Chinese.
“A wonderful concept! As for the population of their own country, they actually bring about genocide: hospitals are closing, high unemployment, and the environment is ruined!”
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Workers in a Chinese greenhouse in Russia
China for a long time has building an economic infrastructure in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East and it is taking full advantage of it. For China these territories are just a source of raw materials. The Chinese for many years have leased hundreds of thousands of hectares in Russia. Now nothing grows in the lands around the Siberian cities, where Chinese and Korean greenhouses began to emerge in the 1990s.
State propaganda tries to convince Russians that the new Chinese-Russian joint ventures will benefit Russia. Chinese would pay taxes at the places of their operations, and the share of Russian personnel in their enterprises would be not less than 75%. Nobody can believe these promises. Where will the find “Russian personnel” in these underpopulated territories?
On June 22 Alex Portansky, a proffesor of the World Economy and International Affairs in the Higher School of Economics Univercity, wrote in rbcdaily.ru :
“It is reasonable to reconsider if the plans to enhance cooperation with China are justified. Not less than 65% of Russia’s exports to China account for natural resources and the forest, while we import from China the products of high added value. For Russia, China – is the number one trading partner after the European Union. For China Russia is only in ninth place. Russia needs China more than China needs Russia, and our partners certainly will use their advantage.”
In the beginning of this article I quoted the comments of the Alexei Tarasov, a columnist of Novaya Gazeta. Here are the last paragraphs of his article:
“There is a Chinese settlement near the Ivolginsky Datsan – the center of Russian Buddhism.” (There are approximately 500,000 Buryats in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. They are the major northern subgroup of the Russian Mongols, practicing Buddhism.)
“Local people do not know what the Chinese produce behind the tall fences of the settlement. When asked whether they feel uncomfortable living near such a neighborhood, they say that they believe that one day the Chinese people in Buryatia simply will disappear, they will evaporate, vanish away like smoke, because they have no souls…
“The impression is that the Kremlin shares the same views of these Buryats. By taking the Crimea and giving land of Asian Russia to Chinese, the Kremlin is hoping that the Chinese will help us solve our problems, will cure neighbors from depression by their diligence and lease payments, and then they will disappear.”
