-Caveat Lector- http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/1/17/145048.shtml
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Chinese in Russia's Maritime Region Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002 Only one month ago, the authors published an article describing Chinese plans – so far only plans – in regard to the Russian Federation Republic of Yakutia and its natural resources. (See The Resources-Rich Republic of Yakutia.) However, another region of the Russian Far East (RFE), namely the Maritime Region, located between China's Heilongjiang Province to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east, has already become the object of a Chinese invasion. And this invasion, according to available data, has assumed an irreversible character. One can claim without exaggeration that by 2001, this region, centered around Vladivostok and having an area of over 100,000 square kilometers and a population of about 2.15 million, was under de facto Chinese control, though formally it was still a part of Russia. In the present article, the authors deliberately do not focus on the legal and illegal arms exports from the Maritime Region to China; this issue is the theme of a separate article. Physical Presence of the Chinese in the Maritime Region The Chinese physical presence was rather high in the Maritime Region as early as 1995 (as shown in the book "Growth of China and the Future of the Eastern Regions of the USSR," published by one of the authors in 1996). This presence greatly increased in 1997, when Heilongjiang province and the Maritime Region officially put into service the so-called Golden Road. This road includes a railway and highway, starting in Harbin (capital of Heilongjiang) and ending in Nakhodka, a Russian seaport some 100 km east of Vladivostok. In more detail, the Golden Road takes the following route: Harbin to Mudanjiang (some 250 km southeast of Harbin) to Suifenhe (a Chinese border town 350 km southeast of Harbin) to Pogranichnyi (a Russian border town 150 km north of Vladivostok) to Ussuriysk (halfway between Pogranichnyi and Vladivostok) to Artyom (50 km northwest of Vladivostok) to Nakhodka. This transportation corridor, which runs north of Vladivostok without passing through the city itself, connects landlocked Heilongjiang province, via the Maritime Region, with South Korea, North Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 1997, China transported over 100,000 tons of coal and other goods via this corridor. In 1998-2000, transport volume over the Golden Road greatly increased, probably surpassing 1 million tons annually. Simultaneously, China in effect established unopposed control over all of the Russian part of the Golden Road, i.e., over the Pogranichnyi-Ussuriysk-Artyom-Nakhodka transport corridor, about 300 km in length. For example, in Ussuriysk, with a native population of about 100,000, the last large old-Soviet-style industrial enterprise – a refrigerator plant – closed down in 1996. By 1997 almost all of the city's newly established businesses – markets, foreign trading companies, timber and transportation companies, and non-ferrous metal scrap facilities – were controlled by the Chinese, whose numbers in the city had reached several thousand. One can even claim that Ussuriysk by 1997 had become a "Chinese city" – in the same way that Mandalay, in central Burma, had become a "Chinese city" by 1994. All other Russian towns along this transportation corridor by 1997-98 had become greatly dependent on economic cooperation with China, especially servicing of Chinese transportation and trade. If there were some problems with the local authorities – who were very corrupt – the Chinese side easily resolved them with bribes. So, by 1998 China had established its control – informal but effective – over the Russian stretches of the Golden Road. Russia's financial default in August 1998 promoted and solidified this process: Western consumer goods became too expensive, so the people of the Maritime Region were forced to switch entirely to the relatively inexpensive Chinese goods. As a result, the number of Chinese traders in the Maritime Region ballooned. For example, by 2000 the "Chinese bazaar" – open "24/7" – in Ussuriysk looked like a separate town. Some 2,000 Chinese traders lived semi-permanently in metal freight containers, but their handsome earnings compensated for this discomfort. The Chinese had their own restaurants, a sauna and even a casino. And these "permanent traders" made up only a fraction of the total number of Chinese in Ussuriysk at any given moment. One can estimate the number of Chinese by late 2001 in Ussuriysk alone – including permanent traders, "traveling traders," family members, scrap metal dealers, criminals and illegals of all kinds – as between 6,000 and 8,000. And the total number of Chinese along the Pogranichnyi-Nakhodka transport corridor in 2000-2001 can be estimated at several tens of thousands. An article in the Feb. 5, 2000, issue of the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta states that by early 20000 the number of Russian citizens in the district centered around Pogranichny was 35,000, while the number of Chinese in this district approached 25,000. Is this situation not an example of de facto occupation? Based on the transport corridor, China by 2000 managed to establish true economic control over most of the Maritime Region – between the North Korean border to the south and the neighboring Khabarovsk Region of Russia to the north. Russian Fears of a Chinese Takeover Numerous Western media reports from Vladivostok in 2000-2001 say that the local Russians were in a panic over the prospect of a Chinese takeover. The jarring scene painted in one such report – "The Chinese have spread like jellyfish, penetrating everywhere, and gradually you find that without a shot being fired, they've simply taken over" – had become the prevailing story in the Maritime Region. China is flexing its economic muscle in the RFE, and, as the local Russians in the RFE fear, the next stage – China's demographic takeover – is not far off. Such depictions are not limited to Russian newspapers. As an article in one British paper from December 2000 states, "Nowadays, Chinese is spoken everywhere in Vladivostok. In the past 10 years, traders from across the border have poured in, finding an eager market for the cheap consumer goods that Russian industry has never been able to supply. "Families in the region, where an average salary can be as low as 30 pounds a month, wear nothing but Chinese clothes. In Vladivostok, hotels depend heavily on tourists from over the border, and the new Chinese restaurants do good business. Yet almost no one has a good word for the Chinese. ‘They behave as though they own the town. … Russia is not strong; there is a threat that we will lose this territory.'" The number of Chinese in Vladivostok and the entire peninsula to its north (with a total population of over 1 million) definitely has surpassed 12,000, and could be twice as much. And thousands of Chinese are concentrated in the southernmost part of the Maritime Region, near the North Korean border, along a newly built "second transportation corridor," running from Hunchun (Chinese border point) to Kraskino (Russian border point) to Zarubino (a port on the Sea of Japan). In addition, thousands of Chinese are working throughout the Maritime Region in timber cutting (legal and illegal), as well as in poaching and smuggling of rare species (mammals, fish, turtles, etc.) By late 2001, the Chinese side had established a highly developed and sophisticated infrastructure in the region for this purpose. Finally, one must admit that the number of Chinese – all kinds, including "traveling traders," poachers, and other illegals – in the Maritime Region by the end of 2001 had neared 100,000 or even surpassed this level. And this is a modest estimate. The ratio of the Chinese to the local Russian population rose from about 2 percent in 1995 to over 4 percent in 2001. In every year from 1995 to 2001, the local population fell by at least 20,000, while the number of Chinese – all kinds, at any given moment – rose by at least 10,000 annually. A continuation of this trend (and what could end it, let alone reverse it?) would result, by 2005, shrinking the population of natives to the 2 million mark, with simultaneous expansion of the Chinese presence to 150,000 or more. The local authorities in effect have lost control of the situation. Proof of this is given in the fact that a "private border checkpoint" is operating, not far from a major official checkpoint in Pogranichnyi, according to mid-to late 2001 Russian TV and magazine sources. Some "new Russian businessmen" rented a small piece of the border from the Russian Border Guard Service. The number of Chinese entering Russia through this checkpoint without registration is evidently measured in the thousands. Chinese Economic Interests in the Maritime Region "The economy of the Maritime Region is ruined; people make their living by selling whatever possible to the Chinese and getting Chinese goods in exchange" was the refrain often repeated in the Russian media in 2000-2001. The social infrastructure is also ruined. Beginning in 1995, the lack of heating, electricity and even water in the apartments in Vladivostok and other Maritime cities has become routine reporting in the Moscow media. Every winter puts the Maritime Region on the brink of survival – for which Moscow and Vladivostok blame each either. The local people use every means available – including crime – to survive. They help the Chinese by transporting consumer goods, collecting non-ferrous metals (in many cases stealing transformers, power lines and other working equipment) and selling them to the Chinese, and participating in illegal timber cutting and transport of the logs to China. In short, local socioeconomic disaster and political chaos have greatly eased the Chinese invasion. The major areas of Chinese economic activity (other than transporting goods over the "Golden Road" to East Asian countries) are as follows: Selling Chinese consumer goods, including food, in the Maritime Region and delivering these goods to other parts of the Russian Far East (RFE) (Khabarovsk, Magadan, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, etc.) and Siberia. This business gives the Chinese side at least an estimated $2 billion annually. Purchasing steel and non-ferrous scrap metal. This includes, naturally, disassembled power equipment, derricks, other machinery and even heating pipelines. The locals are destroying their own infrastructure just to get a few dollars for daily survival. In addition, Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, and Nakhodka have become warehouses for hundreds of thousands of tons of scrap metal – mostly of illegal origin – from all of Siberia and the RFE. This scrap goes to China. Cutting timber and transporting it to China, activities keeping tens of thousands of Russians and thousands of Chinese busy. Annual volumes of timber going to China from the Maritime Region, both in legal and illegal ways, are measured in millions of cubic meters. Local police and the forest guard are on the Chinese payroll. Those who try to resist this reality don't live very long. The Chinese are not directly involved in such murders, but they pay off the "timber mafia." In China itself, timber cutting is nearing zero due to environmental problems, while demand for timber is rising. Rapidly growing imports, mainly from the Russian border regions, fill this gap. Poaching of all kinds. An endless flow of Siberian tiger skins and bones, other wild mammals, soft-body turtles and their eggs, rare fish and sea products, and valuable wild plants goes to China – again, illegally – from the Maritime Region. Thousands of Russians and Chinese are working here, and the "poaching mafia" is as merciless as the "timber mafia." Since 1994-95, China has supplied the Maritime Region and other regions of the RFE with ever increasing quantities of poor-quality (or even poisonous) vodka and illegal drugs. More specifically, in every month during 1998-2001, several million liters of such vodka – also known as khanzha and most of it illegal – crossed the Sino-Russian border into the Maritime Region. This rotgut is extremely popular – despite its lethality – with hundreds of thousands of the locals because of its very cheap price. Chinese control over most of the local retail and wholesale market provides unlimited opportunities for khanzha sales. The local police are bribed and don't interfere. Some of this poison is consumed on the spot, while the rest is delivered to points all over the RFE and Siberia. Ephedrine, a medicine widely used in China to fight colds, is formally banned in Russia. However, Chinese traders deliver this substance in large batches to the Maritime Region, where it is used – in dozens of underground workshops – as a precursor for making the dangerous illegal drug Ephedrone. This comparatively cheap drug has spread all over Russia, but is especially popular in the RFE and Siberia. Without doubt, Beijing and Harbin tolerate – or even support – the supply of khanzha and ephedrine to the Maritime Region and their spread into other eastern regions of Russia, because such practices contribute to the subjugation and even elimination of the locals, and, consequently, ease Chinese expansion into this zone. While the mortality rate is extremely high in Russia, it is even greater in the Maritime Region and other eastern regions, blessed with such poisonous "gifts" from China. Size of Chinese Economy in the Maritime It is impossible to calculate the total annual volume of all Chinese businesses in the Maritime Region, but a very rough estimate would be many billions of dollars. These businesses, while unprofitable or even destructive to the region, provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of the locals. Chinese economic domination of the region cannot be denied. And economic control, along with paying off the local police and politicians, leads to political control. Former Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko and present Governor Sergei Darkin make no attempt to hide their hatred of the Chinese, but this changes nothing. And how do Moscow, the Kremlin and strongman Putin react to this Chinese domination? Evidently, Moscow understands its impotence and just tries to get all the revenue it can, or even to sell off the Maritime Region's resources for the best available price. Russian media such as the newspaper Nezavismaya gazeta have published articles on this account. Again, this changes nothing. By 2001, the Maritime Region in effect had become a semi-occupied territory of China and a Chinese base for invasion into other regions of the RFE. How will this influence the geopolitical situation in the entire Far East? The insightful reader can draw his or her own conclusions. Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is a consultant to the American Foreign Policy Council. He is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics." *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! 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