Excursion around China Town

Dmitry Medvedev checked the Far East for proximity to the rest of Russia

The development of the Far East - strengthening positions in the Asia-Pacific region, improving the state border, stopping the outflow of population and military exercises in the Pacific Ocean - President Dmitry Medvedev managed to cover such a wide range of problems during his trip to the region. Over three days, the head of state visited four cities in the Far East. The visit had a clear political overtone: to ensure that the Russian Far East does not move even further away from the rest of Russia.

Perhaps the most important statement explaining the meaning of this long journey was made on the first day in Khabarovsk at a meeting on the socio-economic development of the region. Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin, speaking about the indicators of his region, said that 15.5% of the region’s products are exported, and half as much (9.5%) goes to Central Russia. Using these figures, he proposed introducing subsidies for transport services, similar to what was done for passenger transport. According to his estimates, this will require only 5-6 billion rubles. per year.

The President waited until the end of the report, and an angry rebuke sounded. “We should never say that in Russia we saw different results. The Far East is Russia, even if sometimes for the sake of internal convenience they say that this is the Far East, and this is Central Russia. The more often we say this, the more likely we are to get into trouble. Remember this,” Mr. Medvedev responded harshly to the governor.

However, the residents of the region themselves, and this is very noticeable in their conversations, feel China is a much closer and understandable region for them than the European part of Russia. In Blagoveshchensk, for example, the Chinese city of Heihe is separated from the city center by 800 meters of the Amur River, and Moscow is separated by an eight-hour plane flight.

As a result, the topic of connections between the Russian Far East and the rest of the country came up from meeting to meeting; local officials and businessmen obviously counted on material confirmation of their belonging to Russia. In Birobidzhan, the president held a meeting with small businesses. At the meeting, he tried several times to ask whether the local authorities were offending him, but he only heard about the need to provide preferences - from tax breaks to lower electricity tariffs.

“We will not close the market. We fought for this for a long time,” replied the head of state. He was not even impressed by the story that socks produced by the Oryol garment factory in Birobidzhan are sold cheaper than local ones. There was no talk about the price of Chinese ones. “Propose something interesting, I’ll think about it and instruct the government. But this should not be such a simple idea like: introduce us to regional benefits, for example, in Birobidzhan and do everything here in an absolutely unique way,” the president noted. “The main resource is within what you have, I mean reducing costs, reducing the costs that exist in your enterprise. I understand that, perhaps, because of the crisis, you have driven them almost inside, but nevertheless, there is still something else to do,” Dmitry Medvedev urged local businessmen to look for a way out of the crisis on their own.

The state will still provide assistance in subsidizing transportation, but only for those goods that are specific to the Far East. “Don’t expect anything supernatural,” the president immediately warned. Obviously, the problem is to prevent it from becoming clear that the state is subsidizing the supply of Chinese goods to the European part of Russia. In the conditions of a visa-free regime and active trade turnover with neighbors from the Celestial Empire, there is a great risk that all Chinese consumer goods will flow into the resulting transport corridor.

Things eventually got to the point of insults, but it turned out that the offenders of the Birobidzhan businessmen themselves were not local, but from Moscow. Thus, the owner of the DV-Upakservice company, Sergei Mishin, spoke about how Russian Post tenders are lost over and over again, and a company affiliated with the management of Post wins them. The president promised to “hit him in the head if he gets caught.”

However, ordinary people were happy with the head of state just like that, and not counting on benefits. When Dmitry Medvedev walked along the picturesque embankment of the Bira River, the crowd greeted him like a rock star. And the president lived up to their expectations. As he jumped onto the parapet to wave, the squeals of delight and the clicking of mobile phones reached a fever pitch. However, some residents were especially lucky. First of all, to three young couples whose registration in the city registry office coincided with the president’s arrival there. After drinking a glass of champagne with the newlyweds, he suggested that the governor of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Alexander Vinnikov, give them an apartment each. And then, examining the double beds produced by the Foma furniture factory, the head of state again remembered the need to improve the demographic situation in the Far East and proposed adding them to the governor’s wedding gift.

It is known that a steady decline in population is one of the main problems of the region. Over 20 years, a quarter of the residents have left here, and this process has not yet been stopped. As the head of the Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, said in Blagoveshchensk, in four months of this year the population decline in the Far East amounted to 7 thousand people. At the same time, 2 thousand of them died, and 5 thousand left. The expectation of the arrival of Russians from the CIS countries did not materialize. The program to assist the resettlement of compatriots to the Far East accounted for less than 2% of applications. The Russians don’t want to come here, but the Chinese are ready to move.

At a meeting on customs and migration policy in Blagoveshchensk, Mr. Romodanovsky said that more than 100 thousand Chinese live in the Far East out of 268 thousand throughout the country. “Are these real numbers?” - the president doubted. The head of the Federal Migration Service initially assured that yes, but then clarified that the count has been carried out only since 2008, and it is unknown how many entered the country before that. Dmitry Medvedev asked whether there are any estimates of how many migrants our country needs. According to Mr. Romodanovsky, we are talking about approximately 5 million people. And they are all already here. Only a million came to the country legally, and another 4 million illegally. The President unexpectedly stood up for the border violators. “Nobody wants to break the rules of a foreign country. It’s just that the rules are such that they cannot be followed,” he admitted.

The meeting took place in the unusual format of a river walk. Discussing the problems of migration and the development of the state border, the meeting participants could see through the window either Blagoveshchensk or Heihe. Coming out on deck, Dmitry Medvedev could not resist taking a few pictures.

The President, by the way, despite his tight schedule, found time in almost every city to take up photography. So his personal collection has now been replenished with views of the Far East, border regions of China and fragments of military exercises in the Pacific Ocean. However, on his Twitter yesterday he posted not landscapes, but a point-blank photograph taken by photojournalists from the Kremlin pool.

In Vladivostok, Mr. Medvedev took to the high seas on the Russian fleet's flagship, the heavy nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, to oversee the maritime phase of the Vostok 2010 military exercises, crucial to determining the intermediate results of army reform. Perhaps in the future “Peter the Great” will have a twin brother. At least to the president’s question whether Russia still needs ships of this class, Navy Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Vysotsky answered in the affirmative.

Vera SITNINA, Khabarovsk - Birobidzhan - Blagoveshchensk - Vladivostok