China looks to Russia for port in Sea of Japan
James Brooke, New York Times
Published December 18, 2003 PORT18
ZARUBINO, RUSSIA -- With a 10-mile-wide sliver of Russian territory blocking Manchuria from the Sea of Japan, China is drawing on its own history for a solution, pushing Russia to sign a 49-year lease to convert Zarubino, the midsize cargo port on Trinity Bay, to a Chinese economic enclave, a Hong Kong of Russia's Far East.
So far, the Russians have not agreed. But the Chinese are making their intentions plain: They have built a six-lane highway to the door of the border crossing closest there, and according to Russian officials, have ordered Chinese companies to boycott Russia's ports in the Sea of Japan until Moscow agrees to the plan.
In the 19th century, European powers strong-armed long-term leases on ports from a weak Chinese government. After the 16th-century Portuguese occupation of Macao, the British claimed Hong Kong, the French took Zhanjiang and the Germans took Qingdao. The Americans, Austrians, Belgians, French, Italians and Russians negotiated concessions in Tientsin and Shanghai.
Now China's economy is on a meteoric rise, and Russia is nervous about being eclipsed. A century ago, Russian authorities promoted these lands bisected by the Amur River as "Amur California," forecasting a population of 100 million by 2000. Instead, the new century has seen new books with pessimistic titles such as "Russia's Far East: a Region at Risk" and "The End of Eurasia."
The Russians appear by turns intrigued and wary of Chinese interest.
Demographics and geography underscore the Chinese interest -- and the Russian alarm. The population is 50 times denser on China's side of the border, and wheat prices soared by one-third this fall because of shortages of water and farmland. On the Russian side, only a third of the arable land is cultivated. Outside Vladivostok, there is water to spare.
China also wants to import Russian oil into Manchuria. A pipeline would bolster China's new campaign to revive its industrial northeast. Speedy guaranteed access to Russian ports on the Japan Sea would ease an economic isolation started in 1860 when a czarist official drew a border treaty map that cut China off from the Sea of Japan.
Asked about the "Hong Kong of Russia" proposal in an interview in Vladivostok, Sergei Darkin, governor of Russia's Maritime region, winced and said: "I don't support this idea. We are ready to consider projects of transshipping cargo but not the leasing or renting ports with the Chinese. We can do it ourselves."
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin summoned the 10 governors of the Russian Far East region to Vladivostok , then lectured them on live television about the area's poor economic performance.
At Trinity Bay, the response can be seen, as Russians develop an international trade entrepot, on their own terms and with their own money. On Dec. 5, with local press in tow, Darkin cut the ribbon on a new stretch of highway, part of a four-year, $50-million program to pave the road network that feeds all five border crossings with China by 2005, said Vladimir Rosenberg, the governor's construction aide.
On Dec. 2, the governor announced, companies made commitments to build $100 million worth of new facilities in Zarubino: a container terminal and a coal terminal. He stressed that there was "only Russian investment" and that "we are starting a program to completely reconstruct our five border checkpoints to China to increase cargo and passenger flow."
Given sensitivities, Djambulat Tekiev, this area's regional legislator, said the solution to China's desire to exploit the ports and to Russia's fear of losing control was not a Chinese lease but a joint venture. Tekiev, who is head of the Berkut company that ships cargo in Zarubino, asserted that many Chinese companies wanted to do business with his ports, "but their government will not let them."
Russia gained its foothold in the Far East through a treaty signed in 1858, but it remains insecure about its presence there. About 100,000 tourists from China are now visiting every summer, making use of new, direct flights from Harbin and two other Chinese cities. The presence clearly unsettles some local Russians.
"I went to get an ice cream cone last summer at a cafe and I thought, 'Whose town is this anyhow?' " tour operator Olga Luzganova said.
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