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Russia spent $22 billion to build gateway port for Europe-bound Asian goods
When Vladivostok was asked to host the summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum Russian leader Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to reverse the steady decline of a region that covers a third of the country’s territory.
In the years leading up to the weeklong APEC summit earlier this month Moscow and other levels of government spent about $22 billion to establish the port city of Vladivostok as the gateway for Asia to the resource-rich eight provinces of Pacific Russia.
The plans are also to make Vladivostok the hub of a transportation network that will allow the overland export of Asia’s manufactured goods to Europe and the Middle East, cutting at least 20 days off the time taken to ship by sea.
At the same time, Vladivostok and the surrounding province are in the early stages of crafting their own manufacturing industries, primarily automotive and home appliance factories at this point. The investments in Vladivostok sparked by the APEC summit are impressive.
They include a network of modern highways and upgraded rail tracks, revitalization of the airport, giant cable-stayed bridges over the Golden Horn Bay and the longest such bridge in the world to Russky Island, and on the island the new Far Eastern Federal University.
This will soon be open for students now it has finished its first role as the venue for the APEC summit.
The new university will add to what is already one of Vladivostok’s greatest assets: the large number and quality of the graduates with technology degrees it produces every year.
During the Cold War Vladivostok was a closed military region and centre for the development of military technology. Even though the city has a population of under 600,000 it still has seven universities, most of which are technical schools of one brand or another, as well as a host of academic institutes.
The United States has caught on to Vladivostok’s future as a fertile field for technology development and a centre of economic and political gravity in the Far East.
Washington wants to have people who understand what’s happening in Pacific Russia. It is therefore encouraging and aiding American students to study there.
But the investments spurred by the APEC summit are still only the beginning of what is required to make the region, officially known as the Far Eastern Federal District, truly functional.
Job number one is to stem the continuing exodus of people seeking work elsewhere.
The population of Pacific Russia is now 6.2 million, making it one of the most sparsely populated places on Earth. But Russian officials estimate that if people keep on leaving for more prosperous regions at current rates the population will be only 4.5 million by 2015.
Putin, first as President then as Prime Minister and now as President again, has made the construction of infrastructure, industrialization and harvesting of natural resources in Pacific Russia a personal mission.
He has regularly flown in from Moscow to get reports from managers on the progress of the APEC projects and mercilessly quizzed them on reasons for delays. These dramatic showpieces have usually been shown live on television.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Vancouver Sun website: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Summit+boosts+Vladivostok+profile/7252327/story.html