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Just around the river bend |
Liu Xinlian
RISING in the Changbai Mountain of Jilin Province and flowing throughout China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Russia into the Sea of Japan, the 525-km-long Tumen River is located at the epicenter of northeast Asia.
Comprising east Russia, northeast China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), the DPRK and Mongolia, Northeast Asia, with a population of more than 600 million, has developed into an area of interest due to its rich resources and vast markets.
As early as 1991, the United Nations Deve-lopment Program initiated a discussion among northeast Asian countries to cooperate in the economic development of the Tumen River region.
In December 1995, the governments of the DPRK, China, the ROK, Mongolia and Russia signed the Agreement on the Establishment of the Consultative Commission for the Development of the Tumen River Economic Development Area and Northeast Asia. Yet, despite various attempts and efforts, the past 18 years have seen little development in the Tumen River region. In response to the stagnant situation, China has vowed to make a breakthrough.
On August 30 this year, the State Council approved the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen Pilot Area for development and opening. The new initiative has upgraded the development of the China Tumen River region to a national strategy, said the Governor of Jilin Province Han Changfu at the Fifth China Jilin Northeast Asia Investment and Trade Expo held on September 1-6 in Changchun, the provincial capital.
Seizing the Day
Located just 15 km from the Sea of Japan, Hunchun in Jilin Province, lies 850 km west of Niigata, Japan. The city is also the nearest point in China to the east coast of the ROK, to the west coast of Japan and North America, and to parts of Northern Europe.
This May, the China-Russia-ROK-Japan joint rail-port transportation route was formally launched. With a total length of 800 nautical miles, the whole route can be completed in as little as one day and a half.
Hunchun is half the distance between the more prominent port of Dalian, in Liaoning Province, and Japan, allowing companies that utilize the new trade route to save one third of the time, as well as 30-40 percent of the shipping costs, said Deng Kai, an official of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.
While offering the potential for a new window for trade with Japan, Hunchun’s opening lagged behind its intended development. By the end of 2008, Japanese-invested enterprises in Dalian had numbered 3,700, while Jilin Province had only registered 264 such enterprises by the first half of 2008.
The Hunchun Industrial Park for Japan, Russia and the ROK has since been established to entice businesses to bring their operations to Jilin. The launch of the joint rail-port transportation route will additionally enhance the development of the industrial parks, said Feng Yuhua, Vice Mayor of Hunchun.
Jilin Province’s economy, for the most part, has been less dependent on exports than the national average. In 2008, Jilin’s exports and imports amounted to $13.3 billion, accounting for 14 percent of its total GDP, much lower than the national average of 66 percent.
“This demonstrated that Jilin was not export-oriented like other provinces, so we should enhance our opening,” said Bing Zheng, Director of the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences.
The six countries in northeast Asia strongly complement each other in economic development and resources supply. According to Bing, these countries can be divided into three categories: developed countries, including Japan and the ROK; developing countries, represented by China and Russia; and less developed nations, including the DPRK and Mongolia.
The less developed countries, while weak in technology and capital, are rich in resources; the developing countries have open markets and an increasing need for investment and resources; and the developed countries have strong technology and capital, but suffer from a lack of labor, new markets and resources supplies.
The Northeast Asian countries can help one another in different levels and provide economic assistance within their own developmental groups, Bing said. For local governments and enterprises, these factors are vital to making profits.
Hunchun Shengming Wood Processing Co., a state-owned Changchun-headquartered company, has invested some 100 billion yuan ($14.7 billion) in a wood roughing factory in Kraskino, a coastal city in Russia. The roughly processed wood is imported to the Sino-Russia Wood Processing Park in Hunchun for further processing and the final product is exported to the United States and Japan.
“Russia is rich in wood and its price is comparatively low, rendering our products rather competitive on the international market,” said a business manager of Shengming.
While northeast China has historically been an old industrial base, it has long suffered from a shortage of resources, which has hindered its production. According to the Jilin Provincial Government, Jilin can only meet 50 percent of its total coal demands.
Neighboring Russia could answer Jilin Province’s call for coal resources, as the country is home to 12 percent of the world’s total coal reserves. Its Far East area alone has 40 percent of Russia’s total reserves.
The number of ROK-invested enterprises is also increasing in Jilin Province, hitting 870 currently. The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province has a similar historic and cultural background to the ROK, allowing ROK-funded enterprises to easily find a Korean-speaking labor force in Hunchun’s vicinity, said Chen Genwei, Deputy Governor of Jilin Province.
Marching ahead
As early as 1992, Hunchun was authorized by the State Council as an A-level opening city together with Shenzhen and Zhuhai of south China’s Guangdong Province. While the other two cities have become the engines of the Pearl River Delta, China’s most vital area over the past 17 years, Hunchun has remained a relatively quiet border town.
Hunchun’s idle state is unfortunate, since the city’s proximity to the DPRK and Russia puts it within 200 km of 10 international ports, none of which, however, belongs to China. And although situated 15 km away from the Sea of Japan, Hunchun lacks estuaries to link it with the world’s major sea routes.
“When we import processed materials from Russia, the formalities, transportation and customs administrations are rather complicated. In fact, our Russia-located factory is only 45 km from the processing site in Hunchun, but it has become the main handicap in the whole operational flow,” said Li of Shengming.
In 2005, two Chinese-invested companies obtained the operational rights to the DPRK’s Najin Port for 50 years. Najin Port, an ice-free port with a total area of 380,000 square meters, is located only 93 km away from Hunchun. The No.1 berth of Port 1 has finished construction, with preparations being made for the launch of the second phase of the project, according to China News Agency.
The Najin Port Program will provide Jilin Province, and possibly all of northeast China’s logistics industry, with a new access to the sea, said Huang Denan, Director of the Trade Administration Department of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture Bureau of Commerce. It will also contribute immeasurably to the DPRK’s economic development, as well as to cooperation in the Tumen River region, he added.
As part of the regional cooperation program, the Russian Government has agreed to build a special economic zone in Hassan that borders on Hunchun. Russia will also construct a highway border port in Hassan, with a total annual capacity of 600,000 tons, according to the local government.
Hassan’s primary trade advantage is its marine transportation, since almost all major Russian ports are closely connected to the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Rail connections will also link China to other parts of Northeast Asia—a railway linking Choibalsan of Mongolia and Arxan of China is already being planned. By extending eastward to Baicheng, Changchun and Hunchun, railways will become a new thoroughfare connecting China and Mongolia, as well as Europe and Asia. The construction of a Sino-Mongolian transit line will be an important artery to promote the development of the Tumen River region and the revitalization of northeast China’s old industrial bases, said Wang Shengjin, a professor of economics at Jilin University.
Another means of stimulating trade in the region is the Eastasian Border Trade Center, a 10-billion-yuan ($1.46-billion) investment project that started construction in Hunchun in August this year.
“Our confidence in the huge investment was from the border trade performance since the establishment of the Sino-Russian Border Trade Area built in 2004. In 2009, Hunchun will see more than 70,000 visitors from Russia, almost four times the number in 2005,” said Wang Jinyu, Vice Mayor of Hunchun.
According to Wang, Hunchun does not have a substantial wholesale market targeting Russia. With the launch of the Eastasian Border Trade Center, Hunchun can develop into a big goods distribution center reaching all of Northeast Asia.
“With the approval of the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen Pilot Area, we try to build the Tumen River Region into a new growth engine in northeast China,” said Han Changfu, Governor of Jilin Province. The hopes are that the area’s economic aggregate will double by the end of this year, Han said.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)
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Time to talk to Taleban for peace & stability |
Ishtiaq Ali Mehkri
I HAVE no love lost for the Taleban. Rather, as per my belief, their ideology is an anti-thesis to the egalitarian teachings of Islam. But when seen from the prism of geopolitics and realities on the ground, they are a power to be reckoned with.
Joining the current chorus of condemnation is quite easy, and more convenient to join the call for the obliteration of the Pakhtoon militia. In doing so, we tend to forget the causes and sources that led to the Phoenix-like rise of the militants, and the overt and covert mechanisms through which they are being pampered to this day. It all boils down to the premise that political exigency of state and non-state actors, from Washington to Islamabad, have found in Taleban their own axe to grind. But the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan who have been a victim of endless mayhem, not to mention the insecurity and chaos the entire region has witnessed, are paying the cost of such a misadventure.
What motivates this comment is the latest Taleban claim that “they pose no threat to the West, but will continue to fight occupying foreign forces.” Coming as this does on the eighth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan that removed them from power, it cannot be brushed aside as a gimmick. If the student militia’s claim is judged on the political criterion of legitimacy, it wins hands down. Such a manifesto can be of any other political party or guerilla organisation engaged in a fight for survival. Such a proposition gains more credence as Washington and its allies themselves confess that the war in Afghanistan has no logical end, ?and is unwinnable.
The security-cum-political situation in the war-weary country is at the crossroads. Eight years of foreign occupation has not helped in ‘democratising’ it, as endeavoured by Brussels and Washington. Rather, the country has once again become a breeding ground for terrorists, and a safe haven for unscrupulous elements. The slur is not associated only with the Taleban, but ironically finds its place at the helm of affairs in Kabul.
The government of President Hamid Karzai enjoys the support of warlords, drug-barons and human-traffickers. This is not just an allegation, but a fact regrettably documented by the US State Department and a host of human rights organisations. Until and unless the inherent bias in regulating the state of affairs is addressed, things will continue to deteriorate — leaving no option for the US but to follow the Soviet example of exiting ?in disgrace.
Late, but never too late, a section of policy-makers in Washington now believe that talking to the Taleban is the only way to resolve the crisis. General Petreaus has been at the vanguard of such an approach, calling on for a mix of political and military muscles to attain a mutually desired objective. This thinking finds its rationale in the assumption that anti-US elements in Afghanistan, or even in Iraq, could intermingle over a set agenda in lieu for political and socio-economic considerations. But having said that one can argue that there could have been no need for invading Afghanistan in 2001, had the previous US administration given it a serious thought of engaging the Taleban regime following? the 9/11 attacks, blamed on Al Qaeda.
History would have been quite different today had Washington relied for a while on Pakistan’s good offices in clinching a deal with the Taleban for flushing out their guest — Osama ?bin Laden.
The Taleban of Afghanistan, irrespective of their like in Pakistan who now comprise of thugs and opportunists, were and are political in genesis. One can always differ with their way of governance and ideology, but their essence was nationalist in nature. Having inherited the pride of defeating Soviets by their predecessors, the student militia eulogised for a form of government, which should be nationalistic and Islamic in substance.
The militia has exhibited its political inclination to rule, and be part of the power decorum, beyond any doubt. Its only grievance is the presence of foreign forces on its soil, whereas the coalition’s major headache is how to get out of the mess with their honour intact. Part of the problem can become part of solution too. It’s time to talk it out with the Taleban and chalk out an exit strategy. It will not only bring political peace to the region but also enable the West to keep on influencing the Taleban mindset in times to come.
-Khaleej Times
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The longevity crowd may become big |
Jonathan Power
PERHAPS after all, the healthy ones among us in the Western world and the middle class in the Third World have a chance of living forever. Already, according to the World Health Organization, a child born today has a 50 percent chance of living until 100.
But by the time they reach 100 medical science will have continued its immense strides forward and they could easily make 200. In fact for those who will make 95 without Alzheimer’s the same goes.
Look at the graph of medical discoveries, life-saving drugs and surgery, the graph is geometric. Over the next 100 years it will become vertical. What can stop it? — AIDS or an epidemic of universal flue or some malign reaction to a drug like Thalidomide? Look at this graph and they are just minor blips.
So why haven’t the great professors of medicine taken such findings to the “Lancet” or “The New England Journal of Medicine?” Because it wouldn’t be published. These esteemed magazines won’t publish unless the experiments can be proved to be true. There are no experiments.
What about the earth’s carrying power? Forgotten your Malthus? Over the last 50 years the doomsayers have said that the world is running out of food. In George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” the returned Irish-American, Malone, insists on calling the great famine “the starvation.”
“Me father died of the starvation in the black ‘47. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“The famine?”
“No, the starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me father was starved dead and I was starved out to America in me mother’s arms.”
But where will all the people live? 98 percent of the world’s surface is uninhabited and often uninhabitable — the poles, the tundra, the tropical forests, the deserts, much of the insect-infested savannah and, not least, the seas. But we have time on our side. Over the 250 years since the Agricultural Revolution science and human ingenuity have enabled us to bring vast amounts of once undeveloped land into cultivation. The process is now accelerating faster than ever before. The seas with its fish and protean-rich plankton should pose no problem. Neither will grow vast amounts of food in our gardens. Remember at this stage we are only discussing the so-called rich world and the middle class in such countries as India, China and Brazil, a small percentage of the world population. But even today the three most overcrowded countries in the world — Barbados, Belgium and Holland — have vast areas of free land.
Beyond that, as high-powered medicine moves to poorer peoples, including many of those in the rich countries, larger numbers will join the longevity crowd. But this will happen infinitely slowly. Besides they too will benefit from the above.
Let us be optimistic and say this will take 150 years. By then we will have reached deep into our galaxy. Does anyone seriously think, even if there is no life on one of the trillion upon trillion of planets, there won’t be one habitable to mankind, even if there are no green men?
One thing that can’t be changed is the burning out of our sun and then we all go. But that is trillions of years ahead. We can be pretty sure that some of us, and soon the world, can live that long.
—Arab News
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