The announcement of the decision to launch the "
Vladivostok Hǎishēnwǎi Free Port" project practically went unnoticed on the forum, and this is a very important event that will affect further the course of the war. Here is an article from Chinese government source (please take into account their propaganda!):
Let's start from the beginning: The Vladivostok Free Port Initiative has been raised for
more than a decade and was supposed to consist in the creation of special investment zones and a duty-free corridor for Chinese goods produced in Manchuria and sent to the Chinese domestic market duty-free and with only a 5% transit fee.
Due to the proximity of Vladivostok, the agreement was very beneficial for business because it allowed to shorten the distance to the transshipment port on average from 1000 km to 200 km. The decrease in revenues from transit duties was to be offset by revenues from increased rail and port traffic and, above all, FDI of Chinese capital in the economy of the Far East.
The whole project was brought up at conferences and meetings, but nothing was done about it for years. The resistance of many circles of oligarchs and politicians in the Kremlin against letting the Chinese into Vladivostok was fully understandable, but it was mainly about the money, or rather the share that the oligarchs were supposed to receive. The Chinese were not very eager to see multi-billion investments in port and railway infrastructure and the construction of factories whose profits were to be shared with the Russian warlords/boyars. Over time, Beijing's resistance (or rather, its interest decreased) to this investment increased due to the increasingly visible problems of Manchuria. During the communist era, the area was exploited in a wasteful manner and did not endure the liberalization of the economy. Currently, the biggest problem of this region is... depopulation. There are still millions of Chinese there, but the demographic structure is one of the worst in the entire Middle Kingdom, also when it comes to Siberia colonization.
But back to yesterday's events. Removing customs duties from Chinese goods means multi-billion losses for the Russian budget that will suffer in this very "successful" fiscal year. For years, Moscow was not satisfied with the negotiated investment amounts, and
now it has stuck to the deal when its amount is, let's face it, shite.
If Russia is so weak, why did the deal come about? Let's leave the fairy tales that Putin is afraid of Xi and agreed to the partition of the country or sold Siberia like the tsar sold Alaska to the "tin foil hats artists".
The main goal of the Kremlin is to launch duty-free freight traffic to be able to "lose" containers on Russian territory. What is a problem for a Chinese company to send 20 wagons of dual-purpose electronics to its client in the south of the country via Vladivostok and those morons from RDŻ (russian railroad) lose one on the way? Of course, the Russians will pay for the lost goods with interest, but the goods are gone...
it's just a very simple and effective way to circumvent the sanctions. Intra-China traffic is an internal Chinese affair and is not monitored by international trading entities. The shortage situation for the industry must be really bad if Putin accepted such a deal.
And as for the putler, notice that the brilliant 5D strategist has plans and acts reasonably (sarcasm intended), but crucial in the 6-month perspective and, what's worse, he doesn't have a plan B in case the plan fails.
Let's do something that will help us now and allow us to drag out the operation a little longer, the west will get tired, Kiev will fall and after the war we will be worried:
- let's start a three-day special operation, set up a puppet government in western Ukraine and after half a year everything will be back to normal, we will not unleash a long and devastating war - and what?
- let's start a gas war with the EU, it won't be able to cope with the post-COVID inflation and they will force the Ukrainians to make another treaty of Minsk, after all, in six months they will not diversify fuel and gas supplies - and what?
- let's block the transport of gas to the EU, to be sure, let's blow up NS1 so that they have to legalize NS2. We will burn budget reserves and we will lose the European market, we will survive for half a year and then we will worry. and what?
- let's switch to Yuans in settlements/trade, we have so many of them in reserves that we don't have to buy them for half a year, the ruble will last, we'll be worried in June - and what? Well, it didn't fell fully to shit, but do you feel the pressure on the sphincters? It's coming economic
- let's save the state budget with a 4% debt limit YoY. It's June and the overdraft is 90% full, with social expenses at 30%. the dummies will stay calm. In six months we will be worried about how we will not be able to cover our pensions. But luckily it's in half a year and for now we'll get Bakhmut!
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on the side note, my usual sources are strangely silent after the night
