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Taking the 'Russia' out of Asia
By Stephen Blank
While
traveling in Russia's Far East in 2000, President
Vladimir Putin warned the region's leaders and peoples
that if those provinces could not get their economic act
together, they would soon be speaking either Korean,
Chinese or Japanese. Even though Russia has since
experienced substantial economic growth, the Russian
population in the Far East has continued to fall as
migrants leave a region of hardship and demoralizing
climactic - as well as economic - conditions for better
opportunities elsewhere.
Under conditions of
economic growth, the resulting shortfall in population
has produced a labor shortage. As a result, Moscow has
had no choice but to accept the situation that Putin
warned against, namely an influx of Asian
gastarbeiters or guest workers.
In the
first instance these immigrants to Russia have been
Chinese, and throughout the 1990s the prospect of this
migration, even more than its reality, whether legal or
illegal, created a local picture of the "yellow peril"
that was successfully employed to block cooperation with
China and entrench local politicians in power. This
perception vastly exaggerated the actual numbers of
Chinese coming to settle in Russian Asia but, as is the
case elsewhere, the prospect of illegal migration by
disliked minorities or ethnic groups served a useful
political purpose for local politicians.
However, by 2001-02 it became clear that there
was no alternative to such migration and the government
began to argue in favor of accepting this immigration,
provided it could channel it by registering immigrants
and as long as they came legally. Essentially, Moscow
had to compromise by accepting that under freer economic
conditions, labor migrates to places where opportunity
exists.
Moreover, Russian census results now
show that the Chinese are the fastest-growing minority
in Russia as a whole. Certainly, this fact will be used
in Russian domestic politics by those seeking to exploit
the age-old fear of the Mongols and the Chinese, but it
is unlikely to have more than a local or minor resonance
because the economic need to develop the Russian Far
East - the so-called Primorskii Krai or Maritime
Province - is too great, and nobody else will do it.
Indeed, as these labor shortages continue, the
provincial government in Primorskii Krai is now
entertaining the idea of inviting up to 150,000 refugees
from North Korea to become guest workers in the
province. This proposal has several aspects to it. First
of all, there is a humanitarian element to it as North
Korea's economy is obviously going nowhere, and this
opportunity would eagerly be grasped by North Koreans
desperate to improve their lives.
Certainly,
many have already tried to flee to China out of similar
desperation with local economic conditions. Obviously
this move also alleviates the local labor shortage and
adds to a reasonably large community of Koreans who have
settled in Russia since about 1860. Third, and the
regime in North Korea can well understand it since it,
too, originated in Russia, it creates the base for a
Russian-based Korean diaspora that could come to have an
influence on North Korea's future political and economic
evolution. Fourth, and again something that is not lost
on North Korea's authorities, such a proposal emulates
what Hungary did in 1989 by opening the door to the West
for East Germans who sought to emigrate.
In the
European case this move was a decisive point in the
acceleration of the velvet revolutions of that year that
destroyed the Soviet bloc and brought about the
unification of Germany. While bringing refugees out of
North Korea may not necessarily have so immense an
effect on the Korean peninsula, this is not a risk that
Pyongyang is likely to take lightly, or probably
support. A fifth consideration is that a proposal for
such mass emigration to Russia, if not other places too,
might be broached as part of a package deal in the
upcoming negotiations with North Korea to alleviate its
awful economic conditions. But it is not yet clear if
that proposal will make it onto the agenda of those or
any subsequent negotiations.
But beyond those
considerations, the proposal, along with the continuing
growth of Chinese immigration, suggests that the
complexion of Russian Asia is changing exactly as Putin
has warned because of an inability to develop the region
so that its economy rests on something more solid than
the price of massive oil and natural gas exploits to
other Asian states. In fact, even as Russia strives with
difficulty to negotiate those huge deals, it is
gradually leaving Asia.
Whether de facto
or ultimately de jure, the inability to convert
Russian Asia into a truly integrated and thriving
economy that links European Russia to it and/or that
connects as well to East Asia's developed economies
signifies the continuing failure of Russia's economic
and administrative policies in Asia. Hence, Putin's
warnings may be coming true. It could well be the case
that a major transformation of East Asia, eg, Korean
unification, is necessary to stimulate Russian Asia's
economic development to the point where the entire
Russian nation could benefit from it. Certainly one
cannot rule out such a possibility.
But in the
meantime, people and governments are following their own
urgent economic imperatives and creating facts on the
ground. And in a demographic, if not juridical sense,
Russian Asia is being reclaimed by its original rulers,
and may yet soon be seen as Asian Russia. And in view of
the spreading influence of Chinese economic power and
the economic capabilities already present in South Korea
and Japan, it may well become those states which become
the engine of development in Primorskii Krai and its
neighboring provinces, rather than Moscow.
In
that case, Moscow's de jure title to the land
will become of progressively less significance compared
to the economic realities on the ground. In opening up
Russian Asia to foreign workers, Moscow was forced to
bow to the inevitable. But the question then becomes
exactly what does the inevitable really signify for the
future of those provinces?
Stephen
Blank is an analyst of international security
affairs residing in Harrisburg, PA.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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