[Salon] Far Eastern Economic Forum

Far Eastern Economic Forum: perhaps the least covered international event by Western major media this week

Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Mongolia at the start of this week drew the attention of U.S. and European media. The BBC and, I assume, other broadcasters put on screen video clips of the honor guard reception for the Russian President. However, nearly all coverage was directed at one very specific aspect of the visit: that it was Vladimir Putin’s first visit to a member state of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had issued a year ago an international arrest warrant following the Court’s determination of his responsibility for what Ukrainian authorities called a deportation of Ukrainian children to children from their homes in occupied Ukraine to the Russian interior.

I won’t go into the details of the allegations against Putin other than to say that the charges were false and defamatory, since the children involved, whether orphans or otherwise, were left without parental supervision in areas of combat. They were temporarily moved away for their own safety. The entire proceedings of the ICC were a textbook case of manipulation and abuse of international organizations by the United States and could only serve to discredit such institutions and limit their effectiveness in pursuing justice in other cases that fall within their remit.

What happened in Mongolia, which is a member of the ICC and has a judge in its ranks, is that Ulan Bator refused to execute the arrest warrant and proceeded to give Mr. Putin a very warm welcome indeed, to the dismay of the United States which, with France and other allies (see the visit of Emmanuel Macron not long ago), had in advance applied all possible pressure on the Mongol leadership, shall we say by the usual extortionate methods, to prevent the visit of the Russian president.

From the Russian perspective, Putin’s visit to Ulan Bator was timed to coincide with the September 2-3 observance of the end of WWII in the Pacific, thereby providing an opportunity to recall the time when Mongolia and Soviet Russia worked very closely together to combat Japanese occupiers of nearby Chinese Manchuria. The visit featured wide-ranging discussions of possible new joint Russian-Mongolian infrastructure projects, including the long-delayed construction of a Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline across Mongolia to facilitate deliveries of natural gas to China’s western regions.

For Mongolia, Putin’s visit provided an opportunity to assert its sovereignty and independence of Western meddling after a long period as a would-be American protectorate that began in the early 1990s when the Russian Federation slashed ties with Soviet dependencies like Mongolia and Cuba for which it no longer had the personnel or money to continue. Indeed, today Mongolia is both economically and diplomatically walking a tightrope between East and West very much in the same way as India. Commercial ties with Russia in particular are going strong, inasmuch as Russia provides one third or more of the country’s refined oil and other hydrocarbon imports.

None of these consequential elements of Mr. Putin’s visit to Mongolia were reflected in Western media accounts. No matter! What followed, when the Russian president proceeded on his way to the final destination of his trip, Vladivostok for the just opening Far Eastern Economic Forum was a still more complete news blackout by the West.

Well, not quite complete. I understand that the online editions of several British newspapers did serve up to their subscribers live coverage of Mr. Putin’s keynote address to the plenary session of the Forum yesterday.

Nonetheless, you likely have very little inkling of what has been going on in Vladivostok, and in the brief remarks that follow I will try to fill in the gaps.

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This was the 9^th edition of the Far Eastern Forum in Vladivostok which is a counterpoint to the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum that takes place in the spring. As in Petersburg, the Vladivostok event brings in commercial and diplomatic missions from all over the world and it also has very important foreign statesmen who appear on the dais with Vladimir Putin during the plenary session. They deliver speeches and participate in a Q&A. This time there were more than 70 countries represented at the Forum and the VIP foreign guests were the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, and the Chinese Vice President, Han Zheng.

The presence of Mr. Ibrahim was particularly relevant and also shocking for the Collective West, which is one reason you did not see his face on the BBC this week. Just a reminder that Britain was the former colonial overlord in what is now Malaysia.

Malaysia has formally requested to join BRICS and Russia will be the sponsor of their candidacy. They will participate in the BRICS summit that will be held in Kazan on 26 October and their admittance to the club as full members is a foregone conclusion.

Malaysia will be the first member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to join BRICS, but we may well expect others to join soon after, starting perhaps with Vietnam. Their joining BRICS represents a significant departure from Malaysia’s hitherto close ties with the United States. There may be many explanations for this change of direction, but one standout is the country’s religious orientation. Malaysia’s population of 35 million is predominantly Muslim and they have watched with horror the Israeli genocide in Gaza which is enabled by Washington.

Russian commentators on Mr. Ibrahim’s address to the plenary session last night directed attention to his remarks on what sets Russia apart from other nations. Yes, he said, it is a major military power and economic power, but it is also a country with significant Soft Power attractiveness thanks to its cultural heritage. Ibrahim said that he was first drawn to the power of Russian literature through the books of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but then moved on to Chekhov and even the poetess Akhmatova. No doubt he said this with sincerity, but if he had been looking for a key to win over the sympathies of Russians for his country apart from the fine beaches which each year bring in 150,000 Russian tourists, then he could do no better than by highlighting Russian culture. We do not yet know what commercial deals were signed off between Malaysian and Russian companies during the Forum, but surely there were some successes at the level of mutual investments in manufacturing and software among other domains.

PRC Vice President Han Zheng was smiling and satisfied with the proceedings even when the moderator posed a rather provocative question about why the Chinese government seemed to be holding back Chinese companies from setting up shop across the border in Russia. Mr. Putin jumped in to soften the blow, explaining that Russia is doing everything possible now to make such moves more attractive to their prospective Chinese partners.

As regards China, Orientalist experts appearing on the Russian talk shows in the evening explained that there are ever closer relations being established between the northeast region of China and the Russian Far East region. Indeed, while the South of China is oriented to doing business with the United States and Europe, the Northeast is integrating with Russia. To add momentum to this trend, a number of the key infrastructure projects that President Putin mentioned in his address to the plenary session are precisely directed at improving logistics of trade across the Amur River, meaning additional bridges and improved customs posts so that waiting time for trucks can be reduced to 10 minutes or less.

What little reporting on Putin’s remarks at the Forum that we see in Western media have cherry picked his answers to some questions following his speech, so as to produce the impression that he spoke about the Ukraine conflict and was in one way or another threatening the West with nuclear attack. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This year’s Economic Forum was dedicated to the theme of the Far Eastern region in 2030. Accordingly, Mr. Putin’s speech dealt exclusively with Russia’s plans for accelerated development of the region through two parallel sets of initiatives: building infrastructure to attract companies to the region and ensuring living conditions for the local population that are highly attractive. The idea is to offer career growth to Russians under the age of 35 who will settle there for a good long time, raise families and provide a pool of skilled manpower to drive economic expansion that far outstrips that of other Russian regions.

The infrastructure investments by the government will focus first on logistics and transportation. This means doubling or more the freight capacity of the mainline railroads serving the region, namely the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal-Amur railway (BAM in Russian). In the time period under discussion, Russia will complete construction of a major highway extending from Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok in the East. It means expanding airports, expanding seaports and the like in the Maritime region and in the adjacent Far Eastern regions as far west as Eastern Siberia and as far north as the arctic coast where further investment is needed to accommodate growing use of the Northern Sea Route and to serve the centers of extractive industries. Some of the regional infrastructure will be done in joint government-private business ventures, with which Russia has many years of fruitful experience now.

With regard to incentives to encourage migration to the Far East, the existing preferential 2% mortgage rate for settlers under the age of 35, for veterans of the SMO, for doctors, school teachers and other professions in great demand will be continued and expanded to take in still more categories of applicants. New housing developments will be endowed with medical clinics, high quality schools and other essentials of comfortable family life. The days of dormitory accommodations for workers attached to factories built in vast empty lands typical of the Soviet days are recognized as having inhibited long term settlement of the region, and will not be repeated.

Particular efforts will be made to improve higher education with establishment of additional university centers and expansion of existing ones, as in Vladivostok itself. Where possible, commercial research centers will be attached to these universities.

In fact, the guiding principles of the master plan for the period to 2030 have been in place for nearly a decade, though they were financed much more modestly. Nonetheless, they achieved results that Vladimir Putin could read off to the audience: namely positive demographic trends, especially as regards young settlers aged 20-22 and the higher rate of economic growth. As Putin said in the conclusion of his speech, the Far Eastern region is the leader in Russia’s outreach to the world, being situated among the world’s most dynamic countries that outpace the West by more than 2:1.

To be sure, Vladimir Putin allowed himself to be drawn into discussion of world events outside the framework of the Forum. It is in this context that he spoke of the dire situation of the Ukrainian military in the Donbas, who have exhausted their human reserves and lost their armor. He also allowed himself to reply to a question about whom Russia favors as winner of the November presidential elections in the USA. With a wry smile, he acknowledged that Russia’s choice is Kamala because of her ‘contagious smile.’ He said he does not believe that a person with such a smile could be truly hostile. To this, I will quote from Verdi’s Rigoletto: ‘le prince s’amuse.’