The overall Russian population is declining
The Siberian population has been declining even faster as people move to European Russia
Where are the people going to come from?
And where are the jobs?
Chinese Economics Thread
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The overall Russian population is declining
The Siberian population has been declining even faster as people move to European Russia
Where are the people going to come from?
And where are the jobs?
But which old nations doesn't have shitty population numbers its not something a developed nation has cracked yet. Even the US has what looks like its approaching its population ceiling.
The westward migration in Russia is why Shoigu wants to build those 3~5 big cities in Siberia to stem that migration because Europe is a lost cause diplomatically and economically not really vibrant. They need more people in the east to exploit opportunities Siberian can offer, the question is will the Russians population go along with this needed redistribution of human resources to different regions of their country.
This is a senseless white elephant project designed to siphon off some construction money in corruption schemes. People are moving from Russian Far East and Siberia westwards not because they don't have shiny new cities but because of lack of infrastructure, jobs, quality education, bad climate, etc. If Russia wants to repopulate its eastern territories, then the aforementioned issues need to be addressed instead of building cities in the middle of nowhere. Even then, the shitty climate issue will remain.
Frankly, the Russian east will probably keep being underdeveloped for the foreseeable future due to the extreme centralization of Russia, small economy, and low population relative to its size.
Indeed. Only way they could achieve this, is if they enlisted Chinese help (money/expertise).
Who knows, most probably China would be interested in order to bring Russia closer to the East and away from the West.
This would be a strategic project with a total investment of dozens (maybe 100) of billions
Anyway, that's offtopic. I just wanted to highlight that China would be interested in realigning Russia's centuries old relationship with Europe from the West to the East
I doubt China could do much there though - it can provide money but that's it, the key bottleneck is population and willingness of people to move there. If you take a look at the economic structure of Siberia & the Far East, you'll see that the dominant sector there is mining (including oil & gas) - right now, the eastern part of Russia is essentially in a colonial mode where their main purpose is to extract natural resources from there and move to the western part, where most of the development actually happens. No wonder people try to move to Moscow and other big cities in the European part of Russia. There were attempts to overturn that but they mostly fail because Russia would need to restructure its economy and political organization (less centralization) to achieve that.
China can't even fix its own Northeast.
China creates “corridors” of economic activity, whicih creates jobs and development along them, China and Russia just announced a new freight train service, via Moscow, to Europe, which takes only 14 days.
Just beacause there is nothing there now doesn’t mean it couldn’t be transformed if China and Russia commit.
I think that westerners like us, Andrew, sometimes lack the vision of the Chinese to look at empty land and see the possibilities.
No, it's basic transport economics
What are these corridors of economic activity supposed to be based on?
Most of Siberia is too remote and relies on expensive road/rail transport, rather than sea transport
It means many industries just can't make economic sense because the customers and/or supplies are located elsewhere
And that elsewhere is primarily inside China, which is where the final demand is, and has much better access to ocean transport.
Resource extraction in Siberia by its nature, doesn't rely on many people
Before thinking about building new transport corridors, look at the existing corridors in Siberia and understand why they are steadily losing jobs and population
I remember reading about problems of far eastern Russia a long time ago, as far back as when I first started seriously following development of China.. So it got me into reading up modern sino Russia relationship
More than 10 years. They were already talking about developing this area and fixing the imbalance but so far nothing solid has materialized. I guess this means it's not a big priority or it is simply too difficult am issue to solve.
More than 10 years. They were already talking about developing this area and fixing the imbalance but so far nothing solid has materialized. I guess this means it's not a big priority or it is simply too difficult am issue to solve.