Russia and China in the Far East: How Long Can the Honeymoon Last?

The Economist and The Financial Times feed off each other and it is usually The Economist that does the hunting and the FT that feeds off the rest of the carcass. The two links above concern a subject also in Mark Steyn's brilliant book America Alone, which charts the demographic decline of Russia as a reason that its population in its Far East will wither away. America might take some lessons from the Russians.

The hard-working Chinese have been in Siberia since Anton Chekhov visited in the 19th century, but the Russian police have been good at keeping them under control and from overpopulating the vast empty stretches of frozen tundra. When I was in the State Dept., I had to forward Top Secret docs to Vance at the UN over the only fax machine so enabled, and they invariably had ELINT and UMBRA headings with descriptions of Russian and Chinese troop manoeuvers and outbreaks of open fighting along the Ussuri and Amur Rivers. The Russo-Chinese struggle has now ceased, thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev, and Putin and Hu are on amicable terms.

However, demography is destiny and the continuing diminishment of the Russian population, largely due to the lack of investment incentives offered by the torpid listless Russian bureaucracy to settle in the Far East as well as national tendencies to abort pregnancies, predictably means that eventually a lot of Chinese will be eyeing the empty spaces to the North for settlement.

Actually, the Chinese policy of only one child per couple will cause some sort of slowdown in the final quest for Lebensraum, but it is hard to imagine a sluggish Russian work ethic sustaining its hold over the vast Siberian resource base forever. But unlike the US, in Russia politicians are doing something about rampant immigration:

Already, Russian politicians exploit the "yellow peril" fear. New federal rules limiting the role of non-Russians in retail markets, aimed at Caucasians in European Russia, will hit Chinese markets in the Far East too. But outsiders should not take heart: if warm Sino-Russian relations raise eyebrows in some quarters, a big falling out could be far be more troubling.

Unlike Washington, some Russian politicians have spines down their backs when illegal immigration is concerned.