Posted on 05/04/2016 10:22:49 PM PDT by Trumpinator
Call it the Muscovite version of "manifest destiny." On Monday, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that offers every Russian citizen a tract of land in their country's remote Far East.
"All citizens will be entitled to apply for up to hectare of land in the Kamchatka, Primorye, Khabarovsk, Amur, Magadan and Sakhalin regions, the republic of Sakha, or the Jewish and Chukotka autonomous districts," the Moscow Times reports. This is a vast stretch of territory spanning the upper Arctic reaches near Alaska, down to islands off the coast of Japan and deep into the Siberian hinterland.
Those interested in the venture can hold their hectare (about 2.5 acres) free of payment or tax for five years. After that, they would receive titles to their plot provided they have put it to use in the prior years.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It is at least two decade late. This has been a great strategic blunder of Russia, which has always mystified me. China is wasting no time to slowly take over the region. They are resorting to their old-fashioned way of sending large number of migrants to settle sparsely populated area.
Out there in the taiga where the mosquitoes are as big as pterodactyls
and as thick as stars in the Milky Way? What a deal!
Not really.
Specifically, bears and big cats?
I'll guess they have wolf packs, but maybe not, since it seems to be mostly forest, with only limited grazing areas for herd animals.
And zillions of mosquitoes.
And three months of darkness and sub-zero temperatures.
I'd like to visit for a few weeks in late August to early September.
The leaves would be just starting to change and the first frost would kill all the skeeters.
The Bolsheviks made that same promise to the peasants that they would own their land when they first gained power, it didn’t last long.
I forget whether a Homestead was a quarter section—160 acres, or a whole section—640 acres. My late husband and his brother recently sold a 40 acre 1/16th section in southern Illinois. Land had been subdivided among heirs. I cannot imagine migrating to Siberia for 2 1/2 acres unless near a city.
In some areas there are very rare Siberian tigers.
It was 160 acres. This was in the pre-tractor days and 160 was a tremendous amount of labor.
My great grandfather made the Cherokee Outlet run in 1893 in Oklahoma and got the deed after seven years of living on and improving the place. He bought two or three more quarter sections later.
The old boy died in his 90s when I was a toddler. Wish I could have talked to him.
Those regions of the Far East are mighty cold and you better like reindeer meat.
Tell that to the Tibetans.
Yea, I did know. History geek, here.
Tibetans have been linked to China for centuries in some form or another.
The population is growing again now that Orthodox Christianity is gaining power and influence.
for real.
This has been on the table for a long time:
(2010) But for most of the lifetime of the Soviet Union, the border was effectively closed. When it opened again in 1988, the fear of the ‘yellow peril’ resurfaced, based on a simple demographic reality: that Russians are hugely outnumbered by Chinese. Says Mikhael Kukharenko, head of the Chinese-government run Confucius Institute in Blagoveshchensk: ‘It’s a law of physics; a vacuum has to be filled. If there are no Russian people here, there will be Chinese people.’
The Russian government, too, has taken notice. During a recent visit to the Far East, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that ‘if we don’t step up the level of activity of our work [in the Russian Far East], then in the final analysis we can lose everything.’
The Russian government also has taken measures to strengthen Russian control over the Far East. It has introduced a program of incentives for ethnic Russians from Central Asia to move to the Russian Far East. http://thediplomat.com/2010/02/chinas-russian-invasion/
The LDPR’s vice-chairman, Igor Lebedev, who also happens to be the son of its leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, warned that “in 20 years there might be more Chinese than Russians in Trans-Baikal,” thus allowing the province to “be annexed by China”
My experience (living in China for 6 years, working here part-time for 12 years, and marrying a Shanghai lady) is that the Chinese have strong differences amongst themselves - but see themselves as ALL Chinese before anyone else.
If there aren’t any foreigners around, then they’ll squabble and call each other farmers and rice buckets, but when there is a foreigner in the mix - it’s a solid, united front of Chinese.
The Yuan dynasty ruled most of Siberia, and Tibetan/Chinese Bhuddism has been the main religion around Lake Baikal and places East since the 14th century.
It’s enough for the Chinese to claim “historical ties” in their assimilation of Siberia. And the resources in Siberia will be greatly needed, as China is facing a hard path to the South with the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia all pushing back against China’s claims in the South China sea. Easier to just take the petroleum and other resources in Siberia where they already run 90% of the economy and have millions of people settled.
Agreed. My guess is before 2024 that China will assert that “Siberia is historically Chinese”, much like they did with Mongolia and Tibet. And with two generations of local Siberians raised with China money, influence, infrastructure and attention (which Moscow ignored for decades) - it will be a fairly quiet affair. Russia would love to stop it, but it’s too far away from Moscow, China has massive forces on the ground (and probably already in Siberia), and the local people will overwhelmingly support being in Beijing’s sphere, rather than Moscow.
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