Russia offers free land to all citizens willing to move to the Far East

washingtonpost.com ^ | Ishaan Tharoor | May 4 at 4:00 AM

[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.

[Shanghai Dan]

China has basically 3 natural resources:

1. People (1.4 billion and counting)
2. Land (about as big an area as the US)
3. Coal (low grade, but lots of it)

They do not have much timber reserves. Very little petroleum or metals. Very little clean water (all their rivers are like the Mississippi - slow and muddy but with extra polluted).

To continue growing, they either keep importing, or find new domestic sources of these items. Thus the push to the Spratley Islands (petroleum) and the focus on Siberia (cleaner coal, petroleum, wood, land).

[Trumpinator]

They know there are ethnic differences, but IMHO it’s seen more as what we do in the US - Southern slow folks, Yankee slicksters, etc. But they all consider themselves Chinese and will rally together immediately, even if they are from different provinces and backgrounds.

I take the long view of Chinese history where every 100 years or so the Chinese power structure loses the mandate of heaven and the country breaks apart and devolves into warlordism and the central authority fights to bring the regions under heel.

I find China's current govt seeking expansion via influence rather than land grabs - up to the point. If there is a historic claim from imperial times to the land than there is a possibility of expansion in that direction like the South China seas. But in regions that do not have a historic association with China they kind of rather have influence rather than conquest.

The annexation meme is because you view this as a fellow westerner. It is what we westerners would do with a Siberia situation - see the Western USA for example - but it is not the Chinese historical example.

With the end of Communism the Chinese govt pretends it is a communist party but no longer acts like one. The Communist Party in China was hollowed out of the ideology and those that remained just exist to keep themselves in power. The mandate of heaven is the Chinese economy. If that falters than the party will lose power and it already lost its reason for being as a communist ideology party. I think in 50 years China will break up like Syria into Warlord states.

See also: Five races under one union was one of the major principles upon which the Republic of China was founded in 1911 at the time of the Xinhai Revolution. the Han (red); the Manchus (yellow); the Mongols (blue); the "Hui" (Muslim Chinese) (white); and the Tibetans (black).

To me this is China in 50 years - not an empire but a fractured state:

[gleeaikin]

When his brother wanted to sell his share, my husband and I went out to Illinois to decide whether to buy him out or also sell. We went to the county courthouse and researched old land records. Hubby’s maternal grandfather had acquired the 40 acres after court proceedings with 8 or 9 relatives. It sounded like an exhausting legal fight. Then he caught typhoid at age 42 and died.

His father had raised a company and led it as a captain in the Civil War. We saw his Egyptian obelisk tomb stone in the cemetery and a small white marble obelisk given by his troops. He must have died around the time the obelisk was raised at the Museum of Natural History in New York. History is so interesting.

[Joe Boucher]

U.S. Federal gubmint ought to make the same happen for our citizens only our west where the damned federal gubmint owns about 85 percent of our land.

[Shanghai Dan]

I guess I see it differently. The feudalism of China is pretty much gone; it’s not the same game as it was 100 years ago. Getting into the culture over here for a few decades will give you that view.

I’ve traveled all over China, and I’d say 90% of all Chinese see themselves as Chinese first, then their provincial/city stock second. China’s unified immensely, much like Italy and Germany in the late 1800s.

[Trumpinator]

I think China is not as Westerners think. I think she seeks empire via kowtow rather than direct colonization expansion or overlordship. That is why I think the Chinese would but influence over Siberia but not plant their flat there.

[gleeaikin]

We have those tiny flies, called black flies or no-see-ems in the northern US and Canada. I read that hunting guides stop eating sugar for about six weeks before black fly and mosquito season and get bit less. When I was 15, I went with my parents and little brothers to Laurentide Park in Quebec, Canada. Late every afternoon the no-see-ems would come out for an hour and we would all crawl into our sleeping bags and pull the top in and closed and spend the next hour talking and telling stories.

Someone said they wished we still had homesteading. I am told they have such a program in Puerto Rico, and some of it is coastal land.

When I was a child in 1943, I came home from kindergarten and found my father and a man with a horse and mold board plow digging up most of our grassy areas. There was an area to the right of the house, in front of the house, a little to the left of the house and a big area of to the farther left. There was also a wooded area with 3 or 4 old pear trees, an apple tree, a Concord grape vine, a rhubarb patch, black raspberries, and blackberries. We lived 3 miles from NY City. The first year we grew potatoes to the right, corn in front and on the side, and all kinds of things in the big patch. I think Pop dropped the potato patch after the first year, and the corn in front of the house a year or two later. He would grow 4 to 6 kinds of tomatoes, beans, and several varieties of corn, spinach, root vegetables, etc. I would say we grew, ate, canned and preserved about 50 different varieties of fruit and vegetable. I think we only bought meat, grain and dairy products. The gardening was on 1/4 to 1/3 acre. We kept the garden for a total of 12 years. Boy was I healthy with the good food and all that work in the garden and in the kitchen.

[SunkenCiv]

Homesteading in eastern Siberia... this may be a delayed response to the many Chinese expatriates who had left China behind to start anew in the largely empty vast wilderness.

[SunLakesJeff]

bookmark. Too interesting to let pass.

[Shanghai Dan]

Who’s the Westerner? If anything, you’re showing a typical Western bias that China has not changed. Try living there for a few years, marry into a Chinese family and learn their culture, and you’ll see it differently.

China has expansionist plans, an is proving so with squabbles over the Spratley Islands right now. Building islands in the middle of an ocean 1000 km from your land is definitely expansionist. Taking a position of just influence-not-location is IMHO ignorant of the current action and attitude of the modern China (and the millions already living in Siberia).

[AdmSmith]

The long term plan:

The Chinese government's decision to rescind its one-child policy and allow Chinese parents to have two children has attracted attention around the world; its concurrent decision reported this weekend to allow Chinese living in regions bordering Russia to have three children is likely to attract even more attention in that country.

If that leads to a population boom in these border areas either because Chinese already there decide to have three children or other Chinese move in to take advantage of this exception, some in Russia are likely to view this as yet another demographic threat from China, whose population density in border areas is already far higher than in the Russian Federation.

Obviously, this is a long-term challenge given that few of those born under this new Beijing policy would come of age before 2040; but even that will be enough to raise questions in Russian minds about China's intentions toward Siberia and the Russian Far East and about Vladimir Putin's tilt away from Europe and toward China.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.se/2016/04/beijing-allows-chinese-living-in.html

[Trumpinator]

Ethnic tribes in rural areas were largely exempt from the one child policy. This colonial view of China is Western projection of Western values on China. The Chinese don’t think like westerners and don’t act like them either. The Chinese want to rule Siberia and the world but via kowtow not direct colonization.

[antidisestablishment]

The first frost does not kill article mosquitoes—they laugh at ice.

[odds]

I have worked with numerous people of ‘recent’ and ‘more distant’ (30 yrs ago) Chinese descent in Australia, over the years.

In more recent times, can say the ones from Hong Kong have been aggressively buying up property in Australia (last 15 years especially). An initial investment for them to get a foot-hold — these were / are typically cashed up. They make a lot of money in China.

In the 1980s it was the Japanese who were doing pretty much the same in Australia. But compare the population of Japan to China; and many Japs I know in Australia are actually selling their property in Australia and moving back to Japan now.

The more recent Chinese, some of whom enter Australia via NZ, are usually from mainland China, surprising or not, are also cashed up. A few of those clearly state they don’t want to live in China as a ‘life choice’ because in main cities in China there are too many people living in high rise buildings (on top of each other, literally), and no other space to “enjoy life”.

I do believe the Chinese are colonizing and their attempt at colonization is expansionist, yet currently in a more economic sense.

In fact, in Australia, I wouldn’t worry about muslim influence but much more the Chinese influence.

[AdmSmith]

The acquisition of land in Australia and other Western countries might as well be a strategy for individual Chinese investors to keep the money safe in case of problems in China.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-lost-500-billion-in-reserves-in-2015-2016-5

But the strategy to acquire land in Russia is probably not for safe keeping.

[odds]

“But the strategy to acquire land in Russia is probably not for safe keeping.”

Then, what is it for?

[AdmSmith]

It is strategic, i.e. political, there are much better safe investments for individual Chinese investors than spending their money on Russian land. These investments are for state money.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Many, many years ago, I had the good fortune to meet a “White Russian”. His features were very Mongoloid, and he spoke fluent Chinese. His village, although technically inside Russia, was more influenced by Chinese culture than Russian.

[odds]

Yes.
Even during the Cold War era the Chinese never accepted the Soviets as ‘true communists’. Ok, the Soviets were Socialists. But a good portion & culturally were Europeans.
Today, in Australia, unfortunately, there is cultural socialism combined with economic capitalism (not too dissimilar to today’s China).
The Chinese and alike continue to be rapidly let into the country. I’d bet, given the population of China alone, if they each ever spat towards Australia, there’ll be floods much more often than drought.

[AdmSmith]

Not only in Russia

Police have detained dozens of protesters in Kazakhstan during anti-government rallies in the country’s major cities, prosecutors said.

Opposition activists had called for demonstrations in the Central Asian country’s largest cities, including Astana, Almaty and Karagandy, to protest a controversial proposal for land reforms that includes liberalising the sale and rental of farmland to foreigners.

There are fears it could lead to Chinese farmers acquiring large swathes of land.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/dozens-detained-kazakhstan-land-reform-protests-160521132802863.html

Something is happening in Orenburg as well. But it is dated May 23, so we have to wait a few days...

https://openrussia.org/post/view/15153/