Клуб ядерных держав: Нашего полку прибыло…?

minchuk> Кстати в России (не в обиду, но похоже за малостью тебя тогда это не интересовало )

In 1990 a Jilin provincial official named Ding Shicheng stood up at an international conference on Northeast economic cooperation to make a carefully prepared proposal. He called for Chinese, Russian, and North Korean cooperation, assisted by external financing, to develop the lower reaches of the Tumen River and open Northeast China's access to the sea. The proposal was taken seriously because it had been reviewed and approved by China's State Council prior to the conference. The U.N. Development Program representative in Beijing subsequently expressed interest in this idea and it became the basis for the Tumen River Project announced by the U.N. in 1991.

By 1995 the governments of China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia had signed an U.N.-drafted agreement. The basic Tumen River development concept was to have multilateral committees made up of the member countries supervise a cadre of international civil servants who would manage the building and operation of a $20 billion port and free economic zone centered at Fangchuan. One can only surmise that these developments explain the substance and timing of Jiang's two visits to this area. Regrettably, it is unlikely that anyone will be visiting this site again soon to view the completed project.

The plan to develop a seaport at Fangchuan, the centerpiece of the hardware aspects of the project, is simply too unrealistic to advance much further. At present Fangchuan is quite literally little more than a signpost on the riverbank of the Tumen. There is no improved land transportation leading to it, and dredging the Tumen River to permit seagoing vessels to dock at Fangchuan would be an expensive and continuous process since the river is shallow and heavily laden with silt. Also, the river is subject to freezing in winter. The expense of developing Fangchuan into a port appears all the greater when Russian and North Korean ports exist nearby that can be cheaply developed. For this reason the North Koreans and the Russians, not to mention the Japanese and South Koreans who are expected to finance the project, are not wild about the idea. The North Koreans would prefer the Chinese to use their port at Rajin. The Russians, behind a smokescreen of concern over the impact of Fangchuan's development on the environment, want transit trade to pass through underutilized Russian ports such as Zarubino, Vladivostok, and Nakhodka.

The political aspects of the project are equally problematic. The proposal to place the lower reaches of the Tumen under a joint international authority would give China a long desired northern access to the sea. It also promises technocratic management of infrastructure construction, trade and investment measures, and the distribution of costs and benefits. Nonetheless, it ignores the unwillingness of North Korea to cede even one inch of sovereign territorial rights. Russia tends in this direction, too, because a withdrawal of its sovereign rights over this corner of territory could make it difficult to recover them if it decided to pull out of the agreement, and meanwhile the benefits of such a concession are unclear. Together with the scarcity of foreign capital for infrastructure development due to the Asian financial crisis, not to mention the unpredictability of events in North Korea, these factors in all probability mean that further progress on the Tumen River development project is unlikely.

This is not to say that the project is pointless. The involved parties want to keep the idea of regional cooperation alive but the vehicle will have to be changed radically if it is to survive. Basically, there should be a shift from intensive development around Fangchuan to smaller scale, more geographically dispersed projects. For example, international resources could be devoted to upgrading the transportation, customs facilities, and telecommunications needed to activate such border crossings as Heihe, Suifenhe, Changlingzi, Tumen City, and Saeppyol, as well as the ports of Rajin, Zarubino, and the ports around Vladivostok. The idea would be to promote international trade via several routes rather than through a single mega-project. Technical studies should refocus on problems in the larger Northeast Asian transportation and telecommunications network, and the oversight committees established by the 1995 Tumen River agreement could work on coordinating liberalization measures and ensuring that national and sub-national needs and responsibilities were met in any projects that materialize.