GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

In Russia's Pivot to Asia, Economic Attraction Lags Hard Power

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Artyom Lukin
Board of Contributors

Sep 12, 2019 | 09:00 GMT

This June 29, 2015, file image shows the start of construction of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline near Heihe, China.

Construction began on the 3,968-kilometer (2,465-mile) China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline in June 2015. The huge pipeline project is expected to be completed next year. The 2014 Ukraine crisis and the imposition of Western sanctions dramatically raised Russia's stakes in Asia.

(Xinhua/Song Fulai via Getty Images)

Highlights

  • For more than a decade, Russia has taken a number of steps to develop trade and investment in its Far East and establish closer economic ties with Asia.
  • Despite dramatically higher stakes in Asia for Moscow, Russia so far has largely failed to turn its Far East into a magnet for foreign businesses and the region remains dependent on Moscow and state-affiliated companies.
  • India has long been interested in Russia's Far East, despite its geographic distance from the region, where it could counterbalance China.

Russia held the fifth Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, its main Far Eastern city on its Pacific coast, on Sept. 4-6. The forum has been held annually since 2015 to showcase Moscow's commitment to the development of its vast Far Eastern areas and closer economic links with Asia. Russia's "turn to the East" began more than a decade ago. In December 2006, Putin convened a meeting of the Kremlin's Security Council, where it was decided to prioritize the development of the Russian Far East, a huge landmass stretching from the Trans-Baikal region to the Pacific Ocean. At this meeting, Putin invoked Russia's perennial fear of losing its Asian periphery, stressing that the underdevelopment of the country's sparsely populated but resource-rich Far East posed "a grave threat to our political and economic positions in Asia and the Pacific, and to the national security of Russia as a whole." The 2008 global financial crisis helped convince the Kremlin that the center of economic...

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