Putin decided to lease an enormous stretch of land in Eastern Siberia to China for 50 years. Obviously, this lease is actually a sale because how do you just displace the Chinese from there 50 years later?
The Chinese are saying they are planning to grow sunflowers there. 284,050 acres of sunflowers in Eastern Siberia. This totally makes sense, especially given that sunflowers don’t grow in the climate of that area.
And it also made crazy oodles of sense to sink a trillion roubles and Russia’s relationship with the West into the annexation of the Crimea when there is so much unused land in Russia that’s being sold piecemeal.
Of course, it’s not all as deranged as it sounds. There is a logic behind all this, and that logic is called “Let’s stick it to the West.” Americans will not be happy over the expansion of China, and Putin will gladly cut parts of Russia off to spite the US.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is China’s last-ditch attempt to make a play for the role of the greatest superpower. It’s doomed to fail but they will keep trying for as long as they can. If Russia is giving them an in, why wouldn’t they take it.
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All true. China’s economy is slowing, it is becoming very hard to retain the country’s #1 place as the purveyor of cheap labor in the world. China simply doesn’t have what it takes to matter on the scale of the US or the EU or even India.
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Not sure I agree. The Chinese are having the same problem running a hybrid blend of command and free market economies that everyone else has. They are also into territorial expansion (e.g., mess in the China Sea). That doesn’t make them inept. The Russians need money, so selling land makes sense, if the land has no strategic value.
For me, the three interesting questions are: (1) How much more will Russia sell? (2) How much more land does China want? (3) How will China use the territory, in reality?
The other factor to consider: Putin doesn’t have the ability to stop the Chinese from taking more land if he refuses to sell it, short of a full nuclear war. He has to know that.
ISIS isn’t the only route to Armageddon.
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Yes, these are the crucial questions.
“(2) How much more land does China want?”
” (3) How will China use the territory, in reality?”
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Hasn’t there been a lot of Chinese ‘immigration’ into Siberia? Some years ago, a student of mine spent a year in Irkutsk and said there were lots of Chinese there.
And I see this from a year ago..
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82969
Given low Russian birth rates and Chinese economic expansion maybe Russia wants to ‘sell’ what it can before it’s simply taken.
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Yes, the Russians have been freaking out about the Chinese takeover of Siberia for a while. But now the war in Ukraine is offering a great distraction from what is happening “behind the Urals.”
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What’s really curious is what Putin will do with the money he gets from the deal.
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Hey, those Swiss bank accounts don’t fill themselves, you know…..
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Plus, buying off Greece will not come cheap. The Latin American “friends” are costing a pretty penny. Nobody is willing to love Putin for free these days. I heard that about 20% of Russia’s entire budget is secret. If one wants to offer oneself up for the role of the world’s superpower, one has to be prepared to pay for the privilege.
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Maybe off but still, what do you think about this:
The Russian government on Thursday strongly condemned the freezing of Russian accounts in France and Belgium as part of an effort to enforce a $50 billion judgment for the destruction of the Yukos oil company.
An arbitration court in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled last year that Russia must compensate the former shareholders of Yukos, which was destroyed in a politically driven legal onslaught that also sent its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to prison for 10 years.
The Foreign Ministry on Thursday summoned Belgium’s ambassador and warned that Moscow would consider taking similar action against Belgian accounts and property in Russia if the accounts of the Russian companies and diplomatic missions in Belgium were not released.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russian-accounts-frozen-france-belgium-yukos-case-31858294
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This whole YUKOS hullabaloo is just shameless. Once again, Europe is dropping the ball royally.
Khodorkovsky, the owner of YUKOS, was one of the robber bandits of the 1990s. He decided at some point that he was more than a simple stooge given this money to pretend there were actual reforms in Russia. He started making noises about wanting to have a role in politics. So Putin sent him to jail. Now he is out of jail and wants “his” money back. Of course, the money is not “his” in any way or manner.
It disgusts me beyond belief that Europe is defending one robber bandit against another robber bandit when they both suck equally. Khodorkovsky is a criminal, there is blood on his hands.
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