

China Builds EU Beachhead With $5 Billion City in Belarus - bangkoknights
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-26/china-builds-eu-beachhead-with-5-billion-city-in-belarus.html

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wyck
Some fun facts about Belarus:

\- 51.2% of Belarusians are employed by state-controlled companies.

\- Political opponents have been violently suppressed

\- Per capita income $6.8k

\- A fifth of Belarusian land (principally farmland and forests in the
southeastern provinces) continues to be affected by radiation fallout from
Chernobyl

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jvm
It's fairly accurate to think of it as a place that has tried as hard as
possible not to move away from the Soviet economic/social/political model.

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greenyoda
Manhattan isn't that big as far as cities go. It's only 23 square miles, less
than 8% of NYC's land area.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan>

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revelation
_A beachhead is a temporary line created when a military unit reaches a beach
by sea and begins to defend the area while other reinforcements help out until
a unit large enough to begin advancing has arrived._

Sometimes, bias is only in language.

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tarkin2
This is very interesting development in European politics and "Europe's last
dictatorship".

Especially since the 'threat' of China often seems to be one thing that can
unite the member states.

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IsaacL
Is anyone else reminded of the "charter city" they were going to build in
Honduras? (Paul Romer had the idea, inspired by Shenzhen, of having third
world countries set aside land to be under the jurisdiction of first world
countries with more stable legal regimes. The plan being that this would
attract international businesses and then bootstrap the rest of the countries
development). In Honduras they ended up cancelling the idea, to the cheers of
many in the Western press who thought it had echoes of colonialism. I doubt
this Chinese city will get the same negative backlash.

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ihnorton
_This American Life_ did a story on the idea and backlash:
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/483/s...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/483/self-improvement-kick?act=2)

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raldi
That [edit: was] an extremely misleading headline. It'll only be 40% larger
than Manhattan _in acreage._

In terms of population, it'll be 1/10th the size of Manhattan.

(Still pretty impressive, though!)

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salemh
_China, which signed a $3 billion currency swap deal with Belarus in 2009 to
boost trade, agreed to finance the venture with low-interest loans as long as
half the money is spent on Chinese materials..._

Can someone explain the four-year planning of the currency swap related to the
actual build-out? Or am I seeing something of insignificance related to the
whole of the article?

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koenigdavidmj
We're on a dictatorship kick today, it seems.

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wcfields
Ain't no party like the people's party because it's mandatory.

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hoprocker
Hilarious.

Although it's projected to be 140% the size of Manhattan, the article states
that the city will accommodate only 150,000 residents. Indeed, the article
also says that the entire country of Belarus is only 9.5 million inhabitants,
just 15% or so larger than all of NYC.

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make3
So what, China wants to move some of its industry there, or does it simply
want to enable its companies to send their stuff there and re-export it from
there, dodging EU taxes in the mean time

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stevoski
This piece reads like a press release.

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cinquemb
I wonder if this will end up like the other cities that sprung up in china
that have yet to have any inhabitants…

Well, congrats to whoever gets awarded with the contracts…

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bangkoknights
_> The hub will put Chinese exporters within 170 miles of EU members Poland
and Lithuania and give them tax-free entry into Russia and Kazakhstan, which
share a customs union. It will also let them draw from a workforce that’s 99.6
percent literate and makes $560 a month on average, half the Polish wage._

Imagine a Shenzhen on the edge of Europe. This is probably a hammer blow for
domestic manufacturing in EU countries.

Chinese outsourcing and freedom from EU regulation will be just an hour or two
away from every single entrepreneur in Europe.

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jpatokal
You've got to be kidding me. Belarus is a landlocked tinpot dictatorship with
an unreformed state-run economy, notoriously arbitrary government,
strangulatory red tape, sanctions up the wazoo and virtually no access to EU
markets, as it's outside every single European institution:

<http://boingboing.net/2011/03/12/venn-diagram-illustr.html>

Hint: Belarus's flag is not in there at all. Add in a near-total lack of
workers skilled in post-1950s technology, English, or for that matter any
language except Russian, and I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to
locate a factory.

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yread
> near-total lack of workers skilled in post-1950s technology

[citation needed]

>I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to locate a factory.

How many factories have you placed? Would you put one in Bangladesh?

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jpatokal
The article touts Belarus' monthly salaries of $650, but in Bangladesh, you
can hire people for _$60_. And besides, multinationals don't operate their own
factories in .bd, they just contract out to the lowest local bidder.

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glut
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords!

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cadalac
> Last year, Germany’s openly gay foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, called
> Belarus “the last dictatorship in Europe,” prompting Lukashenko to quip that
> he’d “rather be a dictator than gay.”

Probably the first and last time I'll ever agree with a dictator.

