russia and greater china

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SPECIAL REPORT

RUSSIA ANDGREATER CHINA

Monthly supplement from Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Moscow, Russia) which takes sole responsibility for the contents

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Billionaire’s vision

High-profile businessman hopes next month’s summit in Vladivostok will boost his country’s

presence in Asia

New routes for exports

Organisation plans nuclear expansion

Moscow to unveil transport initiatives

> PAGE 4

Apec economies are focusing on developing new technology

> PAGE 7

Siberian adventure for visitors Trip to world’s largest freshwater lake is a once-in-a-lifetime experience

> PAGE 15

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RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA2 Tuesday, August 28, 2012

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PICTURE OF THE MONTH FUN AND GAMES NUMBERS GAME

If you thought the London Olympic Games were the only major internation-al competition this summer, you would be wrong. In Fujin, in China’s north-eastern Heilongjiang province, robots were involved in a heated dancing com-petition.

Some 29 teams from countries such as China, Russia, Mexico and South Korea competed in solo dance, pas de deux, group dance, ballet, yangge, street dance and folk dance, where a pair of giant panda-shaped robots drew atten-tion as they had to move more than 20 joints in their costumes while dancing. The team from Mexico took the title in the solo category. Harbin Engineering University won four prizes, while Shang-

hai Jiaotong University, St Petersburg National University and Fujin No 3 Mid-dle School also claimed awards. The Russian team won the “folk dance” cat-egory and came third in “original dance”.

Paratroopers are so cool Robots put their best feet forward in Chinese city 46

MEDAL COUNT

Former Russian paratroopers enjoy a holiday this month in Moscow, cool-ing down in fountains and breaking watermelons over their heads.

Pussy Riot members (from left) Maria Alekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova on trial in Moscow.

Russia was fourth in the gold medal count at the London Olympics with 24, but this didn’t stop some bloggers from claiming an overall victory. They took the 46 golds won by former parts of the Soviet empire, such as Ukraine, Kazakh-stan, Belarus, and proclaimed the USSR winner. The United States also won 46 golds, but the combined USSR score was higher, with more silver medals. Others argued that among empires, the USSR was only fifth. The old Mongol empire with 103 gold medals was first, while runner-up was the Roman Em-pire with 90. Third was shared by Han dynasty China and the British Empire as of 1946 borders, with 55 medals each.

Dancing robots exhibit their wares during the competition in Fujin.

Religion not the issueS

entenced to two years in pris-on for staging a punk prayer inside a Russian Orthodox ca-thedral, the all-female Pussy Riot punk band caused a sen-

sation at home and around the world. Their trial and sentencing was the most talked-about event in the country.

Members of the feminist group staged a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February. The three were arrested days later after a video of the performance appeared online.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutse-vich, 30, were each found guilty of hoo-liganism and inciting religious hatred earlier this month for lip synching a “punk prayer”.

During the trial, members of the group said their actions were motivat-ed by politics and not by “hate towards Orthodox religion”.

The court chose not to believe them, despite support from celebrities such as Paul McCartney and Madonna, and demonstrations of support that spread beyond Russia, to cities that included London, Paris, Berlin and New York.

The women “were motivated by re-ligious enmity and hatred, and acted provocatively and in an insulting man-ner inside a religious building in the presence of a large number of believ-

ROUND-UP

PERSONALITIES OF THE MONTH

ers”, the court said. Two of the accused have young children, one reason why some people opposed their arrest.

The trial caused a new wave of pro-tests and underlined how divided Rus-sian society is.

Most online commentators were sym-pathetic towards the group.

Nevertheless, opinion polls by the Levada centre found 44 per cent thought the controversial group received a fair trial, against 17 per cent who thought the opposite. Some 36 per cent of those polled agreed that the verdict was based on the facts, against 18 per cent who looked at it as a decision that was heav-ily influenced by the government.

Lawyers for the group say they plan to appeal.

RGC RECOMMENDS

Life and times in MoscowPlease check the new addition to our blogs page at rbth.asia. Former South China Morning Post journalist and Hongkonger Freda Wan spent a month in Moscow studying the Russian lan-guage six hours a day, five days a week.

She crams in the local culture, from the banya (a sauna) to contemporary art. Wan blogs twice a week about her Russian experiences and encounters, including visiting a wet market, getting lost inside Moscow University and learn-ing how to cook genuine Russian borsch (not the soup one can find in some res-taurants in Hong Kong).

Find more at www.rbth.asia/blogs

COSTLY LIVINGCapital is fourth most expensive city for expatriatesMercer’s latest “Cost of Living” ranking of the most expensive cities for expatri-ates puts Moscow in fourth place. Mer-cer examines the prices of 200 types of goods and services, including housing, transport and entertainment, in 214 cit-ies calculated in US dollars. Tokyo is the most expensive, followed by the Ango-lan capital, Luanda, and another Japa-nese city, Osaka, The average daily cost of an international class hotel in Mos-cow is US$3,118. It will cost US$2,340 in Hong Kong, which ranks ninth.

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RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINATuesday, August 28, 2012

Land of forgotten feelingsFunny and touching, ‘Slava’s Snowshow’ is a return to the realm of dreams and childhood, writes Ekaterina Zabrovskaya

THEATRE

They call Slava Polunin “the best clown in the world”.

London newspaper The Times dubbed his Snowshow “a theatre classic of the 20th

century”. Polunin began touring the world with his own shows in 1979. And in 1993 he created Slava’s Snowshow, which he has taken to Europe, Israel, North America and Asia. Snowshow has been shown in more than 50 cities to more than a million spectators, includ-ing a 2007 visit to Hong Kong. The show is in Singapore until September 9.

Snowshow is a brilliant and fascinat-ing collection of theatrical sketches: meetings, partings, joys and losses, with characters that are amusing and touch-ing oddities in yellow overalls or green coats. They are expressive clowns with amazing mimes, gestures and appear-ances of unsurpassed skill.

The show creates a kind of Alice in Wonderland, a land of forgotten feel-ings and emotions where there is hap-piness, gentleness and love.

The spectator cannot help but be drawn into this amazing world. Adults are reminded of what it is like to be a child. There are no familiar circus tricks in Snowshow. The artists do not juggle or walk on tightropes.

“I have removed anything that looks like a circus skill, in order to leave only that which is naive,” Polunin says. “So the clowns move from one corner to another, and the spectator should get the feeling that he can do the same too.”

He says the clowns only pretend to be clumsy, so that the audience will begin to identify with them.

Slava Polunin wants to teach people to be happy. His eccentric pantomime, which he dubbed ‘expressive idiotism’, has brought him enormous popularity in Russia and around the world.

Slava Polunin won the Laurence Olivier Prize for ‘Slava’s Snowshow’, which was acclaimed as the best theatrical show of 1998.

Snowshow is enjoying phenomenal success as it travels throughout the world. It is notable that every time Po-lunin performs it, while retaining the overall structure of the show, he adapts it to the mentality of the audience and the traditions of the country where he is performing. The artist does not have a permanent company but reportedly relies on dozens of friends from around the world.

He once explained: “Every time we go somewhere, I ask myself what kind of country is it? What’s the atmosphere there? Who would be able to convey it best? Then, out of all my friends I choose the ones who will be most appropriate for that situation – the passionate ones are best for the Spanish, and the clev-erest ones for the British, while for Rus-sia I take the gentlest ones, because the Russian audience is the most empa-thetic.”

As Polunin once said, that is why Snowshow “is like jazz, it’s constant im-provisation”.

“The person sitting in the audience sees the clown as himself in the acting space and literally becomes part of the performance. In other words, this hu-morous oddity becomes the represent-ative of the spectator in that unreal world,” Polunin has told various news-papers.

The spectator does not just sit in the theatre, it’s as if he’s on stage. The the-atre itself, with its walls and ceiling, its scenery and wings, is his inner world.

“We are not running away from the existing reality, but creating a new one in which we are happy, and we want to teach this to other people,” Polunin once noted, and spectators responded sensitively to this idea.

One blogger noted: “An hour and a half of childhood – that’s great. Don’t pick the show to pieces, don’t compare it, don’t try to dig deeply into it. The child inside you will make it all clear. If you go looking for happiness, for a fairy tale, for a dream, this show has everything.”

Polunin, appearing as a small, naive and timid man in shapeless bright yellow overalls, a red scarf and shaggy red slippers, radiates waves of good-ness, audiences say.

Vyacheslav Polunin (Slava Polunin) was born in 1950 in the Soviet prov-ince of Orel. He was fascinated by Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Marcel Marceau from a young age and imitated Chaplin during high-school performances and developed a range of comic characters during his school years. Polunin later moved to Leningrad, where he founded the clown-mime theatre Litsedei in 1968. He graduated in 1977 from the Len-ingrad Institute of Culture and later studied at Moscow’s State Institute of Theatrical Art (Gitis). Polunin shot to fame after a 1980 TV sketch of a parody of a phone conversation be-tween two lovers. He is married and has three children. He lives in Lon-don and keeps a home in Russia.

SLAVA POLUNIN

The person sitting in the audience sees the clown as himself in the acting space and literally becomes part of the performance SLAVA POLUNIN

© RMIL SITDIKOV_RIA NOVOSTI

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Fresh routes for exports

New logistics network can speed freight to key markets

Moscow to unveil port and overland transport initiatives for north Asia, writes Irina Drobysheva

Russia next month will unveil its plans to further integrate its transport systems into Asia at the Asia-Pacific Eco-nomic Co-operation (Apec)

CEO Summit in Vladivostok. The nation’s proposals include plans

to modernise the Trans-Siberian Rail-way and the Northern Sea Route, and to develop new routes between Asia and Europe, and within Asia.

Global forecasts show that trade with-in Asia will grow faster than trade be-tween the region and either the Euro-pean Union or the Americas, due to intensive regional integration.

Asia is the world’s leader in simpli-fying inter-regional customs procedures and cutting the costs of doing business. While Russia was preoccupied with ac-cession to the World Trade Organisa-tion, many Apec countries opted for re-gional free-trade agreements.

Since the mid-1990s, more than 70 free-trade zone agreements have been concluded in Asia.

Mikhail Kholosha, head of the trans-port development department of the Far Eastern Marine Research, Design and Technology Institute, explains the po-tential for expanding existing Russian transport infrastructure in the region. “The best place to start [in the Far East] is in the south of the Primorye Territo-ry,” he says. “Japan, South Korea and China periodically test the possibilities of freight carriage via the Trans-Siberian Railway and in regional directions, such as the Multi-Modal Transport Corridors, Primorye-1, and Primorye-2. These three corridors form a common, mutually complementary transport space.”

Several years ago, the Greater Tumen Initiative, acting under the auspices of the United Nations Development Pro-gramme, conducted a survey of experts, government officials and businessmen in northeast Asia on the possibilities of cargo flowing between them and Chi-na’s Jilin province. A rough estimate of

the amount of freight passing through this region in 2030 is 90 to 100 million metric tonnes.

This means that the port of Troitsa Harbour in Russia’s Primorye Territory should be developed. It could become the biggest port, not only in Russia, but in all of northeast Asia. This cargo tran-sit route alone could earn Russia bil-lions of dollars a year, and there are sev-eral such growth points in the region.

Last year, the first batch of contain-

ers arrived at Troitsa Harbour by truck from the Chinese city of Hunchun, near the Russian border. From Troitsa Har-bour, they were dispatched to Japan on a container ship. Jilin, which borders Primorye, had been working towards that possibility for almost 10 years.

Now, it takes two days to deliver cargo from northeastern China to Japan, and there are plans to use the new trans-port line not only for transit carriage between China and Japan, but also to

carry freight from those countries to Eu-rope via the Trans-Siberian Railway. However, to optimise the project, ca-pacity must be increased at the Russian border crossing at Kraskino.

So far, the town processes 30 vehi-cles a day, but there is a demand for 200 vehicles with containers. The con-struction of a modern border crossing point at Kraskino is slated for comple-tion in the autumn, but increasing its capacity alone will not solve all the town’s problems. Customs procedures still need to be simplified and Troitsa Harbour’s port capacity expanded.

The idea of improving combined land and sea cargo shipments between Rus-sia, China and Japan was backed by all the members of a consultative meeting within the framework of the Greater Tumen Initiative, in Harbin, in Febru-ary. Unfortunately, Russia is still lagging behind, and pilot projects are being im-plemented between China and South Korea, and between China and Japan, despite the fact that this partnership was initiated by Beijing in 2008, as part of a drive to improve co-operation between its northeastern provinces and the Rus-sian Far East.

Experts hope that Russia’s presenta-tion at the Apec CEO Summit will mean that the country is ready to improve lo-gistics integration in the Far East.

TRANSPORT

Forecasts show trade within Asia will grow faster than between the region and either the EU or the Americas

Russia Beyond the Headlines – General Information Partner

Sochi Forum is a driver of economic modernisationXIINTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT FORUM SOCHI-2012SEPTEMBER 20-23

Last year, 548 delegates from various coun-tries and regions took part in the 10th fo-rum, where 105 deals, worth HK$13.7 billion, were signed.

My overall impressions of the forum (Sochi-2011) are positive. The plenary discussion with Vladimir Putin was the most useful part. I remember his statements on the necessity for reducing the role of the state in the economy. And I think that was a very correct decision.

NIKOLAI PRYANISHNIKOV,

PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT,

RUSSIA

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High-profile billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov will chair the Apec Business Advisory Council.

Businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov embodies his nation’s growing role in Asia, writes Sergey Vinogradov

Influentialbillionaire has global ambitions

Ziyavudin Magomedov is earn-ing a reputation for being one of the few Russian tycoons who speak internationally for his na-tion’s business community.

The 43-year-old founder and chair-man of the Summa Group of “is just dif-ferent”, says a Moscow correspondent for a major American newswire. “Many people told me that he thinks globally.”

A year ago, Magomedov was not very well-known, even inside Russia. Now his Summa Group is making headlines there after bidding for several high-pro-file assets, particularly in the transport and logistics sectors.

“In five years, [Magomedov] might have one of the most powerful shipping holdings, not only in Russia, but inter-nationally as well,” says Alexey Bezboro-dov, director of consultancy Russia In-franews.

Magomedov has acknowledged major plans to expand beyond Russia. Having invested in the Port of Rotterdam, he is contemplating joint international port projects with it.

This year, the Moscow-based billion-aire is chairing the Asia-Pacific Econom-ic Co-operation Business Advisory Coun-

cil (Abac), a body that advises Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation of-ficials on business-sector priorities and concerns. And Magomedov is making the most of it.

We meet at a French restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, where the tycoon is ac-companied by aides and a handful of journalists.

Asked if he is satisfied with the results so far, the billionaire jokes about improv-ing his English and presentation skills, and then gets serious.

“Abac is the full analogue of an inter-national organisation, with the only dif-ference that countries are represented by

INTERVIEW

businesspeople rather than ambassa-dors,” he says. “Decisions are based on consensus, and the only way to get things done is to offer something that is good for everyone. It is difficult, but this is how soft power works, and it is important for Russia to continue to do so because after being the host country for Apec; we are taking up leadership in Brics [the eco-nomic group involving Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa], G20 and G8.”

Indeed, Abac can be seen as a test-ing ground for bigger things. The coun-cil lacks the power to make decisions for Apec governments, but it helps to set the regional agenda.

“It’s a big question – who has more power: someone who makes the final decisions, or someone who limits the available options for the big guys,” says Wu Fei, a Chinese expert on Russia.

For years, Abac has been dominated by the United States, which used the platform to consolidate its interests in the Asia-Pacific “without making big ef-forts to bring everyone on board”, says one long-time Abac member from a de-veloping country. This situation changed in November 2011 during the Abac

Magomedov hopes to see Russia become an integral part of Asia’s dynamic economy

but with the help of many developing nations, Russia managed to get it includ-ed in the Letter to the Leaders that the council prepares for Apec chiefs before every summit. Magomedov hopes to see Russia become an integral part of Asia’s dynamic economy, especially as many of the region’s businesses are eager to use Russian transit routes instead of fac-ing the congestion of major sea lanes.

“[We can] play a greater role in glob-al trade. It takes 28 days for a container to reach Moscow from Vladivostok; [for] 13 of them, it just stays idle at customs. Let’s compare [that] to Singapore, where customs formalities take no more than 24 hours,” Magomedov says.

One unresolved problem leads to an-other, the tycoon adds. “Once you are on this path, it is hard to stop - you start to see things with a wider perspective,” he says. He hopes that other Russian businessmen will participate in the re-gion. The National Business Centre for Apec was established with Summa’s help, and aims to raise awareness and inter-est in Russia about Asia.

“This model worked in other coun-tries, why shouldn’t it work in Russia?” Magomedov asks.

BUSINESS CALENDAR

FOURTH APEC BUSINESS ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETINGSEPTEMBER 3-6VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIAThe council’s annual report to Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) economic leaders outlines the views of business on regional issues and recommends improvements in the business and investment environ-ment. The council includes up to three senior business people from each Apec economy, involves large and small enterprises, and its chair comes from the Apec host. WWW.ABACONLINE.ORG

APEC CEO SUMMIT 2012SEPTEMBER 7-8VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIAThe Apec CEO Summit will be held for the first time in Russia. More than 700 chief executives are ex-pected to take part in the annual forum for the Asia Pacific’s busi-ness elite, held as a part of a series of meetings organised for senior government officials from member economies. Business leaders will have the opportunity to share views with government leaders and heads of state.WWW.APEC2012CEOSUMMIT.RU/EN

RUSSIA-SINGAPORE BUSINESS FORUMSEPTEMBER 24-27MARINA BAY SANDS, SINGAPOREFrom an objective to “demystify” Russia in 2006, the Russia-Singapore Business Forum has evolved into a complex and sustainable platform to forge business links, launch projects and tie-ups, and bridge regional and global business across the Common-wealth of Independent States (CIS) and beyond. The event is the most significant international forum on the CIS and emerging markets. WWW.RSBF.ORG.SG

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC FORUMNOVEMBER 3-9SEOUL, SOUTH KOREAThe International Economic Forum convenes representatives of busi-ness, the public and the political and scientific communities to analyse Russia and South Korea’s experience in innovative development. Partici-pants will also provide recommen-dations after discussions focused on economic and technical upgrade, energy and resource efficiency, in-tellectual property, and Russia and South Korea’s investment appeal. WWW.CONF.RBC.RU/EN/

FIND MORE IN THE GLOBAL CALENDAR

at www.rbth.ru

meeting before the Apec summit in Hon-olulu, when Russia made its presence felt for the first time.

Several Abac members told Russia Be-yond The Headlines that they were pos-itive about Russia’s growing influence in the organisation.

“Russia was very instrumental in

bringing [developing and developed countries’] views closer together,” says an Abac member from the Philippines. Some of Russia’s initiatives were based on best practices across the region. “Our experts studied the experience of Apec countries and proposed a framework of incentives for businesses to go green in construction and urban development,” says Magomedov.

Technology transfer is a tough issue,

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Singapore lures Moscow chiefs

The Russia Singapore Business Forum draws over 800 government and business leaders from about 40 nations. This year’s event will focus on Russia’s links in Asia, at the Marina Bay Sands from September 24 to 27.

Lion City’s business forum shows how nations’ treaty can lead to top-level trade partnerships, writes Viktor Kuzmin

FORUMS

With a well-established an-nual forum and a newly ratified investment trea-ty, Singapore may be overshadowing Hong

Kong in terms of business and invest-ment links with Russia.

“Hong Kong and Singapore are at dif-ferent stages of engaging Russian busi-nesses,” says a former Singapore am-bassador to Russia, Michael Tay.

Although, trade between Russia and Singapore fell last year for the first time in years, business links are growing rap-idly along with support from leaders in both countries.

These links will be the focus of the Russia Singapore Business Forum (RSBF) from September 24 to 27 at the Marina Bay Sands, an event organised by the Singapore Business Federation and its strategic partner, Sberbank Russia. An annual event, the forum has grown into one of the largest international gather-ings of Russian business and political leaders outside the country.

Tay launched the first forum in 2006, and the event regularly attracts more than 800 government and business lead-ers from about 40 countries. Speakers this year include former prime minis-ter of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, Sber-bank chairman Herman Gref, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shu-

valov, and famous American investor and Singapore resident Jim Rogers.

Tay believes Singapore is an appeal-ing partner for Russia because it is home to a wide range of industries.

“If you consider Singapore’s exper-tise in areas such as airports [Changi Airports International], urban planning [RSP Architects], infrastructure [Jurong Consultants], and commodities [Olam

Hong Kong’s bilateral trade with Rus-sia has been growing over the past few years, but the vast majority of that trade is re-exports between Russia and China.

Singapore has been working to at-tract direct trade with Russian. While total trade volumes slumped last year, Russian investment in Singapore jumped and officials expect trade and investment will grow further after Rus-sia finally ratified a 2010 investment agreement.

In April, Russia ratified a bilateral deal that would encourage and protect bi-lateral investment between Russia and Singapore. The agreement was signed in September 2010 and Singapore rati-fied it almost immediately. Hong Kong does not have a treaty with Russia.

Last year, the Russian Ministry for Economic Development reported pos-itive trade dynamics with Singapore, even as actual trade volumes dropped, thanks to the economic slowdown. At the same time, Russian investments in Singapore increased more than five-fold, from US$487 million to US$2.8 bil-lion. Singapore’s bilateral trade with Russia hit US$3.7 billion, lower than the record US$4.1 billion recorded in 2010.

Last year, Hong Kong’s bilateral trade with Russia amounted to US$2.56 bil-lion, but 96 per cent of that was re-ex-ports to and from China.

Host CEOs line up to show new presence in Asia Mark Zavadskiy

Last November’s Asia-Pacific Econom-ic Co-operation (Apec) CEO Forum in Honolulu was a great event. There was just one drawback, however - there were too few Russian speakers. There was just one, the then-president Dmitriy Medvedev.

There were no business people, sci-entists or opinion makers. It looked as if Russia was completely missing from Apec public space, and unwilling to share its views at one of the biggest busi-ness events of 2011.

This year, will be different. The CEO Forum in Vladivostok is organised by the Russian National Centre for Apec, which made sure it would have strong Russian participation, and include busi-ness heavyweights such as Oleg Deri-paska or Ziyavudin Magomedov (fea-tured on page 5), along with Russkiy Mir Foundation executive director Vy-acheslav Nikonov and politicians such as Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin.

The usual Apec suspects will also be there. Prominent American investor Jim Rogers and JP Morgan banker Jing Ul-rich will be among those sharing their views on the global economy.

The forum aims to tackle several is-sues. The limits and unintended con-sequences of economic integration will be discussed, and the challenges that globalisation poses to economic and political stability.

The event will look at the future of

Singapore’s expertise and experience across a multitude of skilled professions put us in good stead to offer Russia a range of services

International], it is quite clear that bi-lateral business ties and interests are not solely confined to the world of fi-nance and banking,” Tay says. “Singa-pore’s expertise and experience across a multitude of skilled professions put us in good stead to offer Russia a range of services that can strengthen overall bilateral business relations.”

fiat currency regimes, and will exam-ine ways to address resource limitations to ensure energy and food security, to improve the reliability and robustness of global supply chains, and to realise the untapped potential of the more dis-tant provinces and borderlands. Forum organisers plan to ask world leaders how governments can help their people pre-pare for the new demands and new op-portunities of the present decade and century – and how new technologies will change those opportunities and challenge established social structures.

The main question remains the same as a year ago, however. Five years on from the height of the global econom-ic crisis, can we return to – or near – pre-2008 growth trajectories? This year’s 17th Apec CEO Summit will explore what can be done to make this chal-lenging aspiration a possibility.

TOP 3 sessions TOP 5 speakers

Technologies: The Next Big Thing

What will be the technological break-throughs of the early 21st century? Participants will also focus on recent innovations such as new internet technologies, biotechnologies and artificial intelligence.

Emerging Markets’ Middle Classes: The New Consumer

This discussion will focus on the up-coming shift in consumption trends from developed to developing econ-omies due to their growing middle classes. What needs to be done to make this shift?

Distant Provinces: The Scale of Opportunity

This session will discuss countries’ untapped natural, geographical and human resources, and how they can be used to benefit the economy and those regions themselves.

ANATOLY CHUBAISACEO AND CHAIRMAN OF ROSNANO, RUSSIA A politician and business man-ager responsible for privatisation in Russia.

JIM ROGERSINVESTOR, UNITED STATESAn author, financial commentator, adventurer, and successful interna-tional investor.

JING ULRICHMANAGING DIRECTOR AND CHAIR OF GLOBAL MARKETS AT JP MORGAN CHASE, CHINARanked as one of Fortune Maga-zine’s 50 Most Powerful Global Busi-nesswomen for the past three years.

ARTEM VOLYNETS CEO OF EN+GROUP, RUSSIAHeads the nation’s leading diver-sified mining, metals and energy groups.

SERGEY SOBYANIN MAYOR OF MOSCOW, RUSSIAMayor since October 2010.

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Group eyes nuclear sectorOrganisation plans to develop technologies for huge market, writes Alexander Emelyanenkov

He was born in 1979 in the science town of Troitsk, in the Moscow Re-gion. Before moving to Skolkovo, he worked for the Rosatom corporation for four years from 2007, supervis-ing programmes to reform and de-velop the Russian nuclear industry, including long-range planning.

Since 2009, he has co-ordinated the work of Rosatom within the Com-mission for Modernisation and Tech-nological Development of Russia under the president of the Russian Federation, and driven the efforts of the working group towards nuclear technologies.

Denis Kovalevich

Nuclear technology could become the platform for most contemporary industries.

Led by Russia’s Skolkovo, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-opera-tion (Apec) economies are in-c r e a s i n g l y f o c u s e d o n developing and commercial-

ising nuclear technologies, a sector that is growing faster than nuclear power.

A project that Apec members plan to implement this year aims to devel-op scientific and trade collaboration in nuclear technology applications in health care, the environment, trans-port, food and food safety. The initia-tive belongs to Skolkovo, a special-pur-pose vehicle established after Russia’s president and government moved to support and promote innovative pro-jects and technologies.

“When they ask why we are focusing on [nuclear] technologies now, the an-swer is simple and obvious,” says Denis Kovalevich, executive director of the Nuclear Technologies Cluster. “The po-tential volume of the global market for [nuclear] technologies is expected to reach US$400 to US$500 billion. Is there a connection with the Fukushima ac-cident? They say there is no direct caus-al link. However, on a global scale, there is.”

The market for nuclear technology is growing much faster than the nu-clear power sector. The world market has topped the US$200 billion mark and is already as big as the market for services in the nuclear power genera-tion industry. With average annual growth of 10 per cent, it will eventu-ally surpass the energy sector. The range of the nuclear industry know-how that can be applied outside of the energy market extends to about 500 products and solutions.

About 20 per cent of the 100 largest corporations in the world use nuclear technology in one way or another. They use it for cancer diagnostics and ther-apy, and the sterilisation of medical products. In the transport sector, nu-clear technology is used to create mod-ern passenger and luggage inspection systems. In the automotive industry, it helps to increase the durability of tyres and body paint. Nuclear technologies are also used in food processing and cosmetics for disinfection and increased shelf life, and in materials production.

“A year ago, when we outlined the strategy for the Skolkovo nuclear clus-ter, we decided to promote technolo-gies that contribute to long-term glob-al development and have a high potential for start-ups in growing mar-kets. The Asian market and the nucle-ar technology market [as an innova-tion-based business] are equally promising from our point of view,” Ko-valevich says.

This year, Apec economies have launched several initiatives to promote scientific, technical and trade co-op-eration in the nuclear technology sphere. Kovalevich believes Apec will demonstrate the strongest demand for nuclear technology products and ser-

TECHNOLOGY

Nuclear medicine

The future of nuclear medicine de-pends on how accurately problem

areas are found and how to con-tain deadly radiation. Medical equip-ment developers and practitioners need more than just pinpoint accu-racy; they now require accuracy. This means that a nanoscale proton injec-tion is not a fantasy but a necessity for scientists today.

The first units for radioac-tive treatment of polymers were

launched in developed countries in the early 1970s. One of the earliest and most important uses of nucle-ar technology was in radioactive-in-duced crosslinking of polyolefins. By the mid-1970s, the leading suppliers of polyethylene and polyvinyl chlo-ride products used nuclear technol-ogy in their production chains. In Ja-pan, more than 200 accelerators had been installed by the early 2000s to treat polymers.

vices over the next 10 years. “My Rus-sian colleagues and I share the vision that [nuclear] technologies have an ex-cellent chance of becoming the tech-nology platform for most contemporary industries, the way microelectronics was developed 50 years ago and nanoscale solutions during the last decade,” he says. “Second, while implementing the [nuclear technology] promotion pro-gramme, we are encountering new challenges and problems on a daily basis – and there are no ready answers,

mostly because we are among the first to take them on.” Skolkovo president Viktor Vekselberg, a former research-er at the Russian Academy of Scienc-es, shares this view. “These are not just words to me, as a businessman,” he writes in the foreword to the report “Ra-diation Technologies: Changing the Industry and Quality of Life”.

“Even before Skolkovo, I had formu-lated my position on the outlook for investment in radiation technologies. I have plans to invest more in this sec-

tor – both in nuclear medicine, a mar-ket that is entering a new development phase, and other growing target areas,” he says. He believes that despite 60 years of nuclear research, it has not made Russia a dominant player.

“The Skolkovo Foundation not only supports start-ups, but also co-ordi-nates the national technology platform, ‘Radiation Technologies’, a crucial mechanism for facilitating commer-cialisation of innovative technologies,” Vekselberg adds.

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Summit raises city’s hopesVladivostok wants pre-event clean-up and bridges to lure tourists, writes Vaughan Winterbottom

BUILDING

The gritty Russian port of Vlad-ivostok — where the main business is importing right-hand-drive Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans — will host the

24th Summit of the Asia-Pacific Eco-nomic Co-operation (Apec) forum on September 2-9.

About 600,000 locals are aware that the leaders of 21 countries and accom-panying media will descend on the city. However, the real party is reserved for infrastructure projects that will be com-pleted on the eve of the summit, and the hopes that tourism will flourish in the formerly closed naval outpost.

Chief among the building efforts is the construction of two massive bridg-es, one from the city centre across Zol-otoy Rog Bay to the residential area of Churkin. The other is from the city’s Na-zimov Peninsula to Russky Island, where the Apec meetings and conferences will take place. The bridge to Russky Island became the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world in June.

The bridges are connected but have opened to traffic just recently. An open-ing ceremony for the Russky Island Bridge was scheduled for July 2, to co-incide with the city’s 152nd anniversa-ry, but was delayed due to rain dam-age.

Bridge construction hasn’t been with-out incident as well. A large fire on the Zolotoy Rog Bridge last December led to rumours that a collapse was immi-nent. Locals said rain was a timely ex-

cuse, but the pomp and ceremony on July 2 went ahead.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flew in for the aborted occasion and said: “As someone not living in Vladivostok, I can objectively say that the changes here have been huge. I’m glad that the 152nd an-niversary celebrations of the city coin-cide with another very important event – the beginning of test operations on our beautiful bridges ... They have already become symbols of the city.”

Vladivostok Mayor Igor Pushkarev said “time is still needed to complete

the construction work. As before, we promise that when they are opened, cit-izens will have the opportunity to walk the length of the bridges and take pho-tos before traffic is allowed. This should be at the start of August.”

Anniversary celebrations were ex-tended to a full week to unveil a host of other urban-rejuvenation projects. On the final day of festivities on July 7, the old Arbat pedestrian street in the city centre was packed. Girls posed in front of new fountains. Fireworks dazzled to the accompaniment of live music.

“I’d give a high rating to what I’ve seen,” said New Zealand’s ambassador, Ian Hill. “The scale of construction on the island is truly impressive; I have no doubt the site will be ready. Russky Is-land is a great place for Apec, and for a world-class university.”

Island residents aren’t so impressed. Many chose to live there to escape Vlad-ivostok’s urban bustle, and say newcom-ers will spoil the environment.

“We’ve seen the bridge getting clos-er and closer, and for us it seems like a giant snake [coiling] up to us with its mouth wide open,” said Voronchuk Kon-stantin, 28, an army sergeant who lives on the island.

“Besides, the slick, new roads only pave the side of the island closest to Vladivostok, and most of the present population lives on the far side. The con-struction isn’t for us.”

Back in the city, many believe pre-Apec beautification is a poor solution to the infrastructure problems. The ex-pression “Potyomkin Village” has been popping up, referring to a historical myth of fake settlements erected to fool Empress Catherine II on a visit to the Crimea in 1787.

There is some truth to this accusa-tion. While the Arbat sparkles, it’s not unusual for the city’s water supply to be cut off for weeks in the summer. Mas-sive potholes in suburban roads make four-wheel drives a necessity. The city is in need of reconstructive surgery, not a makeover, some say.

Nation’s fi rst island-based university

As early as October 1, all venues built on Russky Island ahead of the Apec summit will become the prop-erty of the Far Eastern Federal Uni-

versity – the region’s biggest univer-sity. This year, it will throw open its doors to 50,000 new students, to be-come Russia’s first island-based uni-

versity. The five presidential hotels that will accommodate the heads of the Apec states in September will be subsequently turned into resi-dential buildings for professors and lecturers working at the university. The conference and the press cen-tres will be used as academic build-ings, while the 11-storey structure between them will serve as premis-es for student organisations and as-sociations. The centre will feature a conference hall with 900 seats, and shops, clubs, cafes, a sports section with several swimming pools, indoor courts and various track and field grounds. Several more buildings will be transformed into hostels.

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Vladivostok prepares for the arrival of 21 state lead-ers next month with the construc-tion of two landmark bridges and a renovation programme that could draw more tourists to the port.

OPINION

Asia-Pacifi c ties begin to solidify

VICTOR SUMSKY

Among the news on the forthcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit is a report that Russian representatives at the Apec Business Advisory Council have presented a list of priority recommendations to lead-ers at the event. On that list are ideas linked to food security, transport and logistics, the green economy, and tech-nology transfers.

This is an important instance in which private-public partnerships, as they are understood in the Russian context, can mature. There is even a visible degree of expert input in the composition of this list.

At the same time, while the list re-flects Russia’s national interests as Apec chair, it has also received several posi-tive reactions from other Apec mem-bers. This means there’s a degree of sim-ilarity between Russian national aspirations and the expectations of the international business community.

Finally, if one takes this set of initia-tives as a whole, it can be seen that the focus is on improving all sorts of links and connectivity between Russia and the Asia Pacific. In fact, the term “con-nectivity” has become quite popular in the economic and political discourse since October 2010, when the Associa-tion of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) put forward its Master Plan on Asean Connectivity aimed at facilitating links between its members.

Russia is starting to think and act very much in line with the rest of the Asia-Pacific, which is especially important as Russia chairs the Apec summit.

Talking about developments in the Asia-Pacific as a whole, one has to pay attention to Asean, which has a central place in the region’s emerging archi-tecture of security and co-operation.

Somewhat disturbingly, however, for the first time in the history of Asean min-isterial conferences, its foreign minis-ters in the meeting at Phnom Penh in July failed to produce a final statement — a communiqué – due to rising ten-sions in the South China Sea.

The good news is that after a series of bilateral meetings between the In-donesian Foreign Minister Marty Na-talegawa and his colleagues in several Asean capitals, a joint statement emerged, so a sort of consensus within Asean seems to have been restored.

That’s certainly a positive signal. Indonesia’s growing clout was visible

last year, when it chaired Asean. Next year, Indonesia will take over

the Apec chair and will, once again, have a chance to show its growing impor-tance in international affairs.

Dr Victor Sumsky is director of the new Asean Centre at Moscow State’s Institute of International Relations

21.2 BILLION US$ spent on building over 50 facilities for the Apec summit

On the whole, however, locals seem excited by the flood of money and pro-jects in the region.

“The hope is that these bridges – along with all the other beautification projects in the centre – will attract more tourists,” said Katya Zebzeyeva, 24, a local jour-nalist. “Tourism here is essentially a trick-le of tour groups from the Chinese bor-der. The geography of the city is stunning – a sort of Far East San Francisco, only colder – and the bridges emphasise that”.

A new airport, capable of handling five million passengers per year has just opened.

Getting to the remote city is still ex-pensive, but thousands are willing to pay exorbitant ticket prices to attend the Apec forum.

“Among the planned activities are performances by famous artists, art ex-hibitions, video shows, concerts for chil-dren, a laser show, a photo-festival and much more,” said the Primorsky Terri-tory’s acting head of the department of culture, Dmitry Chugunov.

“On September 2-3, Vladivostok will also hold the first ‘Day of Peace in the Pacific’. It’s an exciting time.”

The city’s new bridges will steal the show, however.

Key infrastructure built for summit

The city’s preparation for the Apec summit was a key priority for Russia.

The infrastructure projects for the summit include:

1,388-metre bridge across the Golden Horn Bay.

1,885.53-metre bridge to Russky Island, the world’s largest cable-stayed bridge.

Two new hotel complexes with a total area of 75,400 square me-tres and cost US$2 billion. The 42km route along which summit partici-pants will be first taken from the village of Novy, across the De Vries

peninsula, cost almost US$8.1 bil-lion. The construction of a new air-port terminal, including the termi-nal, took almost US$3.24 billion. The capacity of the new terminal exceeds 3.5 million passengers a year. With the terminal in place, Vladivostok Airport is expected to handle 1.8 mil-lion people by year’s end. A new Aer-oexpress line has been built, costing more than US$2.16 billion to link the airport and the city.

More than 8,000 new jobs have been created to build the facilities for the summit.

Tourism here is essentially a trickle of tour groups from the Chinese border. The geography of the city is stunning – a sort of Far East San Francisco, only colder

Investors must be ready for fierce competition from Asian neighbours

10 investors ‘place bets’ on Primorye Gambling ZonePavel Belavi, Kommersant

With infrastructure development under way, the leaseholder of one of Russia’s four gambling zones says it has identi-fied 10 investors.

OAO Nash dom Primorye, which holds the lease for the Primorye Gam-bling Zone and is owned by the Primor-sky Region government, said in its lat-est annual report that 10 investors were ready to inject US$600 million.

Investors include one company that is building facilities for the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit and Rital Time Group of Kazan, which owns the first gambling venue in the Krasnodar Region Gambling Zone.

On the northwestern shore of Ussuri Bay, about 20km from Vladivostock In-ternational Airport, the 620-hectare Pri-morye Zone is one of four zones in which gambling is allowed after a 2009 law banned it anywhere else.

Investments in the zone are project-ed to total US$1.76 billion, with the com-pany expected to account for 30 per cent.

Plans are for 16 hotels with casinos by 2022, a yacht club with a pier for 65 vessels, a ski slope, a trade and exhibi-tion centre, an office complex, guest vil-las, landscaped areas and beaches. The entertainment complex and five hotels are to be completed by 2016.

The infrastructure is under develop-ment and work on an entertainment centre and casino is under way.

Primorye is a very appealing area, but investors must be ready for fierce com-petition from Asian neighbours that may also invest in gaming venues, says Lenar Kashapov, director of the Azov-City De-velopment Association.

Only one investor had been previ-ously identified, Pervaya igrovaya kom-paniya Vostoka (PIKV or The First Gam-bling Company of the East), which got a licence to build an entertainment and casino complex in October.

The report names seven other inves-

tors whose contributions total US$626.8 million. PIKV plans to invest US$30 mil-lion in an entertainment centre, while Vladivostok-based Dalta-Vostok-1 is in-vesting US$133.2 million in a four-star hotel and casino. Aleksei Simanchuk and Oleg Drozdov own the company that is part of Dalta Group, which built facilities for the Apec summit.

Homeworks Primorye, controlled by Nutelico Trading of Cyprus, plans to in-vest US$214.8 million in a five-star hotel and casino, while the Moscow-regis-tered Investitsionnoe soobshchestvo (Investment Community), controlled by Vyacheslav Bushuyev, will build a four-star hotel for US$101.9 million.

Moscow’s Firma Master, controlled by Marat Zakirov, will spend US$37.1 million on a three-star hotel. Zakirov also operates another investor in the zone, ZAO Finprim, owned by Vadim Kondratov and Alexander Samsonov, which plans to build a hotel for US$54.9 million. Gaming Construction will build a five-start hotel for US$54.9 million.

All of the investors were found last year, Marina Lomakina, general direc-tor of OAO Nash dom Primorye, told Kommersant.

“We have signed contracts with all of them,” she said.

Primorsky Governor Vladimir Miklu-shevsky told Russia Today that travel and gambling revenues could eventu-ally account for 30-40 per cent of the region’s budget.

The Yantarnaya Gambling Zone in Kaliningrad has yet to attract any inves-tors while the Sibirskaya Moneta Zone in Altai Krai has one.

The Primorye Gambling Zone is expected to have 16 hotels with casinos by 2022. There are also plans to build a yacht club and a ski slope.

PHOTOX

PRESS


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Critics go over the top

The time has come to ask if criticism of the global financial system is de-served. The main complaints focus on bubbles in capital and derivatives mar-kets that could have catastrophic ef-

fects on the real sector, high debt levels in de-veloped economies paid for by their developing brethren, growing economic imbalances that skew consumption in favour of the “golden bil-lion”, and the idea that certain countries “rule” the world economy thanks to their ability to issue reserve currencies. Many economists in developing countries, Russia included, call this an abomination. But is it really true?

At the end of last year, the capitalisation of global capital markets was US$47 trillion or 67 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP), compared to US$2.9 trillion, or 34 per cent, in 1960. As a result of crises in 2000-2002 and 2008-2009, this indicator shrank by US$6.3 trillion and US$10.2 trillion in developed economies, but the global economy did not collapse. It did not con-tract in 2000-2002 but grew by 7 per cent in the United States and 5.3 per cent in the European Union. During the 2008-2009 crisis, the US econ-omy shrank 3.8 per cent and the EU 3.7 per cent, but the financial sector survived.

The sector is something of a safety valve for the real economy, protecting it from overheat-ing, clearly not an untreatable flaw.

Developed economies “live on credit,” but

The international response to the Pussy Riot trial has taken on a dimension out of all propor-tion to the original incident. The punk group has touched a nerve, broaching a subject that is extremely sensitive, not just in Russia.

What’s happening is a consequence of the changes at the end of the 20th and the start of the 21st centuries. The cold war imposed a rigid structure on the palette of ideas, dominated by two ideologies – Western liberalism and Soviet communism. Then the “socialist alternative” collapsed, but the liberal ideology failed to be-come “all-powerful”. Traditionalist and funda-mental approaches began to fill the vacuum, appealing as a rule to religion, which lost ground in the 20th century in the face of pro-

this may not be bad. Debt is a growth tool. From 1960 to 2010, the indebtedness of America’s households and corporations jumped 37.2 times (unadjusted for inflation), while GDP rose 28.3 times in nominal terms and some 73.4 mil-lion new jobs were created. In the EU, private sector debt rose just 22.1 times, GDP grew 16.7 times and 10.2 million new jobs emerged.

The modern financial system is as good as it can get, as evidenced by the fact that nothing like the crises of 1907-1908, 1929-1932, or 1973-1974 has happened. The existing financial sys-tem allows huge “bubbles” of fictitious assets and the creation of trillions of currency units that can stop an economic downturn and pre-vent a global depression. This unsecured money supply supports consumption and en-courages the development of manufacturing, while the international imbalances that arise

create prospects for emerging economies.The seeming imbalances conceal an amaz-

ingly well-balanced and resilient financial sys-tem, and crises like the euro zone’s are generat-ed by Europeans’ hesitation to use the instruments available to them, rather than by any contradictions in the system. A market economy cannot develop except through ups and downs. At first sight, the existing financial system maximises the amplitude of these cycli-cal dynamics but by creating surface storms it leaves the real sector relatively intact.

If an attempt is made to regulate the money supply on a global scale, the world economy will return to living “within its means”. Consumption in the US and Europe will shrink by at least the amount of their trade deficits – US$1 trillion an-nually. The economy will contract by 4 to 5 per cent a year for several years. Capital markets will lose more than half their valuation as institutions slash debts and sell risky assets. Commodity

prices will fall by between a half and three-quar-ters. Recent financial shocks have caused no losses to bank depositors in developed countries, unlike in the 1930s. Additionally, GDPs and con-sumption have not declined.

The financial situation since 1971 has helped developing countries grow and allowed devel-oped countries to maintain growth rates and it is worth noting that the US and Europe pow-ered the world in the 1990s and 2000s.

Also consider this: failures and problems haunted countries that tried to make their cur-rencies quasi-convertible and peg them to the US dollar – Asia in 1997, Russia in 1998, or Ar-gentina in 2001. Freedom to manoeuvre is worth more than the advantages of “stability” but, unfair as the financial system might seem, any alternative would be worse.

OPINION

Vladislav Inozemtsev Ogoniok magazine

State must take heat out of Pussy Riot caseFyodor Lukyanov Vedomosti

gress but which now seems to be regaining po-sition.

Conservative attitudes are on the rise. The emergence of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement has had a big influence on the Re-publican Party in the United States, forcing it to shift to the right. In Europe, radical conserva-tives rely on protectionism – from resisting im-migration and complaining about the decline in traditional cultures to demanding that their na-tional economies be protected against transna-tional factors.

The uprisings against the tottering regimes of the Middle East – which are authoritarian but secular – are bringing into power Islamists who are not noticeably moderate. People living in Arab countries want changes, but paradoxically revolutions can take things back to more tradi-tional ways.

The traditionalist trend is rejected by devo-tees of liberal views: they are appealing to the ideals of the freedom and rights of the individu-al. The global situation – social, political and economic – requires more flexible approaches. But aggravating the clash of values and ideolo-gies within countries leads to stances becoming oversimplified and crystallised.

In this context Russia is not so much a special case, more one that is particularly clearly ex-pressed. The psychological, intellectual and cul-tural inertia of the Soviet system has gone – it is exhausted, together with the ideas, sympathies and antipathies conditioned by the experience of the past. We don’t have a robust system of political co-ordinates, but like a photographic film being developed, the outline of the picture is beginning to emerge. And the first lines to ap-pear are those with the sharpest contrast.

The issue of national self-identification is coming to the fore. The clash between funda-mentalist and libertarian is a testing of bounda-ries, sounding out how people feel. A painful search is beginning for a consensual basis, ac-cepted by the majority, on which Russian socie-ty can develop. It just happens that the first con-spicuous cause is this punk prayer with a political tinge, but there will probably be quite a few such stories to come. The state has a huge responsibility. While recognising what a delicate issue the trial is, it must act as a pacifying force and a shock absorber. It must not try to flirt with the extremes for the sake of achieving short-term political ends. That would be dangerous for the state and for society.

Fyodor Lukyanov is editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Politics magazine

Vladislav Inozemtsev is director of the Centre for Post-Industrial Studies, Moscow

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Future remains nuclearAll post-Fukushima scenarios point to continued push to develop industry, writes Viktor Kuzmin

Despite last year’s Fukushima disaster, and subsequent calls to shut down existing nuclear reactors, nuclear power is unlikely to fade away and be found only in history books.

Stress tests performed on nu-clear power plants since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March last year have shown that existing

plants are reliable and safe. These tests have reassured poten-

tial customers, and demand for nucle-ar energy has started to recover. It turns out that there is no viable alternative to nuclear power, given the shortage of hydrocarbon resources, an alterna-tive energy industry that is still in its infancy, and the existing caps on car-bon dioxide emissions.

All post-Fukushima scenarios - in the wake of the series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns and re-lease of radioactive materials, follow-ing the earthquake and tsunami - have pointed to a continued long-term push to develop this industry.

As panic swept across the world after the Fukushima disaster, governments were forced to declare their intentions to abandon nuclear power. However, there have been few changes on the ground.

In countries such as Germany and Switzerland, where nuclear power plants already exist, they will continue to operate at least through the 2020s. Construction of new power units has continued in China, India, Russia, France, Finland and South Korea. Some countries have decided to increase the share of nuclear power in their energy mix. One example is Britain, where production of hydrocarbons has been declining markedly. South Korea and Saudi Arabia are also boosting nucle-ar energy production.

The Russian state-owned corpora-tion Rosatom estimates that by 2030 worldwide NPP installed capacity will rise by more than 40%. This corre-sponds with the World Nuclear Asso-ciation’s forecasts.

Russia has had its share of nuclear accidents. The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time, in April 1986, when an explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western Soviet Union and Europe, spurred the development of new safety technologies.

Rosatom has continued financing the research and development of nu-clear power for the past 20 years. This has yielded innovations such as the “corium trap”, which localises core melts and is now a feature of all Rus-sian projects.

Besides upgrading Chernobyl-type reactors, 20 VVER (water-water ener-getic reactor) type units have been built in Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, China, Iran and India since the disas-ter. Rosatom is now building genera-tion 3+ nuclear power plants and ranks second to France’s EDF in installed ca-pacity, at 25.2GW. The company’s en-gineers are working on reactor tech-

COMMENT

Energy development after Fukushima Rosatom’s links with Apec countries growRussia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom is increasingly working with a number of Asia-Pacific Econom-ic Co-operation countries, including China, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Singapore and Australia.

Russia and China are engaged in long-term co-operation. In 2007, the Russian-designed Tianwan Nuclear Power Station, the world’s most ad-vanced, was completed. Last year, a master contract was signed for the construction of two additional units. Russian specialists engaged by Bei-jing have also built a research fast-

breeder reactor. Vietnam became the first Southeast Asian economy to opt for Russian technology for its nu-clear power sector. In 2014, Vietnam will start building its first Russian-designed nuclear power plant.

Russia also supplies South Ko-rea with one-fifth of the uranium it needs for its nuclear power plants. It allows Japan to transport nuclear materials across Russian territory and process feedstock at Russian fa-cilities. It is planning a joint scientific and nuclear technology centre with Singapore and signed an agreement to enrich Australian uranium.

nologies based on “natural safety” systems that will be the basis for a fourth generation of reactors, where any serious accidents resulting in ra-dioactivity leaks will be all but elimi-nated, one expert claims.

Developing countries with nuclear power ambitions make up a consider-able proportion of customers. They typically partner with global leaders in construction.

The need for energy has spawned demand for integrated nuclear power solutions. Only major companies that are global nuclear industry leaders can offer solutions of such complexity. Ro-satom is one such leader. The compa-ny incorporates more than 250 Rus-sian nuclear industry companies and

Rosatom offers a universal solution covering every possible aspect of a nu-clear energy complex. It includes ele-ments such as a power solution, an in-dustrial solution, a financial solution, expertise and knowledge transfer, per-sonnel training, legal support and the creation of the requisite infrastructure, in addition to fostering public loyalty to the project.

In the energy sector, Rosatom offers two approaches for the design and con-struction of generation 3+ nuclear power plants.

The first is engineering, procure-ment, and construction. The second is build-own-operate. Its industrial so-lutions provide for broad local involve-ment. Rosatom is prepared to localise

up to 85 per cent of the project’s total value and offers government loans on preferential terms.

“Both countries involved in devel-oping an existing nuclear power sec-tor or creating a nuclear industry from scratch normally not only want to build nuclear power plants, but also to de-ploy the requisite infrastructure and plan on involving their national indus-try and creating jobs,” says a Rosatom representative, pointing to his compa-ny’s co-operation with the Czech Re-public.

Together with Skoda JS, a Czech en-gineering leader, the Russian nuclear giant is bidding for a contract for the Temelin nuclear power plant and is ready to localise up to 70 per cent of the services and equipment, enabling the Czech industry to be fully involved from the initial stages of the project to the creation of the “nuclear island”.

Demand for clean energy in Asia is growing. “Despite the events at Fuku-shima, Apec [Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation] countries today drive the development of nuclear power worldwide,” says a Rosatom represent-ative. “Even Japan, which shut down all its reactors after Fukushima, has an-nounced the launch of two power units.”

None of the problems can be re-solved easily. However, it is clear that nuclear power is economical and quite safe.

Globally, Rosatom offers a universal solution covering every possible aspect of a nuclear energy complex

research organisations. The corpora-tion has a range of nuclear solutions, including uranium production, nucle-ar power plant construction, legal framework drafting, personnel train-ing and project fund-raising.

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Filipinos drawn to Moscow

Hong Kong may not be as welcoming to Filipino workers as Moscow. The Russian capital seems to be a more acceptable place to live and work.

Capital is coming to terms with its growing numbers of foreign workers, writes Dmitry Butrin

My two-year-old daughter always smiles and says “hi” when she sees a Filipino woman, one of the many that are regularly seen in

any small park in central Moscow. A decade ago people had heard Fili-

pinos were coming to work in Moscow, but only a few could lay claim to know-ing one.

Russia’s Filipino community has grown into the thousands, but few locals can claim to really know them.

It’s only thanks to Nina – not her real name – that my family and I have learned much about them.

We have learned that the main prob-lem facing Filipinos in Moscow is the lack of sunlight. That Moscow is a diffi-cult and aggressive city with a silver lin-ing: anonymity.

That there are no employment con-tracts, and taxes paid through employ-ment agencies are more likely non-bur-densome.

Filipino women, for there are very few men, first started arriving in the 1990s along with American expats.

A short-lived fad for exotic nannies and home cleaners followed and then more Japanese companies sprang up, providing thousands of Filipinas with a stable job market.

Moscow is a city where hard and thankless work pays more than in Hong Kong and comparably as much as the Persian Gulf and the European Union, as much as US$1,200 to US$1,400 a month. The high cost of living is a fac-

tor, so Filipinos live on a shoestring budget.

Most are well-educated, thanks to a system in the Philippines modelled on the American one of the 1970s, not bad by Russian standards.

They are also entrepreneurial and like to set up their own micro-businesses, even if most of them fail. This means that work for hire is their only income.

Nina was a teacher and her best friend is a talented market researcher. There are economists, lawyers, you name it. But in Moscow they mainly work as nan-nies or home helps.

PEOPLE

People had heard Filipinos were coming to work in Moscow, but only a few could lay claim to knowing one

The cost of living cuts them off from the entire service economy. Health care is concern number one

high crime – unheard of in countries where Filipino immigrants normally work. In Moscow, foreign Asian women are always at risk.

The internet, on the other hand, works fine and allows skyping, read-ing news in Tagalog and English, watch-ing movies, and listening to music when it’s freezing cold outside.

These petite, bright, smiling women live in the city but in their own world.

Only those children lucky enough to have a Filipino nanny know them for who they really are, and always say “hi”.

Migrant workers find new opportunitiesFelyssa Chu-Ramirez

There is much myth and mystery at-tached to Filipinos’ ideas of Russia. These perspectives were mostly based on propaganda against the old Soviet Union, which was regarded mainly as a rival of the United States during the cold war.

During those years, the Philippines was an ally of the US and hosted the superpower’s military base at Subic, in the province of Pampanga. It is there-fore understandable that Filipinos in general possess little knowledge, and even less affection, for Russia than any other European country.

The early 1970s saw the beginning of the exodus of Filipino migrants to greener pastures abroad. Russia wasn’t the first country on their list, however. The US has been Filipinos’ favourite destination since the middle of the 19th century. Based on existing records, Fil-ipinos didn’t arrive in Russia until the mid-1970s, and then they only came in trickles. There are good reasons for this. Apparently, most Filipinos find it difficult to work in Russia, due to its very stringent policies covering foreign nationals. The nation’s higher cost of living also prevented many Filipinos from working there.

At the height of the transformation

from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation, the Philippines and Rus-sia kick-started their partnership as a way to build the latter’s economy.

Bilateral agreements between the two countries started in 1976, and their pacts involved tourism, construction, mining, energy and the deployment of Filipino workers to Russia.

At this time, a string of economic zones were being built in Russia to but-tress the nation’s need to rev up the economy. Workers with various skills would be needed to sustain such a gar-gantuan effort. At this time, roughly 2,000 Filipino workers had already been deployed to meet the need for skilled

hands in Azerbaijan. Today, the num-ber of Filipinos in Russia continues to be small when compared with their counterparts in Europe, the US and the Middle East. Government records show that the number of land-based Filipi-no migrant workers in Russia fall well below the tally of those who are de-ployed in the rest of Europe.

Between 2004 and 2010, this total peaked during 2007, at 3,129 overseas foreign workers, and levelled off at 960 and 910 in 2009 and 2010, respective-ly. Experts say that Russia must learn to relax its policies on foreign nation-als in order to create a more friendly and welcoming environment.

Working conditionsA Filipino cleaner is paid an average US$50 per client for one weekly vis-it, and can make US$400 to US$500 from eight clients in a six-day week. Their expenses can be US$700 to US$800 per month. Nannies on av-erage earn between US$1,200 and US$1,500 per month, with seven-to 11-hour days, four or five days off per month, and 25 to 30 days’ annu-al leave. Filipinos in Moscow usual-ly pay for their air fares, sometimes with pre-trip “bonuses”.

as much or more. Vacations are rare but they do visit their homeland once a year.

Then there is the huge language bar-rier, inhospitable public transport and

al indifference and cult of money, which they treat very pragmatically, are unac-ceptable to them. Nina’s sister, who lives in Saudi Arabia, was willing to arrange for her to move to the Gulf, where the Filipino community is much larger and more accepted, but it was easier for her to work in Moscow.

She left Russia due to problems with a small business that she was relying on to maintain her family back home.

Some Filipinos appreciate mixing with the local Japanese community and being exposed to their culture in Moscow.

It is a huge city whose rhythm is not unlike that of the Philippines’ own me-tropolises. Nevertheless, it is an alien city where secrets can be kept.

The cost of living cuts Filipinos off from the entire service economy. Health care is concern number one. An annual work visa costs US$500, a sizeable amount. The cheapest air tickets to Manila cost

Although their chances of staying in the Russian capital are much slimmer than their Central Asian or even African counterparts, many live here for years and learn to live with the winters.

Filipinas are appreciated above all for the kindness with which they treat chil-dren in their care.

On the other hand, it would be an ex-aggeration to say that Moscow’s gener-

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Ushering in a golden eraThree Olympic golds and a silver have put nation on top of judo world, writes Ajay Kamalakaran

Former president Boris Yeltsin’s attempt to popularise tennis in Russia led to an unprecedent-ed level of interest among the youth of the country. In a dec-

ade, Russia became an international force, producing grand slam champions.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s most famous judoka, may have done the same with judo, as shown by the three gold and one silver medals Russians have won at the London Olympics.

The sport does not have the interna-tional mass appeal and popularity of tennis. So, even though Arsen Galstyan won a bronze at the 60kg event in the 2010 World Championships in Tokyo and a European gold a year earlier in Tbilisi, hardly any sports commentator listed the judoka from the Krasnodar Region as a gold medal prospect.

The buzz around Galstyan started only when he shocked the internation-al judo fraternity by defeating the top ranked judoka in the 60kg category, Uz-bekistan’s Rishod Sobirov, in the semi-finals. The victory over Japan’s Hiroaki Hiraoka in the final made the 23-year old an instant sensation across the coun-try, especially in the flood-ravaged ter-ritory of Krasnodar he calls home.

Galstyan’s victory was toasted by the residents of the Krasnodar Territory as “our” triumph and there was very little talk of the judoka’s Armenian origins. This is a great story for the southern Russian region that has occasionally been in the news for racial flare-ups be-tween ethnic Russians and immigrants from former Soviet republics. Galstyan was born in Armenia in 1989, when the country was a part of the Soviet Union. His parents emigrated to Russia later.

After Galstyan struck gold in London, Mansur Isaev followed suit by defeat-ing Japan’s Riki Nakaya in the 73kg final to get Russia’s second judo gold medal. The 26-year old resident of Chelyabinsk, a small city in Siberia, was again not someone most pundits were predict-ing would win a medal in London. Isaev’s best performance before Lon-don was a bronze at the 2009 World Championships in Rotterdam.

It remains to be seen whether the gov-ernor of the Chelyabinsk Region will honour a pre-Olympic promise to give US$1 million to each gold medal win-ner from the region. Still, Isaev has be-come an instant celebrity in Russia and no doubt has pleased the president. Isaev is also a poster-child for multieth-nic Russia, being a Muslim and an eth-nic Avar, a community with origins in the Republic of Dagestan.

As the country was toasting its first two judo golds, Tagir Khaibulaev won a third by defeating defending cham-pion Naidar Tuvshinbayar of Mongolia in the men’s 100kg category final by ippon. It was poetic justice that Presi-dent Putin was in the audience when the third gold medal was won. “It’s a brilliant success, the likes of which we’ve never had in the history of Russian or

It’s hard to escape from Arsen Gal-styan’s grab (top photo). Tagir Khai-bulaev (left inset) and Mansur Isaev (middle) owe much to their Italian coach Ezio Gamba (right inset).

President Vladimir Putin with the national judo team. He began studying judo at 14 and is now president of St Petersburg’s Yawara Judo Club.

Chelyabinsk’s governor has promised to pay US$1 million to Olympic gold medallists from the region.

Olympic athletes cash in

Soviet sport,” Putin said at the time. Khaibulaev, another ethnic Avar and resident of Dagestan, was a dark horse to win gold in London. The 28-year old won the European Championships in Tbilisi and the World Championships in Helsinki last year. Alexander Mikhay-lin took home the silver in the heavy-weight category and Ivan Nifontov won bronze in the 81kg event to take the Rus-sian medal haul in judo to five.

“As far as I know, before there was only one such victory, at the Moscow

Olympics,” Putin said. This time, unlike 1980, no one can raise the boycott bo-geyman. One of the keys to Russia’s gold haul in judo in London was the hiring of Ezio Gamba, who won a gold medal for Italy in the 71kg class in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Each medal-winner gave a lot of credit to their Italian coach and his rigorous workout regime.

The seeds of success for the medal winners were probably laid by Putin, who has taken a proactive role in the development of his favourite sport. In

a television interview, Galstyan spoke of his New Year’s Eve meetings with the president. In addition to encouraging Russian judokas, Putin was the brain-child behind the Zvenigorod Judo Acad-emy, a facility that promises to produce many more champions.

Surveys show that Putin is very pop-ular in the far regions of the country. The gold medals won by residents of places such as Krasnodar, Dagestan and Chelyabinsk show his efforts to popu-larise the sport have struck a chord.SPORT

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Confusingfact with fictionHollywood depictions can turn a thriller into a comedy for Russian viewers, writes Sofya Raevskaya

Igor Zhizhikin, a Russian actor who lived for 23 years in the United States and had a solid Hollywood career, had to argue with director Steven Spielberg about the too-obvious accents of Russian characters.

CINEMA

How Americans see Russians in their movies

Ivan Simonov (Brian Cox), RED, 2010The former KGB agent spends his time in dark vaults wearing a fur coat and ear-flap hat with a bottle of vodka on the table. This set of stere-otypes enhances the comedic effect for the Russian audience.

Ivan Danko (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Red Heat, 1988The movie became famous in Russia for its parody portrayals of regular Soviet policemen. Schwar-zenegger walking in Red Square in a Soviet police officer’s uniform still raises a few laughs.

Cosmonaut Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare), Armageddon, 1998When Americans arrive at a space station, cosmonaut Andropov wel-comes them wearing a hat with ear-flaps and a T-shirt with a five-point star and the acronym “USSR” on it, while, naturally, drunk.

Vitaly the Tiger (Bryan Cranston), Madagascar 3, 2012Russian circus tiger Vitaly’s fur was burned during a jump through a ring of fire. He does not trust the light-hearted American lion, Alex, but is lifted out of his depression when Alex gives him fur conditioner.

Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), Iron Man 2, 2010Russian engineer Ivan Vanko (Whip-lash’s alias Crimson Dynamo) re-minds the viewer of the villain’s communist roots. To make Mickey Rourke look more Russian, make-up artists gave him metal teeth.

“The portrayal of this country in Hol-lywood films is a result of the impact the American media has on the Amer-ican mindset,” Alisov says.

“The films manifest what the Amer-ican public really thinks about Russia. Hollywood is an unconscious victim of the media.

“They make pictures about what they believe to be true and what people re-ally want to see.”

The language is the main challenge. There are a collection of [language] bloopers on Russian websites

Mangled Russian words, ex-aggerated and absurd scenes and people, and unverified or unreliable data do not make Amer-

ican movies credible in the eyes of a Russian audience.

Yet, Russia has become an important market for Hollywood products, and ce-lebrities such as Tom Cruise, Will Smith and Megan Fox often visit Russia to pro-mote their films.

The language is the main challenge for Hollywood studios. There are col-lections of bloopers on Russian-lan-guage websites.

A typical example is The Bourne Iden-tity, in which the main character’s name Foma Kiniaev is spelt in his documents as “Fshf Lshtshfum”.

The writer simply changed the key-board layout, hoping the same keys were used for the Cyrillic letters.

Tom Hanks’ character in The Termi-nal had a driving licence issued to Gul-nara Gulina, a name that would fit a Muslim woman from Tatarstan rather than an Eastern European male.

“Hollywood makes pictures for itself. They don’t care that we all have accents there. So why are we hurt? They didn’t shoot the movie for us. They didn’t

While there are continuing debates about the continued use of Russians, communists and Russian mafiosi as the number one enemy in Hollywood films, Zhizhikin argues that Russian villains in blockbusters actually benefit the country. “It acts as a counterweight, an archenemy. This makes it more excit-ing; it is a good tactical move. Russia is described as a worthy opponent, and rightly so,” Zhizhikin says.

Sarkisian notes that Russian cinema also distorts the image of Americans in films and television shows.

Take The Interns, a popular comedy series featuring Phil, a naïve, fair and kind-hearted American whose parents are gay. Phil is mocked and attacked in every episode and is often referred to as a Yank. “That’s a set of stereotypes, albeit quite mild and gentle. However, this series may just be the first one in a sweeping trend,” Sarkisian says.

sian language in Hollywood films to mere incompetence. “It seems they economise on advisers. It is pointless to spend so much time and resources on checking the facts. The audience will be happy with what you have,” Alisov says.

Erik Sarkisian, a former supervisor of the cinema archive at the Russian Ministry of Culture, however, disagrees with the idea that this is just incompe-tence. He believes depicting stereotyp-ical Russians in major films is a politi-cal statement.

“How can Hollywood be so blind when it portrays a Russian cosmonaut in Armageddon as a drunkard wearing a fur cap? They should have added a bear and a nesting doll!”

Alisov, on the other hand, does not think Hollywood directors should be blamed for distorting the image of Rus-sians and that the real responsibility lies with another form of media.

check the facts? They never pay too much attention to it,” says Igor Zhizhikin, a Russian actor who lived for 23 years in the United States and had a solid Hol-lywood career.

When Steven Spielberg was shoot-ing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Zhizhikin had to argue with the director about the too-obvious accents of the Russian characters.

The actor believes that those respon-sible for making films never consider these faults to be worthy of any atten-tion and make mistakes unintention-ally.

Russian film producer Viktor Alisov attributes these distortions of the Rus-

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One may visit Lake Baikal by driv-ing across Asia on the Trans-Siberi-an route.

This is a network of federal high-ways that span the width of Russia from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Ja-pan. It runs for 9,288km between Moscow and Vladivostok, and, even if you don’t make any stops, takes al-most a week to complete.

The lake is also on Trans-Siberian railway, but a road trip allows tour-ists to explore more of Russia.

One of the Seven Underwater Won-ders of the World, Lake Baikal is lo-cated in Southern Siberia. It is often called the “Blue Eye” of Siberia and also the “Sacred Lake”. The name probably derives from the Yakutian word “Baig’al”, meaning “deep wa-ter”. It is the world’s largest fresh-water lake, with a depth of 1,642 metres and a surface area of 30,000 square kilometres.

Its cold water is so clear that it is possible to see to a depth of 40 metres, and so clean that it can be drunk like distilled water. The 1,800km tourist trail running along its coastline is called the Big Baikal Trail. Aquatic life constitutes around 1,500 species and 1,000 varieties of plants, of which two-thirds are not found anywhere else. In winter, a metre-thick layer of ice covers the entire lake.

Visiting world’s largest freshwater lake is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, writes Emma Burrows

The ‘Blue Eye’ of Siberia

One of the main destinations on the Trans-Siberian railway is Lake Baikal, and visiting the world’s largest freshwa-ter lake is a once-in-a-lifetime

experience.A seven-hour train journey around

the southernmost end of the lake, from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk, ends at one of the great travel hubs on the trans-Siberian route, and the point from which it is pos-sible to explore the great lake.

Buses or minivans to Olkhon Island, off the western shore of the lake, leave from outside the main train station in Irkutsk.

The journey takes about five hours, depending on what sort of bus you take, and it costs around 500 roubles (HK$120). For this price, do not expect comfort.

The road to Lake Baikal starts to de-teriorate immediately outside Irkutsk and it is difficult for the driver to avoid the potholes. At some point on the road to the great lake, the asphalt stops and it becomes a dirt track.

The drivers will stop for a toilet break after an hour or so and then pull over for lunch. The traditional stopping place for lunch is a yurt-like structure some-where along the dirt track, surrounded by hills. The food is simple but welcome after three hours of bumping across pot-holes. As soon as the drivers have eaten, they are ready to hit the road: do not stray too far because they will not wait.

The road towards the lake snakes tan-talisingly in and out of view of the water, which looks cool, blue and inviting. In winter, the buses can drive across the ice to the island, but in the summer, eve-ryone is shuttled across by a small boat.

Before crossing, buses are unloaded and passengers are herded into a small hut where they are asked to pay a small fee to keep up conservation work on the island.

It is then just a short journey across the deep, blue water to one of the most magical places in Russia.

I cannot think there would be a bet-ter place for travellers to rest their heads than Nikita’s Homestead in the settle-ment of Kuzhir, on the island’s western shore.

Built by hand, all the wooden build-ings are ornately carved and trimmed in traditional style.

After checking in we were shown up-stairs to a beautiful room with two dou-ble beds and a separate shower and toi-let area.

After almost 14 hours of travelling, we could not believe our luck; it was heav-en.

Nikita Bencharov, the owner, is a for-mer table-tennis champion and he and his helpful staff can help organise almost anything on the island.

In the winter, it is possible to snow-shoe or drive across the lake and in the summer, swimming and trips across Olk-hon are the order of the day.

Perched on top of a cliff, Nikita’s Home-

Discovery tour

Underwater wonder of the world

Lake Baikal is one of Russia’s most prominent tourist attractions, in southern Siberia. Visitors can see much of it on a seven-hour train journey along its southern banks, from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk.

In winter, buses can drive across the lake’s ice to Olkhon Island, but in sum-mer passengers are ferried there by boat.

One of the best ways to see Olkhon Island is to drive across it, taking in spectacular views of Russia’s largest freshwater lake.

TRAVEL

stead has a fantastic view of the lake and is only a short walk down the coastal path to the Burkhan Cape. One of the best ways to see Olkhon is to drive across it. The drive lasts all day and takes in some spectacular views of the lake. The true expanse of Lake Baikal is revealed on the eastern shore of the island as the water fades away for miles to meet the sky in a thin blue line.

Although the lake’s waters look invit-ing they are, in fact, very cold.

Nothing had prepared me to meet the cold of Baikal.

Normally after a minute or so in cold water it feels warmer as the body adjusts to the temperature. Not so with Baikal.

The water was so cold it felt like tiny knives were repeatedly jabbing my skin. What is strange about Baikal is that it is a freshwater lake and it was odd to sur-face and not to feel the salt crackling in my hair and face as I sat on the rocks and dried off.

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16 Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Martial arts school facing tough fight

CITY

Learning just an open book Visitors to fair keen to discover more about the ‘mystery’ surrounding a huge neighbour, writes Lisa Tam

In Hong Kong, where even taxi driv-ers snatch a couple of minutes to read a page of their favourite book at traffic lights, it is no wonder the Hong Kong Book Fair draws enor-

mous crowds. Russia and Greater China (RGC) ex-

hibited at the fair’s International Cul-tural Village at this year’s event, thanks to the Russian consulate which secured the agreement with the fair’s organis-er.

Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, the fair is ded-icated to exhibiting and selling all kinds of printed matter, from the works of local and international authors to chil-dren’s books and travel guides.

This year’s fair saw more than 500 exhibitors and thousands of book lov-ers roaming the Hong Kong Conven-tion and Exhibition Centre last month.

Visitors were reluctant to leave, even in the face of the approaching typhoon Vicente.

Attracted by bargains, author inter-views and autograph sessions, many visited the International Cultural Vil-lage “street” in the middle of which RGC had a booth and represented Rus-sia, it’s culture and the project.

Visitors expressed strong interest in the RGC supplement, noting that this is the only source of information about Russia in Hong Kong. Many had read previous issues while others browsed through issues at the booth.

“Russia is such a mystery for Hong Kong people. But we want to explore and learn more about it. I don’t know much about your country besides the fact that it’s big and very beautiful,” said Michael To, an accountant, while his two sons looked over a photo album of Russian scenery.

A quiz, with questions about Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH), the Rus-sian language and literature was run.

Winners received a set of bookmarks with quotes from Russian writers and

Many visitors to the Hong Kong Book Fair knew little about Russia, but were keen to know more about its culture, cuisine and sights.

an RBTH Asia gift bag. Many visitors asked about Russian culture, cuisine and sights. “I have always wanted to go to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but I had no idea where to start look-ing for information,” visitor Rainbow Wong said. It was a pleasure to intro-duce Russia and it is hoped there will be more opportunities to talk of things involving Russia and China.

Varied answers to literature quiz Russia Beyond The Headlines’ (RBTH) booth was a big hit dur-ing the fair and we managed to distribute over 500 copies of our “Russian literature quiz for be-ginners”. The majority of answers were correct, but we also received some strange entries. Some 20 per cent thought that Vladimir Lenin was the greatest Russian poet, and the Russian alphabet has 120 or 88 letters. We also asked you what RBTH stands for, and 30 per cent said it stood for “Russian idea of paradise”, while 1 per cent thought that it was a “Russian swear word”. But 60 per cent said RBTH was a media or-ganisation.

Oleg Kozlov

Hong Kong is one of the martial arts capitals of the world, crowded with wushu wannabes and old ladies doing morning tai chi. However there is a special school that dares to be different and compete with the rest of them.

Systema is a unique martial arts school that embraces ancient traditions that have been adopted from multiple foreign cultures by medieval Russia and incorporated into the ingenuous fight-ing style of Russian warriors.

Its reputation as the martial arts school used by the Russian Spetsnaz – elite special forces unit – created a strong base for recognition around the world.

Even so, systema is still relatively un-popular in Hong Kong, probably due to the city’s obsession with local heroes and fighting styles.

Dating back to 10th century and root-ed deeply in native Slavic culture, sys-tema looks exotic among Hong Kong’s wing chun and tai chi classes.

“Systema cannot be compared to wing chun or any other Eastern mar-tial arts because it is based on a differ-ent concept that implies more flexibil-ity, ability to react to circumstances and essentially thinking outside the box,” says Janik Litalien, a Canadian systema instructor who brought the school to Hong Kong.

Apart from physical training, syste-ma offers a unique philosophical as-pect of self-development based on Rus-sian Orthodox Christianity doctrine that emphasises humility and striving to un-derstand yourself.

The spacious studio in Tai Kok Tsui is decorated with banners that feature the five basic principles of systema: breathe, relax, know, move and have fun. Heavy kettlebells - Russian exer-cise tools that resemble cannonballs - and nagaikas - short, thick whips - are used here very often. One of the instruc-tors is a native Hongkonger.

This establishment is the first school in Hong Kong and the mainland to serve as a systema ambassador. There are about 30 students learning relaxation and self-defence techniques from two instructors, which makes it a more se-rious endeavour than the school’s hum-ble beginnings in 2010.

“We used to exercise in Kowloon Park with the Symphony of Lights laser show [as] our background and inspiration,” says Litalien. He is also optimistic about the future progress of the school: “We have already organised three seminars with international instructors and we are planning the next one now.” How-ever, he is not so sure about expansion since students are hard to come by.

Litalien recognises that while syste-ma is potentially interesting as it is cus-tomisable for individual qualities and abilities, and has already created curi-osity, not everyone will instantly con-vert to it.

Attracting new students can be dif-ficult, particularly in a city where it is quite unlikely that they will have a chance to put any new skills to use, and where Bruce Lee is still the No 1 mar-tial arts role model for many.

Attracting new students is proving tough for the little-known school.

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