Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [172]
Are these senior figures mafiosi?
It would be wrong to say they are all mafiosi. Many are hard-working people who earn a living by the sweat of their brow. Mafiosi do not usually actually work. Under an ancient Chinese tradition, they protect the traders for a certain payment.
A kind of protection racket?
They negotiate with our militia and Customs officers. Their job is to shift goods across the border.
The Chinese use Russians for “patronage”?
Of course. The Chinese have nothing against militiamen. I have seen that myself. Let me offer one striking example: the Russian press is always publishing figures about the volume of trade between Russia and China based on – Chinese statistics. Do we not have our own? Of course we do, but the Chinese figures are higher. As soon as goods cross the frontier, there are more of them, by many billions of dollars each year. And that continues year in, year out.
Where does this difference come from?
The black market. Ours is a corrupt economy. Mr Vanin, the Head of our Customs Service, is starting to say we need to impose order. It’s not so much the Chinese mafia who are active as our own, and that is what makes it best to use Chinese statistics. The Chinese figures include both the grey economy and the black market. The second factor accounting for the differences is that in Russia the Chinese engage in forms of trade that would never occur to us. For example, they collect frogspawn. It is greatly valued, and they resourcefully collect kilograms of it at a time.
Where do they get licences for harvesting frogspawn?
Why, bless you, what licences?!
Well, what documents do the Chinese show at the border?
I have no idea, but in the forests of the taiga they live very much on their own, very secretively, busily milking frogs. It is a very gruelling form of poaching, and it will backfire on us.
Timber, frogs, marrying Russian women – are these the results of the new policy China calls “going out”?
Yes. This approach started in 1996–7. They came to it by thinking about conquering world markets. All the academic institutes were brought in, including natural science institutes. It was accepted that indigenous geological discoveries would be a long and very costly endeavour, and the Chinese wanted something quick that would change the situation in the country. They decided to break into world markets by producing cheap goods by the billion. And they have succeeded.
Why did the Chinese need to “go out”?
The majority of Chinese in China are peasants. In all ages they have served as a source of revenue, but 500 million Chinese peasants are not what is needed today. After the XVIth Party Congress, in 2000, when the leadership of China changed, they concluded that the economy had no internal mechanisms encouraging increased production. China has 20 per cent of the world’s population, but they account for very little in the way of production: about 80 per cent of peasants earn less than one US dollar a day; about 60 per cent, less than half a dollar a day. What can someone in that situation aspire to in the market? What interest does he have in innovation? No, it was calculated that they needed to leave 150–170 million peasants in the rural economy, and to take 250–300 million out of the villages. Where to? That is how the era of Chinese expansion came about, “going out.” The peasants were allowed to leave the villages. For China that was a revolution. All towns and provinces which produce goods for export now have mini-townships where peasants live and work. That is why they are so cheap. A new migratory phenomenon appeared: China began as it were to split into two parts, one moving towards our border, to Xinjiang, and the other towards the coast.
Are they moving physically?
Yes, that is where the work and the money are, but the Chinese cannot completely abandon their ancestral lands. The peculiarity of