Belarusian-Chinese Relations: From Great Promise to Failure
In the near future Minsk and Beijing plan to sign the main contract for the China-Belarus Industrial Park. Once a project that used to hold great promise, now appears to be a failure.
Lately, Belarusian-Chinese relations have gone through a number of stumbling blocks, including the delay of the industrial park near Minsk and a manufacturing plant in the Homel region. And Chinese Geely cars have yet to become a popular commodity in Belarus.
The lack of expertise and knowledge about China is the primary reason why Belarus cannot benefit from its relationship with the economic giant. Propaganda, as a surrogate to any fact-driven discussion, has brought Belarus more harm than good. The authorities continue to restrict access to information from independent journalists and experts.
If the authorities fail to develop their own strategy for their ties with China and adapt joint projects to the real needs of the Belarusian economy, the crisis in its relations with Beijing will only deepen.
Plants, Potash and Geely
On 3 April, Belarusian deputy Prime Minister Anatol Tozik agreed with Lee Kheysin, Vice President of the Chinese corporation CAMCE, to sign the primary contract for the Sino-Belarusian industrial park in the near future. The Park will occupy about nine thousand hectares of the Smaliavichy region (Minsk district) and host high-tech and export-oriented companies. In February, Alexander Lukashenka described the pace of construction as "a disgrace to the government", so Belarusian officials are trying to speed it up. Tozik promises to start construction on the first buildings in May or June this year.
The park remains important for the Belarusian economy, but it is unlikely to become a breakthrough project. The park will host only large-scale producers and will lack research laboratories for new companies, one of the most crucial elements that the economy needs. The authorities set the minimal amount of investment at $5m. China wants Belarus to finance 40% of this overall contribution on its own, but Minsk has no money to do so.
Previously many rumours circled around the park, particularly its enormity. State media reported about $30bn in investment, while the independent press got caught up in writing about the arrival of 600,000 Chinese construction workers. Today’s the rumours that are circulating mostly describe the failure of the project. Yury Ziser, the owner of popular web portaltut.by, writes that Russia and the EU could resist any expansion of Belarusian-Chinese products to their markets.
The Industrial Park is not the only evidence that Belarusian-Chinese relations were mired in a state of crisis. China buys potash fertilisers from Uralkali, the main competitor of Belaruskali, and remains reluctant to invest even in small projects in Belarus.
In 2013 the Belarusian Geely automobile plant sold fewer than 2,000 cars, far fewer than was anticipated. Generally, the public authorities, such as the police, were the primary owners of these new cars. Other cars were delivered to Kazakhstan. When refering to the situation with Kazakhstan, Geely employs the vague terminology that the cars were "supplied", not "sold."
A joint plant building porject, which costs about $800m, remains behind schedule. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Miasnikovich hinted to Chinese partners that if construction was not completed on time, the Belarusian party would have a problem with its loan repayments.
Even the Belarusian state media began to write about the two countries' ties with extraordinary caution. On 4 March, the Belarusian Telegraph Agency reported that "Huawei does not preclude a new project in Minsk." While Lukashenka`s regime claims that both parties are successfully working together in accordance with the prescribed program of the development of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Between Belarus and China for 2014-2018, few have seen this road map. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has denied the author of this article access to the document.
What Went Wrong
The Belarusian authorities are facing the consequences of their own miscalculations. China never planned to invest in Belarus, a country with a small market and an expensive labour force. China wants to make a profit and remains reluctant to serve as a counterbalance to Russia or the EU. Orban`s Hungary, which also had some high expectations for cooperating with China, made no significant progress in this regard. China prefers to cooperate with less conflicted countries like Poland than with scandal-prone Hungary.
It seems that the Belarusian authorities have become victims of their own propaganda. The state media has long exaggerated the financial benefits of Belarusian-Chinese ties. Belarusian state media is beginning to describe relations of a strategic nature being back in 2005, but in reality the parties signed the Joint Declaration on the Establishment of Relations and Comprehensive Strategic Partnership only in 2013.
The government remained reluctant to support any analytical and academic discussions on ways to improve cooperation with the economic powerhouse. China, an authoritarian country like Belarus, relies on analytical centres. Thus, the Belarusian authorities lack the necessary information and expertise to make competent policies in this arena.
Without access to the documents it remains quite difficult to say whether Belarus has its own strategy for dealing with China. However, the results of cooperation in the form of a $2.5bn negative balance and the absence of investment rather indicate that Minsk has no idea what to do with China.
Will the Authorities Improve Cooperation?
Despite all the problems in their relations, Belarus receives certain benefits from China. The Chinese help Belarusians in the energy sector, China remains an important partner for Belarus' military industry, Chinese loans help Belarus keep its economy afloat. Only Beijing proposed Belarus cheap lines of credit that have amounted to $16 bn. However, this dependence on China limits Belarus` ability to demand more from Beijing officials.
Deputy Prime Minister Tozik and Lukashenka`s advisor Rudy, have worked in China and know it better than anyone else, but are both in limbo. On the one hand, when Tozik was an ambassador to China, he regularly praised China. On the other hand, he remains responsible for Minsk`s policy towards the Middle Kingdom. In this situation he should sober his colleagues up and have them recognise that the Belarusian-Chinese venture has been unsuccessful.
The Belarusian authorities should adapt an industrial park to the needs of Belarusian business, promote discussions about China at think tanks and universities, and its cooperation strategy should emerge sooner, rather than later. These small steps can help Belarus achieve a balance in its relations with China more positive.
A New Drug is Killing Belarusian Youth
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During the three months of 2014, seven young people in Minsk died from eating blotting paper that contained a synthetic drug. A number of teenagers have also been seriously poisoned and ended up in the hospital in various cities across the country.
After a ban on the free trade of poppy seeds was imposed on 1 January 2014, a synthetic drug, also known as ‘spice’, has made up 70% of the illicit drug market in Belarus. Due to the ease of creating the new narcotic with information readily available on the Internet, its distribution has become extremely difficult to fight against.
However, the authorities recently launched several legislative initiatives to stop the spread of ‘spice’.
New Generation of Drugs
Since 2008, the synthetic drug known as ‘spice’ coming out of Southeast Asia has flooded Europe’s illicit drug market. According to Belarusian law enforcement, China, Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia produce around 800 tonnes of the synthetic drug annually. The substance reaches Belarus either in ready-to-smoke blends, in powder form, on blotting paper or as a pure substance that dealers can prepare for usage domestically.
The success of the spice trade can be attributed to the legal status of the substance in Belarus. Producers create new compounds as soon as the authorities are able to ban the old ones. In order to ban a new compound they have to go through a lengthy legislative process. Until the ban is introduced, dealers can sell them without any fear of legal repercussions or subsequent punishment. This inpatinet addiction treatment can help you recovering from your addiction.
Another reason for the rapid growth of their sale is the ease of selling them through the Internet, the primary conduit of their distribution. Police block web sites which sell spice, but new ones pop-up as fast as they can take them down.
Putting an end to their sale is further complicated by the fact that many of the web sites registered abroad and purchases are made with e-money transfers. There are many rehabs like substance abuse fort lauderdale which are trying to aid to this process but it has not been that easy.
Spice is highly poisonous and inflicts irreversible damage to the health of its users, with the most notable impact being seen on users’ brains. As a result of a kind of psychosis that comes about from using the drug, people can become volatile and become a physical danger to themselves and others. If you happen to suffer from substance abuse and want to save yourself from an ill-fated experience, sites like oakvinerecoverycenter.com can be of great assistance to you.
The drug’s cooks do not evenly distribute dosages when preparing it, so dosages can vary significantly from batch to batch, making it impossible to predict which one could be fatal to its users.
Hundreds of young people have gone through rehabilitation for their drug addiction in recent years. Many find themselves returning to Abbeycare Scotland again and again. Abbeycare’s rehab Scotland clinic helps those suffering from drug or alcohol addiction to complete a full rehab programme, in a safe, supervised environment. And while a good portion of addicts are forced into a rehabilitation programme by their parents, usually law enforcement initiates drug users into a programme of treatment. In 2010 ten patients with what was diagnosed as “acute psychosis” underwent drug rehab in Beverly Hills for using the synthetic drug, while in 2013 some 380 people underwent treatment.
School Epidemic
The main consumers of spice are young people, including school and university students. Poppy opiate addicts, on the other hand, were typically age 25 and up. Of the seven who have died as a result of the use of spice in Minsk, all were schoolchildren and students with clean histories and no previous record of drug use or criminal activity. Their sudden deaths has generated shock waves throughout Minsk’s community of parents.
Minsk police receive hundreds of calls with reports of school children taking spice. “Children come to their classes high – and these are the best students with a spotless background,” says Liudmila Špakoŭskaja, a doctor at the Minsk Narcological Dispensary. Generally, parents are able to detect the problem only when it is too late.
School employees were afraid to report drug use in the past. They feared their schools garner a bad reputation and being punished for having a poor anti-drug education programme. However, in 2013 police began to realise the seriousness of the problem and started to cooperate more closely with schools. The Ministry of Education also joined the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Healthcare in the anti-spice war in 2013.
Over 26 – 29 March, the authorities held a Belarus-wide “Stop Spice” campaign which informed young people on the medical and legal consequences of using the drug and narcotics in general. Teachers were trained to detect drug use among students and parents were informed on how to restrict access to web sites that distribute spice. If you know someone who is suffering from opioid use disorder, you can help them get treated at Klinic.care in Bellevue, WA.
Authorities Declare War on Spice
The Belarusian police boasts of having the most extensive list of illegal drugs among the post-communist countries and the fastest procedures of banning new substances. Despite this, spice trade continues to thrive in Belarus. Still, with a new compound appearing nearly every week in 2013, efforts to combat the distribution of spice were failing.
Finally the Belarusian authorities realised the ineffectiveness of its policy of banning compounds with new ones constantly appearing on the market. As part of this process of review, the government decided to take a look at the experience of the US and EU. There, the authorities ban the basic ingredients that are used to make various drugs, eliminating the necessity of banning a new compound each time one appears. Belarusian policymakers are currently on the verge of adopting a law which bans 18 basic ingredients to produce spice.
The Supreme Court has also joined in the anti-drug campaign and suggested making the potential punishment for drug production and distribution much more severe. The Parliament decided to elaborate on an amendment in its Law on Narcotics and adopt it as soon as possible.
The creation the Anti-Narcotic Interagency Committee would allow the ban on the new substance to come into force in a few days, but Belarusian MPs are complaining that Customs Union’s legislation is impeding the process. Under Customs Union law, there is a different procedure of dealing with narcotic substances.
Law enforcement has also suggested that web sites who sell drugs should be blocked by the government for all Internet users residing in Belarus. At the moment, the government is only able to legally block these kinds of web sites inside the confines of state institutions and organisations.
Will Belarus Become Drug-Free?
The typical distribution scheme is as follows. Information on drugs and prices appear on the Internet, the buyer discusses the details with the dealer via Skype. Then the buyer makes an e-money transfer, the dealer makes a delivery, known locally as a “laying” – he puts the drugs in a certain place and informs the buyer where they can pick them up. The police are naturally targeting wholesale dealers who deliver the drug to petty distributors.
On 1 March, the police detained a 37-year old man in a car who was allegedly in possession of a half-kilo of spice. Later on, he allegedly revealed his cache under a city bridge to investigators that held another 13 kilos.
Finally, the police searched his residence, and found nearly 300,000 pieces of blotting paper and 100 grammes of pure spice, as well as a laboratory in his garage with a large amount of the drug.
The police believe him to be Minsk’s main supplier and dealer. Several other groups that have dealt in spice were also detained in Babrujsk and Hrodna recently.
It seems like the Belarusian authorities are determined to try to take spice completely off of the streets, but even at the moment of writing, one can still buy spice online. If the new legal initiatives prove to be successful, Belarus may soon become a drug-free country, or at least ‘spice’-free.
