>Indeed. There is a section of the productive property-owning class and
>the remaining European Russian professional class which acknowledges that
>the salvation (from a conventional economic growth perspective) of the RFE
>must necessarily combine Japanese/South Korean capital and Chinese labor.
>(The Chinese capital for the most part is too fly-by-night and not oriented
>enough toward fixed investment for their tastes).
It's in this context I think that one should look at the recent agreement between Russia and the Koreas to link the to-be-relinked inter-Korean railroad with the trans-Siberian. This is going to make it possible for Asia to get much easier access to Siberian oil, as well as, if and when the rail lines are upgraded to high-speed, to ship goods from SK to the EU in two days (!), giving Russia whopping transit tariff money in the process. Geography has placed Russia as the eternal silk road... (I wrote an article on this a while ago, BTW.)
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