The Great Game Changer: Belt and Road Intiative (BRI; OBOR)

[TaiShang]

anti-china propaganda to get more funding

Obama's troll army needs more funding, obviously.

 

[gambit]

anti-china propaganda to get more funding. americunt erection cumming up, get ready for big china-bashing flood

Looks like somebody is nervous on how much we can accomplish with 5.5 bils.

 

[Götterdämmerung]

Give a bunch of Arabs some tape cutters and all US defense will be rendered useless.

 

[forcetrip]

Looks like somebody is nervous on how much we can accomplish with 5.5 bils.

Yes after spending trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan .. The US has learned the art of defeating the two largest superpowers in $5.5b. Or make real expensive Mission Accomplished banners.

 

[TaiShang]

Give a bunch of Arabs some tape cutters and all US defense will be rendered useless.

Or just wait until the next elections. LOL.

Obama in Good Company of America's Worst Wartime Presidents / Sputnik International

 

[gambit]

Yes after spending trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan .. The US has learned the art of defeating the two largest superpowers in $5.5b. Or make real expensive Mission Accomplished banners.

We can do more with 5.5 bils than most people realize.

 

[TaiShang]

1st China-Russia railway bridge to be launched in 2016
April 20, 2015, 8:09 am
The BRICS Post

The $431 million project is the first railway bridge to cross a river linking China with Russia [Xinhua]


To improve the Sino-Russian border trade route, work on a major infrastructure project – the building of a long-planned railway bridge over the Amur river- has been accelerated, Chinese local media reports said.


The $431 million project is the first railway bridge to cross a river linking China with Russia.

The Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye Railway Bridge, which crosses the Heilongjiang River known as Amur in Russia, is slated for completion by the end of 2016, according toHeilongjiang Daily.

The 2,215-meter bridge will link Tongjiang city in Heilongjiang Province with Nizhneleninskoye in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

1900 meters will be within China’s borders.

China plans to invest 2.64 billion yuan ($431 million) in the project through the RCIF [Russia-China Investment Fund], including the construction of the main bridge and an approach road.

The project was given a go-ahead following Russian President Putin’s visit to Shanghai last year.

The bridge will be able to handle 21 million tons of traffic a year.

The new export corridor will make it easier to transport oil and gas from the new fields developed in Eastern Siberia and the Far East.

It will also significantly increase the turnover of goods and competitiveness of Russian exporters in the region. The new route will reduce the distance to the end customer by about 700 kilometers compared to other rail routes.

Heilongjiang accounts for about a quarter of China’s total trade with Russia.

Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province is planning to increase investment in Russia by $1 billion by the end of 2015, and $2 billion by 2020.

The Chinese province, which borders Russia, plans to boost its trade volume to $26 billion by 2015, and $52 billion by 2020.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said, in Moscow last year, that Beijing will advance the establishment of a Eurasian high-speed transport corridor linking Beijing and Moscow, adding that the current priority should be the high-speed railway between Moscow and Kazan.

***
CCTV

The first railway bridge to cross a river and link China with Russia is under rapid construction, local media reported.

The Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye Railway Bridge, which crosses the Heilongjiang River, or the Amur River in Russia, is slated for completion by the end of 2016, according to Heilongjiang Daily.

The 2,215-meter bridge will link Tongjiang city in Heilongjiang Province with Nizhneleninskoye in Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast, 1,900 meters will be within China's borders.

First cross-river railway bridge to Russia ready in 2016 - People's Daily Online

 

[TaiShang]

Russia, China set up $200mn venture capital fund, robotics center
April 21, 2015, 7:07 am
Brics Post

File photo of the third Skolkovo Robotics International Conference in March 2015 [Image: Skolkovo]

Russia and China have announced a $200 million joint venture capital fund that will focus on companies from sectors like information and technology, robotics, space technologies and telecommunications, said an official statement on Tuesday.

Apart from the venture fund, the agreement inked between Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation and Chinese Cybernaut Investment Group aims to create a joint Russian-Chinese business incubator and a center for robotics at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high-tech park of 23,000 square meters outside Moscow that is also known as Russia’s “Silicon Valley”.

The business incubator will deal in research and development.

The Chinese and Russian firms signed the agreement in Beijing on Tuesday during the ongoing Russia-Chinese forum “Big opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises”.

“Agreement between Skolkovo and Cybernaut Investment Group marks an important step in Russian-Chinese cooperation in the field of innovations,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Tuesday in Beijing.

“I’m confident Russia and China will score big success along the way of innovations and will thus contribute to their economic development,” he added.

The projects are expected to be launched in the third quarter of this year.

The agreement comes ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia on 8 May.

Chinese investments in Russia is helping Moscow overcome the void caused by international sanctions, said Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

“We have a special program where we co-invest with people to localize their production in Russia, and frankly we see (a) major surge of strategies from China,” Dmitriev told CNBClast month.

“So a little bit less European countries are coming in right now, but lots of Chinese companies are coming in in mass. So we believe that for Russia it’s important to continue working with China, but also to have a strategic relationship with Europe,” he added.

In a meeting earlier this month with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Sino-Russian ties “meet the demands of the day”.

“I believe there is no need to describe Russian-Chinese relations. They are truly at an unprecedentedly high level. Their quality meets the demands of the day and our national interests,” Putin said.

In October 2014, China and Russia had signed a memorandum to jointly build high-tech parks in the two countries.

 

[Tresbon]

by PEPE ESCOBAR

Move over, Cold War 2.0. The real story, now and for the foreseeable future, in its myriad declinations, and of course, ruling out too many bumps in the road, is a new, integrated Eurasia forging ahead.

China’s immensely ambitious New Silk Road project will keep intersecting with the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EEC). And that will be the day when the EU wakes up and finds a booming trade/commerce axis stretching from St. Petersburg to Shanghai. It’s always pertinent to remember that Vladimir Putin sold a similar, and even more encompassing, vision in Germany a few years ago – stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

It will take time – and troubled times. But Eurasia’s radical face lift is inexorable. This implies an exceptionalist dream – the U.S. as Eurasia hegemon, something that still looked feasible at the turn of the millennium – fast dissolving right before anyone’s eyes.

Russia Pivots East, China Pivots West

A few sound minds in the U.S. remain essential as they fully deconstruct the negatives, pointing to the dangers of Cold War 2.0. The Carnegie Moscow Center’s Dmitri Trenin, meanwhile, is more concerned with the positives, proposing a road map for Eurasian convergence.

The Russia-China strategic partnership – from energy trade to defense and infrastructure development – will only solidify, as Russia pivots East and China pivots West. Geopolitically, this does not mean a Moscow subordinated to Beijing, but a rising symbiotic relationship, painstakingly developed in multiple stages.

The BRICs – that dirty word in Washington – already have way more global appeal, and as much influence as the outdated G-7. The BRIC New Development Bank, ready to start before the end of 2015, is a key alternative to G7-controlled mechanisms and the IMF.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is bound to include India and Pakistan at their upcoming summer summit in Russia, and Iran’s inclusion, post-sanctions as an official member, would be virtually a done deal by 2016. The SCO is finally blossoming as the key development, political/economic cooperation and security forum across Asia.

Putin’s “greater Europe” from Lisbon to Vladivostok – which would mean the EU + EEC – may be on hold while China turbo-charges the its New Silk Road in both its overland and maritime routes. Meanwhile, the Kremlin will concentrate on a parallel strategy – to use East Asian capital and technology to develop Siberia and the Russian Far East. The yuan is bound to become a reserve currency across Eurasia in the very near future, as the ruble and the yuan are about to rule for good in bilateral trade.

The German Factor

“Greater Europe” from Lisbon to Vladivostok inevitably depends on a solution to the German puzzle. German industrialists clearly see the marvels of Russia providing Germany – much more than the EU as a whole – with a privileged geopolitical and strategic channel to Asia-Pacific. However, the same does not apply as yet to German politicos. Chancellor Angela Merkel, whatever her rhetoric, keeps toeing the Washington line.

The Russian Pipelineistan strategy was already in place – via Nord Stream and South Stream – when interminable EU U-turns led Moscow to cancel South Stream and launch Turk Stream (which will, in the end, increase energy costs for the EU). The EU, in exchange, would have virtually free access to Russia’s wealth of resources, and internal market. The Ukraine disaster means the end of all these elaborate plans.

Germany is already the defacto EU conductor for this economic express train. As an export powerhouse, its only way to go is not West or South, but East. Thus, the portentous spectacle of an orchestra of salivating industrialists when Xi Jinping went to Germany in the spring of 2104. Xi proposed no less than a high-speed rail line linking the New Silk Road from Shanghai to Duisburg and Berlin.

A key point which shouldn’t be lost on Germans: a vital branch of the New Silk Road is the Trans-Siberian high-speed rail remix. So one of the yellow BRIC roads to Beijing and Shanghai boasts Moscow as a strategic pit stop.

That Empire of Chaos …

Beijing’s Go West strategy overland is blissfully free of hyperpower meddling – from the Trans-Siberian remix to the rail/road routes across the Central Asian “stans” all the way to Iran and Turkey. Moreover, Russia sees it as a symbiosis, considering a win-win as Central Asian stans jump simultaneously aboard the EEU and what Beijing dubs the Silk Road Economic Belt.

On other fronts, meanwhile, Beijing is very careful to not antagonize the U.S., the reigning hyperpower. See for instance this quite frank but also quite diplomatic interview to the Financial Times by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang.

One key aspect of the Russia-China strategic partnership is that both identify Washington’s massively incoherent foreign policy as a prime breeder of chaos – exactly as I argue in my book Empire of Chaos.

In what applies specifically to China and Russia, it’s essentially chaos as in divide and rule. Beijing sees Washington trying to destabilize China’s periphery (Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang), and actively interfering in the South China Sea disputes. Moscow sees Washington obsessed with the infinite expansion of NATO and taking no prisoners in preventing Russia’s efforts at Eurasian integration.

Thus, the certified death of Russia’s previous geopolitical strategy. No more trying to feel included in an elite Western club such as the G-8. No more strategic partnership with NATO.

Always expert at planning well in advance, Beijing also sees how Washington’s relentless demonization of not only Putin, but Russia as a whole (as in submit or else), constitute a trial run on what might be applied against China in the near future.

Meet the Imponderables

All bets are off on how the fateful U.S.-China-Russia triangle will evolve. Arguably, it may take the following pattern: The Americans talk loud and carry an array of sticks; the Russians are not shy to talk back while silently preparing strategically for a long, difficult haul; the Chinese follow a modified “Little Helmsman” Deng Xiaoping doctrine – talk very diplomatically while no longer keeping a low profile.

Beijing’s already savvy to what Moscow has been whispering: Exceptionalist Washington – in decline or not – will never treat Beijing as an equal or respect Chinese national interests.

In the great Imponderables chapter, bets are still accepted on whether Moscow will use this serious, triple threat crisis – sanctions, oil price war, ruble devaluation – to radically apply structural game changers and launch a new strategy of economic development. Putin’s recent Q&A, although crammed with intriguing answers, still isn’t clear on this.

Other great imponderable is whether Xi, armed with soft power, charisma and lots of cash, will be able to steer, simultaneously, the tweaking of the economic model and a Go West avalanche that does not end up alienating China’s multiple potential partners in building the New Silk roads.

A final, super-imponderable is whether (or when, if ever) Brussels will decide to undertake a mutually agreed symbiosis with Russia. This, vs. its current posture of total antagonism that extends beyond geopolitical issues. Germany, under Merkel, seems to have made the choice to remain submitted to NATO, and thus, a strategic midget.

So what we have here is the makings of a Greater Asia from Shanghai to St. Petersburg – including, crucially, Tehran – instead of a Total Eurasia that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Total Eurasia may be broken, at least for now. But Greater Asia is a go. There will be a tsunami of efforts by the usual suspects, to also break it up.

All this will be fascinating to watch. How will Moscow and Beijing stare down the West – politically, commercially and ideologically – without risking a war? How will they cope with so much pressure? How will they sell their strategy to great swathes of the Global South, across multiple Asian latitudes?

One battle, though, is already won. Bye, bye Zbigniew Brzezinski. Your grand chessboard hegemonic dream is over.

 

[meanderer]

good analysis.

yes, indeed, EU leans towards US -- after all, neither Russia nor China can give EU security assurance as NATO does.

that inevitably pushes Russia and China together, forming a bipolar world. many countries will choose side.

swinging countries, like India, will benefit a lot from the game.

the boundary is not that clear though. there will be a lot of covert communications and under table deals. I think countries like UK, France, Israel, etc will be open to make some deals with China or Russia.

 

[Aepsilons]

good analysis.

yes, indeed, EU leans towards US -- after all, neither Russia nor China can give EU security assurance as NATO does.

that inevitably pushes Russia and China together, forming a bipolar world. many countries will choose side.

swinging countries, like India, will benefit a lot from the game.

the boundary is not that clear though. there will be a lot of covert communications and under table deals. I think countries like UK, France, Israel, etc will be open to make some deals with China or Russia.

Correction. Not bipolar world, but a multipolar world.

 

[cnleio]

CHINA SIGNS HUGE ARMS DEAL WITH RUSSIA, BUYS WORLD'S BEST MISSILE

S-400.The S-400 SAM has a range of 400km, effective against many targets that Russia (or China) would face, such as stealth and conventional fighters, bombers, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

China and Russia, as part of closer strategic ties, have finalized a long-awaited deal for very long range S-400 surface to air missile (SAM) system. The deal is not only the largest Sino-Russian arms deal in over a decade, but S-400 missile defense capabilities would provide China with a quick missile defense upgrade at the moment neighboring states like North Korea acquire more ballistic missiles, and the U.S. and Japan look to buy stealthy anti-ship missiles.

S-400 Components.Seen here, from left to right, are the S-400 missile launcher, the 92N6E Grave Stone Multimode Engagement Radar which provides midcourse guidance for the missiles, and a 96L6-1/96L6E Acquisition Radar for all altitude target acquisition.

In April 2015, both Anatoly Isaikin, CEO of Russia's arms sales Rosoboronexport agency, and Du Wenlong, a senior member of the PLA Academy of Military Science, have stated that China will take delivery of the S-400 SAM. The Moscow Times reports that the deal was negotiated for $3 billion, to deliver 6 S-400 battalions. With each battalion consisting of 6 transport erector launch (TEL) vehicles, China would have 36 launch vehicles.

S-400 Missiles.The S-400 system's 250km-ranged 48N6 and 120km-range 9M96E2 missiles are lethal against fighters, bombers, early warning and electronic warfare aircraft, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles.

The S-400 is the longest range SAM system in the world. It first entered into Russian service in 2007, and has capability to intercept ballistic missiles and high speed aircraft, while its 91N6E can locate and track stealth aircraft at standoff (100km+) distances. The most infamous of the S-400's three missiles is the 40N6, which has an astounding range of 400km. The 40N6's extreme range would allow S-400 TELs on China's coast to shoot down aircraft anywhere over Taiwan. The smaller 250km-ranged 48N6 and 120km-range 9M96E2 missiles are also equally lethal against fighters, bombers, early warning and electronic warfare aircraft, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles.

HQ-9.China's HQ-9 SAM makes up half of China's long-range SAM arsenal, with nearly a hundred launchers in 2014. The HQ-9 has a range of 200km, and in addition to targeting aircraft, drones and cruise missiles, it has a limited ABM capability. In 2013, the HQ-9 was selected as Turkey's air defense system of choice over its Russian and western counterparts.

The S-400 will supplement China's Russian-made S-300 and domestic HQ-9 long-range SAMs, while its 30K6E command system can even interlink with other Russian made SAMs, like the S-400 and TOR-M1, both of which China already fields. The S-400s would likely be operated by the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), which has historically operated China's land based long-range air defense systems. While the 40N6's long range could theoretically cover all of Taiwan's air space, they would most likely protect major bases like the Hainan submarine pens, important cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, or hide within the inland mountains of Fujian and Guangdong Provinces.

91N6E Radar.The 91N6E "Big Bird" AESA radar can locate and track stealth aircraft at standoff (100km+) distances, while it can detect high altitude targets like ballistic missiles at distances of up to 600km.

The deal is significant to regional security as well as geopolitics. China's improved air defense capabilities will greatly complicate any efforts to conduct aerial operations or missile attacks against the Chinese mainland, even with stealthy drones, longer-ranged cruise missiles, or new bombers, all part of the new US "third offset" plan. In wartime, the S-400 could even support Chinese airstrikes by knocking out enemy fighters flying above their own bases and cities. On the strategic level, the S-400 sale would facilitate Sino-Russian cooperation, as well as facilitate other sales and joint projects like submarines and space operations.

 

[HariPrasad]

S 400 is an *** kicking weapon. It is a great matter of concern for India. The only solution to this is to buy S500 and deploy that as a counter measure or develop 1000 KM range desi system based on K 15. Russian weapons are very hard to counter.

 

[ito]

S400 is awesome weapon.

 

[deckingraj]

S 400 is an *** kicking weapon. It is a great matter of concern for India. The only solution to this is to buy S500 and deploy that as a counter measure or develop 1000 KM range desi system based on K 15. Russian weapons are very hard to counter.

how come a SAM be countered by another SAM?? We need to tighten our air defence however at the same time need to figure out how to penetrate enemy sky(if push comes to shove), no??