Gillard, Emerson roll up for APEC summit

6 Sep 2012, 6:02 pm   -   Source: AFP
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Russia's Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, once closed to foreigners and notorious for mafia crime, has become an Asian investment hub, undergoing a $20 billion makeover to host APEC.

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Russia's Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, once closed to foreigners and notorious for mafia crime, has undergone a $20 billion makeover to host an APEC summit and become a glitzy Asian investment hub.
  
After the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit is over, Russia is hoping that Vladivostok will become its window to Asia and open new markets just as Peter the Great founded Saint Petersburg to be a window on Europe.
  
Russia has spared no expense in hosting the event on a scale incomparable to previous APEC summits, defying the current global belt-tightening at a time of economic crisis.
  
The massive construction drive for the summit has seen the building of what is reputed to be the world's highest suspension bridge to connect Vladivostok with the summit venue on Russky Island at a height of 1,872 metres (6,177 feet).
  
Rather than taking the easy option of hosting the summit on the mainland, Russia decided that the venue would be the almost virgin Russky Island where a huge new facility resembling an American campus has been built.
  
Once the weekend summit is over, the buildings will house the Far Eastern Federal University, with an initial intake of 25,000 students although the authorities hope to attract even more students from across Asia.

Visit Vladivostok with Jonathan Dimbleby in Russia: A Journey on SBS OnDemand

MAJOR MAKEOVER
  
In a construction drive that officials hope will transform the spectacularly situated city into Russia's answer to San Francisco or Istanbul, another giant suspension bridge has also been built across the Golden Horn bay to help relieve notorious traffic jams.
  
A brand new airport terminal is already receiving summit visitors who can then take a new rail link straight into the city -- avoiding the pesky traffic jams. Other less visible improvements have also been made including modern sewage treatment works.
  
The total bill has come to 670 billion rubles ($20.7 billion/16.5 billion euros), a colossal sum for a country that only in 2008 was reeling from the economic crisis.
  
The investment marks a massive turnaround for the fabled Pacific terminus of the Trans-Siberian railway which is home to the Russian Pacific Fleet but fell into virtual dereliction after the fall of the Soviet Union.
  
Its fishery-based industries crumbled, residents moved to Russian cities further west in search of a better life and mafia gangland shootouts were commonplace while Moscow turned a blind eye.
  
"Over the last 20 years, the federal centre unjustly forgot the Far East and now perhaps this has finally been reversed," said Vasily Avchenko, correspondent of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Vladivostok and the author of several books on the city.
  
"We all live on the same land mass but sometimes we have had the feeling we were on some far-flung isle," he told AFP.
  
Not even the $20 billion makeover has smoothed all the city's rough edges. Bumpy roads, dust-strewn pavements and derelict buildings show the city still has some way to go before realising the Kremlin's ambition to make it a Far East investment capital like Hong Kong or Singapore.
  
The project has divided Vladivostok's immensely proud residents, some of whom are grateful for the attention finally being bestowed on their city while others scorn the summit as a massive waste of misdirected funds.
  
Natalya Zubarevich, an expert with the Moscow-based Independent Institute for Social Policy, lambasted the project as suffering from "megalomania" and criticised the authorities for hosting the summit out on Russky Island.
  
"There were many options for Vladivostok and one of them was to create the infrastructure for the summit on the mainland," she said.
  
Once the Moscow bigwigs have gone home, the local authorities will then have the expensive task of maintaining the grand new facilities that have been built.
  
"They are going to need extra funds to do this and there is not huge funding available for this," she said, comparing the project to a "Potemkin village" designed to mask the real living standards in the city.
  

 

Vladivostok

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