State Council of the PRC Took Offence at the Proposal to Lease Some Quarters of Vladivostok to China

VLADIVOSTOK. September 25. VOSTOK-MEDIA - An official at the State Council of the PRC has denounced as a cheap trick the news circulated by Russian media on the alleged plan of the local Russian Government to lease some quarters of Vladivostok to China.

“We were furious to find Sinophobic comments on the issue in the Internet, all the more so the information on lease of a part of the city is clearly untrue,” – Li Fenglin, a member of Development Research Center under the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China, was quoted by KM news agency as saying.

“It hurts to read comments about Russia’s incapability to develop the Far East of the country and that the land should be leased to China. We are of different opinion,” –stressed the Chinese official.

Vostok-Media news agency reminds that earlier, a number of media outlets reported that during the working group meeting on the Strategic Vladivostok 2020 Development Plan led by the city mayor Igor Pushkarev, the so-called “Hai Shen Wei” conception proposed by the Leontief Centre was given an approval and that the project was supposed to be submitted to Moscow for consideration.

The experts of the St. Petersburg-based Leontief Centre have allegedly proposed to divide the city into two parts. According to the project, the Pervomaysky district and part of the Leninsky district will be leased out to China. In this quarter of the city it is proposed to set up the Chinese Administration to be staffed by officials from Harbin in China. The communications with the other parts of the city will be carried out through customs and frontier posts.

The Vladivostok city Administration denied the rumors stating that “the reports disseminated by certain media outlets on the Vladivostok development plans that have to do with leasing plots of land to foreign countries, the co-called “Hai Shen Wei” Project, are false. These reports bear no relations to the issues discussed in the framework of the working group meeting on Strategic Vladivostok 2020 Development Plan as well as to the research activities of the Leontief Centre.”