On 26 May, Bloomberg highlighted a significant Chinese investment in Belarus. China is building a huge manufacturing springboard near the Minsk airport.
According to Chinese and Belarusian officials the area which is allocated for the Chinese springboard is approximately 40 per cent larger than Manhattan and will include enough housing to accommodate approximately 155,000 people.
The Chinese ambassador to Belarus Gong Jianwei said on state television on May 17. “This is a unique project…Nobody will be able to build anything like this industrial park anywhere else in Europe anymore. The infrastructure is so powerful.” According to the US financial news agency, the Chinese investment is located in a significant position. The manufacturing springboard will be very close to the EU members Poland and Lithuania and will offer to Chinese exports a tax-free entry into Russia and Kazakhstan, which share a customs union. The minimum monthly pay of the employees will be at €433.
Chinese investment in Belarus is a common fact. Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, wrote in Harvard Political Review that the bilateral trade between the two countries has grown from $34 million in 1992 to over $2.5 billion in 2010. “Further, China stands as involved in Belarus’s politics as it does in its economics. From Minsk to Beijing, evidence of growing economic and diplomatic links suggests a mutually beneficial relationship that will continue to develop in the coming years,” Nedzhvetskaya underlined in her article.
The Chinese investment will be called the “modern city on the Eurasian continent.” The springboard will be located near the M1 highway that links Moscow and Berlin via Poland and Belarus. Apart from China, Russia has agreed with Belarus to help the country build its first nuclear plant by 2018.
Belarus, is considered as the last dictatorship in Europe.
