Russia And Greater China by Russia Beyond

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

SPECIAL REPORT

RUSSIA

AND GREATER CHINA

Monthly supplement from Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Moscow, Russia) which takes sole responsibility for the contents

A product by

Beijing rebuilds military ties PLA aims to acquire hi-tech weapons, such as the Su-35 fighter, from Moscow PAGE 5

Geniuses make quantum leaps in their field > PAGE 3

Space sector faces major shake-up

Entering into the right spirit

Federal agency must reform to fulfil goals for the next 30 years

Discover the age-old secrets of vodka drinking

> PAGES 8-9

> PAGE 15

LORI/LEGION MEDIA

Mathematical wonders

ÂŠ ED ALCOCK / MYOP DIFFUSION

WWW.SUKHOI.ORG

2 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA DEALMAKER OF THE MONTH

SURVEY OF THE MONTH

Sechin takes Rosneft global C

Happiness is found in Chechen capital Grozny

hief executive Igor Sechin has bolstered his position as a top dealmaker in Russia, thanks to Rosneft’s US$55 billion takeover of TNK-BP, making the state-controlled oil company a global energy giant with a potential output of 4.6 million barrels per day. The deal cements the Kremlin’s alliance with British oil firm BP, which will take a stake in Rosneft of just under 20 per cent. Sechin’s influence over Russian policymaking stretches back to the late 1990s, when he worked with Vladimir Putin in the administration of former president Boris Yeltsin. A fluent Portuguese and French speaker, Sechin, 62, started his career as a Soviet military translator in Mozambique in the 1980s. Since 2004, he has built up Rosneft through the absorption of former Yukos assets and, as a deputy prime minister in charge of energy, later developed Russia’s trade with strategic partners in Asia and Latin America. Sechin favours state influence in the energy sector, while welcoming modernisation and foreign investors’ participation in developing new fields. Recently, Sechin referred to Rosneft as his “teddy bear”.

Dmitry Kahn A little more than 10 years ago, the Chechen capital of Grozny was lying in ruins from two brutal wars. Today, it is regarded as the best place to live in Russia, according to a new survey. Grozny took top place in an assessment of almost 27,000 people from Russia’s largest cities in terms of happiness, financial status, environment, pace of development, overall standard of living and other factors. Moscow was ranked way down at number 52 on the happiness index. Despite the devastation after the wars, the authorities were quick to redevelop the city, with massive cash injections from the federal budget that helped in its transformation. No other city in Russia has been so dynamically changed in recent years, with 73 per cent of its people saying they were happy with the way Grozny had been rebuilt. The survey was conducted by the NewsEffector monitoring agency and

LIFE the Russian Regions’ Regional Research Fund, which found that although many people still moved from regional areas to seek a better life in Moscow, those living away from the capital were generally happier with their lot. In response to the question, “are you happy in your city?”, the researchers discovered that, despite the conventional wisdom that money can’t buy you happiness, material well-being does indeed matter.

FORUM KOMMERSANT

Moscow vows to free itself from dependence on oil

Igor Sechin’s TNK-BP deal makes Rosneft a top global oil firm.

Nikita Dulnev

PICTURE OF THE MONTH

NUMBERS GAME

Moscow is cool and stylish

81,801 VOTERS

Models take centre stage at the Moscow Fashion Week Contrafashion event, which featured young designers and their avant-garde styles.

The number who supported the “nonsystem opposition” and who took part in a poll on the internet to elect a new leadership to fight for reform. More than 200 left-wing, liberal and nationalist candidates competed for 45 seats on a “Coordinating Council” opposed to President Vladimir Putin, who returned to office in a landslide victory in March after serving a term as prime minister. Nearly 170,000 people had registered to choose their representatives; only half of them voted. The organisers worked to create a voting system that was transparent and fraud-free.

The Russian government is taking concrete steps to free the state budget from its dependence on oil and raw materials, seeing this as a vital step in guaranteeing the country’s economic security, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at the Sochi Investment Forum. From next year, for example, oil price forecasts would no longer be factored into the budget, he said. “This was a tough decision to make,

Fighting oil dependency is now a top priority for the cabinet.

but we took it and are already working within the new framework,” said Medvedev, adding that all profits from high oil prices would go straight to the reserve fund. This year, oil and gas revenues made up just under half (47.3 per cent) of the Russian budget. When drafting the budget under the old system, the treasury would look closely at predictions of oil and gas prices for the year ahead. It was not difficult to estimate revenues from gas, because they depended on contracts rather than fluctuations in the stock market. The XI Sochi Investment Forum, held on the shores of the Black Sea, was first organised to increase investment in the Krasnodar Territory, which is in the western part of the Greater Caucasus and is one of the most attractive regions in the country. However, neighbouring regions, especially from the north Caucasus, also became involved and, what started out as a regional event, gradually turned into a national and then international forum on investment.

RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES’ SUPPLEMENTS AND SECTIONS IN ASIA: GET THE BEST STORIES FROM RUSSIA EACH MONTH IN YOUR FAVOURITE NEWSPAPER In China Business News (China)

In Mainichi Shimbun (Japan)

“WHY SPIES NOW RESEMBLE ACADEMICS”

“RUSSIAN PRIESTS ENTER THE RING” ezhong.ru

in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

In The Economic Times (India)

roshianow.jp

“GLONASS UPBEAT ABOUT INDIA”

“RUSSIA HOPES TO BREAK ITS WAY INTO GLOBAL RUGBY ELITE” indrus.in

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS AND SECTIONS ABOUT RUSSIA ARE ALSO PUBLISHED BY RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES, A DIVISION OF ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA (RUSSIA), IN: THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE NEW YORK TIMES (UNITED STATES), THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (UNITED KINGDOM), LE FIGARO (FRANCE), SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (GERMANY), EL PAÍS (SPAIN), LA REPUBBLICA (ITALY), LE SOIR (BELGIUM), DUMA (BULGARIA), GEOPOLITICA (SERBIA), EUROPEAN VOICE (EU), LA NATION (ARGENTINA), FOLHA DO SAO PAOLO (BRAZIL), EL OBSERVADOR (URUGUAY).

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Tuesday, October 30, 2012 3

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Mathematical wonders Prize-winning geniuses make quantum leaps in a ‘cool’ field, writes Dmitry Malyanov

SCIENCE The Shaw Prize This annual award, established in 2002, is made to scholars “regardless of race, nationality, or religious belief, who have achieved a significant breakthrough in scientific and applied research, and whose work has resulted in a profound and positive impact on humanity”. The prize bears the name of Run Run Shaw, a Hong Kong media mogul and philanthropist. It is awarded in three categories: astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. It’s also known as the “Asian Nobel Prize” and it is worth US$1 million. Nominations for the prize are accepted in September. Last year, 25 prizes were awarded to 43 individuals.

Maxim Kontsevich is a world-renowned mathematician, and he has won several awards for his work.

MAXIM KONTSEVICH Born 1964 in Khimki, Moscow region; studied under the renowned mathematics teacher Vladimir Sapozhnikov at Moscow School No 91; graduated from the faculty of mathematics and mechanics of Moscow State University in 1985; obtained a PhD in 1992 from the University of Bonn (Germany). Presently, permanent professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (France) and a member of the French Academy. Fields Medal (1998), Poincaré Prize (1997) Crafoord Prize (2008) Milner Prize (2012) Shaw Prize (2012)

Kontsevich is recognised as a genius, the brains behind a series of breakthroughs

“You could say that I partake in the dialogue between physics and mathematics on the side of the latter,” Kontsevich says. “String theory is in some respects the ‘swan song’ of theoretical physics ... in general, it’s all pretty ‘cool’ science that cannot be explained in words of one syllable. I can only say that string theory is now being applied to many puzzling phenomena in physics, such as gravity and quarks.” Kontsevich is one of the leaders of the small but very active army of Soviet and Russian-born mathematicians who in the past 20 years have taken up top positions at the world’s major universities and research centres. Another is the reclusive genius, Grigori Perelman, who made a breakthrough in modern mathematics by proving the Poincaré conjecture. However, he has consistently turned down all offers of regalia, medals and awards. Kontsevich is rather more practical: he says that he used the prize money from his Fields Medal (the mathematical “Nobel Prize”) to repair the heating system in his house. These two extremes – one ignoring the Fields Medal entirely, and the other investing it in central heating – are in fact closer than they seem. A great deal unites the biographies

of these two mathematicians: they are almost the same age (Perelman, born in 1966, is Kontsevich’s junior by two years), and both were prodigies of the Soviet mathematics school, which peaked in the 1980s, having supplied the world with mathematicians of the very highest calibre. Both went abroad in the 1990s and acquired fame. Perelman returned to St Petersburg, while the Muscovite Kontsevich became a permanent professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, the seat of mathematical learning, located in a quiet suburb of Paris. They are passionate about music: Perelman is a long-time habitué of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, while Kontsevich plays the lute and the viola da gamba to near professional standard. His wife, Katya, enjoys opera singing and restoring antiques. They are products of the “mathematical universalism” characteristic of the Russian mathematical school, which eschews all dogmatic approaches to the formulation and solving of problems. It is most likely because of this conceptual background that Kontsevich prefers the romantic Parisian suburbs to United States campus life, while Perelman was repelled by the career-oriented machinery of modern academia.

Reclusive professor Grigori Perelman

ITAR-TASS

ne can be forgiven for describing theoretical mathematics as “mind games”. Some mathematicians spend a lifetime wandering in the corridors of their own imaginations, never to attain their objectives. “Our science is rife with ‘accidents,’” says Maxim Kontsevich. “People invent a theory and work on it for years. “And then it turns out that they’ve been digging in vain. “It’s a tragedy, of course. But there are amusing stories: one mathematician invented an entirely new series of spaces. He wrote a thesis on the wonders of these spaces, describing their properties. And then he defended his dissertation by arguing that these spaces do not, in fact, exist.” Today, Kontsevich is recognised as a mathematics genius, the brains behind a series of conceptual breakthroughs in several areas at the intersection of theoretical physics, algebraic geometry, combinatorics and topology. He is also one of the most cited academics in modern scientific literature. A genuine wunderkind and a representative of the famous Soviet mathematical school, Kontsevich, 48, now lives in the suburbs of Paris and works at France’s Institute for Advanced Studies. His already impressive list of awards was supplemented this autumn by the Shaw Prize, also known as the “Asian Nobel Prize”, and the new Milner Prize, now the biggest award in physics. “I’m more interested in ‘mathematical wonders’ – logical structures that exist independent of reality ... and hypotheses yet to be proved,” Kontsevich says. “They are surrounded by an entire world of wondrous constructions that mathematicians try to anatomise.” String theory – the branch of physics that deals with elementary particles – is the focus of Kontsevich’s mathematical investigations, where that “wondrous construction” of which he speaks is in abundance. String theory is based on the idea that the universe at the micro level – the foundation of foundations accessible only to the imagination – is full of invisible threads, or strings. According to this idea, which seems to defy rational thought, all elementary particles – electrons, protons, quarks – are nothing more than the vibration of invisible strings. Each of these “quantum tones” corresponds to a certain particle, such as an electron or a quark. The “strings” themselves are energy in its purest form.

Six years ago, Grigori Perelman shocked the world of mathematics when he solved what was believed to be an unsolvable problem, and then by turning his back on the fame and fortune that went with it. He turned down US$1 million in prize money.

4 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Censorship fears

QUICK FACTS Sites black out as scrutiny tightens

New legislation may lead to online clampdown, writes Anna Arutunyan

June 2012 • Amendments to the Federal Law protecting children from information harmful to their health and development is submitted to parliament by Duma parties. July 2012 • Russian Wikipedia blacks out for 24 hours to protest against the readings of the internet law in the Russian Parliament. July 2012 • The internet law is approved by the State Duma. July 2012 • President Vladimir Putin signs the law.

ITAR-TASS

ZURAB DZHAVAKHADZE

September 2012 • YouTube blacks out in Omsk for a few hours. The film was confirmed to be extremist in Grozny.

Experts fear that the new law is a form of censorship.

Muslims protest in Moscow against the film ‘Innocence of Muslims’.

& Partners, says law-enforcement agencies already have instruments to block extremist internet sites. “I support this law, and find the mass hysteria that accompanied it isn’t completely justified,” Tolkachev says. “There are risks that state organs will abuse their authority. But they already have all the powers to shut down sites.” A case in point is the recent controversy over the Innocence of Muslims, an American trailer that sparked violent protests in the Arab world. Russian lawmakers have asked law-enforcement authorities to check the clip, but even with a court decision pending, reports surfaced that access to YouTube was blocked in Omsk and Volgograd, reports local internet providers denied. “You may laugh at it, but the whole of YouTube may be blocked in Russia over this video on November 3 to 5,” Nikiforov said in a Twitter post. A local court in Chechnya has already ruled the video as extremist. Google, owner of YouTube, did not comment specifically, but cited a practice of blocking similar videos in other countries. Alexei Mitrofanov, the new head of a parliamentary committee on information policy and technology, assured journalists that YouTube wasn’t going anywhere, and any solution to the video controversy would be “creative”. Still, Tolkachev cites the Omsk and Volgograd incident as one example of how access can be blocked without a court ruling. “If there is an order from the Prosecutor General’s office to block a site, then internet providers react with fear,” he says. Tolkachev believes the new bill will make regulations more transparent.

awyers, legislators and internet experts are divided on how Russia’s new internet law will be enforced and whether it will lead to greater censorship. A new law targeting websites with content harmful to children goes into effect on November 1. The controversy is about whether or not the legislation will expand or curtail existing powers to block content. “This law has no objective to introduce censorship or any sort of influence on media,” Russian news agencies quoted Media and Communications Minister Nikolai Nikoforov as saying. Debates have raged since Russia’s parliament passed in July what became known as the internet blacklist law, which would create a register for websites hosting “illegal content” such as child pornography or the promotion of suicide or drug use. Under the law, once a site has been listed on the register, the site’s provider has 24 hours to demand the owner remove the illegal content. If the content is not removed, the site can be blocked. The Russian State Agency for Communication will operate the register. Many fear the bill is part of legislative efforts to crack down on opposition voices after anti-Kremlin protests broke out in December last year. Following President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in May this year, parliament increased fines for unauthorised rallies and passed a bill forcing NGOs with foreign funding to register as foreign agents. Many see the internet blacklist as a third step to curb opposition. The Presidential Human Rights Commission issued a statement calling the

INTERNET

This law is not intended to introduce censorship or any kind of influence on the media NIKOLAI NIKOFOROV, MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER

bill an attempt to introduce censorship, which is unconstitutional in Russia. The Russian sector of Wikipedia shut down for a day in protest. In the past month, the controversy has become more nuanced. Nikoforov has sought to dispel fears, explaining the law would bring transparency. Though Nikiforov admitted that various internet sites are often arbitrarily blocked, “the law would allow this process to be regulated somehow”, ITARTASS quoted him as saying. Artem Tolkachev, a lawyer at Tolkachev

A bill to ban smoking in public places causes an uproar among smokers

November 2012 • Provisions concerning the so-called internet blacklist, with domain names and url addresses, containing information forbidden to distribution will come into force.

This law does not Web of trouble limit the powers of various lawenforcement agencies to block sites ... it just offers new procedures ANTON NOSIK, LIVEJOURNAL

“Right now, a site can be shut down if there’s a court ruling that finds it extremist,” Tolkachev says. “There’s also a quasi-legal method ... at least this law introduces a series of specific rules.” One problem, Tolkachev says, is that it is unclear how the new rules will be regulated. But industry leaders say the bill has many problems. “This law does not limit the powers of various law-enforcement agencies to block sites,” says Anton Nosik, an executive at Livejournal. “It just offers new procedures.” Compounding the problem are unclear views on censorship. The constitution forbids censorship but a poll suggests many Russians support it. Some 63 per cent of respondents were in favour of censorship of harmful content, with 19 per cent against, according to a survey by the independent Levada Center. Regarding blocking access to adolescents, the number in favour grew to 65 per cent. “People are afraid not just of the internet, [but of their] freedom and the free [flow] of information,” Alexei Grazhdankin, Levada’s deputy director, told Kommersant.

November 27

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 5 PARTNERED BY

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA COMMENT Cautious approach

REUTERS/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

China wants to buy the latest weapons systems from Russia, having already spent US$1.3 billion on military hardware from Moscow this year.

Beijing boosts arms purchase Defence spending on the rise as PLA seeks hi-tech weapons systems from Moscow, writes Vasiliy Kashin

hina’s drive to acquire sophisticated weapons systems and cement its status a regional military power has once again led to closer ties between Beijing and Moscow. The two nations have returned to their 1990s peak of defence co-operation, and Russia sold close to US$2 billion worth of military hardware and technical equipment to China last year. Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, deputy director of Russia’s Federal Service for Military and Technical Co-operation, says China accounted for “approximately 15 per cent” of Russia’s total military exports last year of US$13 billion, with India being the largest market. This year, China has already bought US$1.3 billion worth of military hardware from Russia, including MI-171 helicopters and AL-31F engines. Beijing has been mired in a number of territorial disputes, notably with Japan, and the PLA is continuing its drive to acquire the latest military technology. The Russians and Chinese enjoyed healthy bilateral military ties in the 1990s, but the relationship faded in

DEFENCE the following decade as China emerged as an industrial power and ventured to develop their own weapons systems. The bilateral commission for military and technical co-operation, which used to meet regularly, failed to convene at all in 2006 and 2007, and all signs pointed to a China market that was closed to Russian hardware. Beijing even refused to continue licensed production of the Su-27SK fighters in Shenyang and later started producing its own version of the model, the J-11B, which breached the Russian licensing agreement.

However, despite China’s rapid pace of industrialisation, economic progress was unable to keep up with the country’s military ambitions and requirements, and the central government once again turned to Russia to fulfil its defence needs, albeit in different ways than in the past. The two countries are now engaged in a number of deals that will result in China buying a host of military equipment from Russia, including aircraft and aircraft components, and air defence systems, among others. China makes four relatively modern types of tactical combat aircraft: the J-11B, FC-1 and J-10 fighters and the JH-7A bomber. The JH-7A is the only Chinese combat aircraft powered by a Chinese-made engine, but even the WS-9 Qingling engines are licensed copies of the British Rolls-Royce Spey Mk 202, which took the Chinese about 30 years to develop (the licence was taken back in the 1970s). The J-11B and the J-10 use Russianmade AL-31F and Al-31FN engines respectively. Their Chinese-produced equivalent,

the WS10, is not reliable enough and has a limited lifetime to be able to drive the Russian engines from the market. The FC-1 fighter is powered by the Russian RD-93, which won’t be replaced any time soon. The Russian-made D-30KP2 is installed in the Chinese long-range bomber H-6K and the heavy cargo aircraft Y-20, which is being developed in Xian. Meanwhile, China is yet to identify the types of engine for the two fifth-generation fighters that are being designed. Supplies of other components and systems that are less expensive and less conspicuous to the media, including in the electronics industry, are also growing. Beijing is naturally making efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in the military and technical sector, but Russian developers often come up with something new to offer. Importantly, the import of components and materials from Russia does not undermine the status of China as a great military power. The United States and the European Union develop their defence industries, relying on international co-operation. The Chinese defence industry has made significant progress in deploying new arms systems and it would only be natural if reliable foreign suppliers were engaged in new projects. At the same time, future supplies of Russian turnkey arms and weapons systems to China cannot be ruled out. China is eagerly developing its military transport aviation and has already acquired three old Il-76 military cargo aircraft from the Russian Air Force. Beijing is also interested in the Il76MD-90A, also known as the Il-476, a new modification of the Il-76. Tests of the Il-476 have recently started in Ulyanovsk and mass production is expected after 2014. Russia and China are also in talks over supplies of Russian Su-35S fighters, the newest generation of combat aircraft, which could enhance the capability of the Chinese air force.

Russian companies and the government have changed their original approach to military and technical co-operation with China since the 1990s. Back then, the Russian military-industrial complex only survived by exporting to two countries – China and India. Its status as a key buyer gave China leverage. Since then, the Russian defence industry has been reformed. Russia’s Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin said that military exports accounted for only 22 per cent of the combined revenues of defence industry companies, whereas domestic defence orders account for 45 per cent, and sales of civil products and services account for the remaining 33 per cent. Arms exports have been diversified: Moscow has several markets as big as China, specifically, India, Algeria, Vietnam and Venezuela. Russian companies are exercising more caution when discussing co-operation with China, citing possible infringements of intellectual property rights.

BUSINESS CALENDAR UC RUSAL PRESIDENT’S FORUM NOVEMBER 2 CITI LECTURE THEATRE, (LT-A), HKUST

UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium producer, invites visitors to the UC RUSAL President’s Forum, entitled “8.5 Billion Global Consumers by 2030: Opportunity or Looming Disaster?” This year’s keynote speaker is Barry Cheung, independent non-executive director of UC RUSAL and the chairman of the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange and the Urban Renewal Authority. ias.ust.hk/ucrusal

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC FORUM NOVEMBER 3-9 SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

The International Economic Forum convenes representatives from business, the public, and political and scientific communities to analyse Russia and South Korea’s experience in innovative development. Participants will also provide recommendations after discussions focused on economic and technical upgrades, energy and resource efficiency, intellectual property, and Russia and South Korea’s investment appeal. www.conf.rbc.ru/en

FIND MORE IN THE GLOBAL CALENDAR

at www.rbth.asia

6 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

TRANSPORT

PRESS PHOTO

Transporting freight by the Northern Sea Route is a priority for Russia as part of its campaign to explore the Arctic.

Express offers a lifeline Ship laden with groceries and household supplies cuts through ice, writes Dmitry Litovkin

nce every two days, an enormous diesel-electric ship owned by Norilsk Nickel leaves Murmansk for the mouth of the Yenisei, Siberia’s biggest river. Even in winter, when the ice can be as thick as 1.5 metres, the ships make the trip to the port of Dudinka in five to seven days. The ship typically carries 4,000 to 8,000 tonnes of groceries and household supplies, goods that make it possible for those living in the huge region to survive. It is difficult to get to Norilsk and its surrounding region, with its large deposits of nickel, copper and precious metals. The city is isolated. There is no road connecting it to the Russian mainland, and the only way to get there is by plane, by sea or by sailing the River Yenisei. At the same time, making shipping

Northern Sea Route

easier to Europe and Asia via the Northern Sea Route is a priority for Russia as part of its campaign to explore the Arctic. Mikhail Khomenko, a deep-sea master who spent 13 years on the icebreaker fleet, swells with pride as he shows off the machinery that runs the Talnakh, an Arctic-class diesel-electric ship. “There were no ships of this kind in the Russian or any foreign fleet,” he says. “During one of our early voyages to Hamburg, two customs shifts boarded the ship – the one that entered on duty and the one that handed over. The German customs officers confessed that they were excited to see the ship and asked for a tour.” Khomenko has every reason to feel proud. The Norilsk Nickel series ships are the world’s first container ships built to Arc 7-class standards. The ship is capable of breaking

The company Norilsk Nickel is the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium and a leading producer of platinum and copper. It also produces other products, such as cobalt, rhodium, silver, gold, iridium, ruthenium, selenium, tellurium and sulphur. The group is involved in prospecting, exploration, extraction, refining, production and marketing of metals. Norilsk Nickel has production facilities in three continents. through 1.5-metre-thick ice without a special icebreaker supporting it. Furthermore, it is Russia’s first ship equipped with an Azipod propulsion device. The

propeller is mounted outside the hull and can rotate 360 degrees, increasing the manoeuvring capability of the ship in its course and speed. When travelling through frozen or icecongested waters, the Talnakh can turn stern front to break the ice. Also, the Azipod system requires a smaller power compartment, increasing the ship’s cargo capacity. Norilsk Nickel ordered its first Arctic class vessel from Aker Yards. Four more container ships and one Arctic tanker were built at the German shipyards. The new ship completed all its Arctic trials, after which four more diesel-electric ships, with a capacity of 14,500 tonnes, were ordered, followed by an Arctic tanker. The Talnakh is capable of breaking through 1.5 metres of ice at a rate of one to two knots.

Transport artery in the Arctic The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the shortest passage between northern Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The entire route lies in Arctic waters and parts are free of ice for only two months per year. It is an established national unified transport artery. In the early 1930s it was actively used to connect the European and far east parts of the country. The route is a potential alternative to traditional international seaways in terms of freight costs, safety and quality. In recent years, the volume of Arctic freight traffic has surged. This year, a new law regulated commercial navigation through the NSR.

The ice in the Kara Straits and the mouth of the Yenisei is almost always very hard, but the ship can break a way through it. Oleg Fedin, director of the Murmansk transport subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, says the Arctic expresses run on a timely basis. The cabin has state-of-the-art navigation equipment and automated safety systems. Khomenko says that when sailing in icebound waters, he receives real-time satellite images of the ice situation in the navigation area, and these are automatically integrated into navigational charts. “My objective is not to break the thickest ice to prove that I operate the most powerful vessel in the Arctic, but to use navigation information to reach point B from point A via the shortest route, and using minimum fuel,” he says. Norilsk Nickel’s vessels run between Dudinka, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Shanghai. They have helped the company solve logistical issues without using icebreakers, and slash delivery costs by 30 per cent. “Our fleet effectively addresses all logistics challenges,” Fedin says. A fleet of six diesel-electric ships delivers material and technical resources, as well as civil cargo to the population of the Norilsk industrial area, all year round, and takes Norilsk Nickel commodities – nickel and copper – to domestic and foreign markets. While supplying the Monchegorsk smelter in the Kola Peninsula with raw materials, the Norilsk Nickel fleet provides the population of the far north with the groceries and everyday products they need. The annual freight turnover of the company’s maritime fleet operating on the Northern Sea Route is estimated at about 1.3 million tonnes.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

A deal between HK firm and Russkoye More-Dobycha may end controversy, writes Svetlana Mentyukova

joint venture with one of the world’s largest producers of frozen fish and fish products may help to settle a dispute and, at the same time, offer investors the chance to tap into this vast and lucrative market. Hong Kong seafood distributor Pacific Andes is expected to form a partnership with Russkoye More-Dobycha, according to reports in the newspaper Kommersant. The possible deal was approved during a meeting with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. Two insiders told the newspaper the government is looking for a peaceful settlement to the conflict with Pacific Andes, which is suspected of illegal fish-

ing in Russian waters. One possible solution is the creation of a joint venture through a closed joint-stock company. A representative of the Federal Antitrust Service, which proposed the deal, says Russia would hold a controlling 51 per cent stake and Pacific Andes would have 49 per cent. The joint venture would be expected to have “free access to the processing facilities of Pacific Andes”. China accounts for about half of the company’s sales, while Europe and North America make up 40 per cent. The company’s revenues increased 24.4 per cent year-on-year in 2011 to HK$14.2 billion. The company netted HK$923 million in profit.

PHOTOSHOT/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

Joint venture ‘to settle dispute’ A joint venture between Hong Kong’s Pacific Andes and Russkoye MoreDobycha could resolve issues surrounding allegations of illegal fishing.

FISHING A controversy surrounding the company’s fishing activities in Russian waters broke in March, when Pacific Andes said in an investment memorandum

that it controlled 60 per cent of the Russian Alaska Pollock, one of the most valuable fisheries in Russia. Russian State Duma members later ordered the General Prosecutor’s Office to begin an investigation to possbible links between Russian fishing companies and Pacific Andes. John Ng Teng, a company spokesperson who was in Moscow in October, declined to comment. Nevertheless, a source close to the negotiations said that Russkoye More-

Dobycha was the most likely partner for a joint venture. Russkoye More-Dobycha has the same shareholders as Russian Sea Group – businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Maksim Vorobyov – but is not part of the group. Many feel that a settlement, through a joint venture, may be the easiest way to resolve the controversy surrounding the allegations of illegal fishing. Pacific Andes is a public listed company in Hong Kong and Singapore.

8 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Federal agency calls for reform of sector and to be based on American model, writes Andrei Kislyakov

he Russian government, its space agency and major enterprises want to revive an industry that is reeling after a spate of high-profile accidents in the past two years. The latest incident was on August 6, when communications satellite ExpressMD2 and Indonesia’s Telkom 3 were lost after a booster rocket malfunctioned. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met officials from the federal space agency, Roscosmos, and directors of major space enterprises early this month. Roscosmos has proposed sweeping reforms, consolidating 15 existing industry structures into seven to eliminate duplication and increase efficiency. Piloted flights and space research would be merged into the OAO Russian Space Corporation. The OAO Russian Rocket-and-Space Corporation would be responsible for launch vehicles, rocket engines and satellites. The new OAO Special Space Systems would incorporate companies specialising in space missile warning systems, surveillance and target-marking systems, and radio-electronic warfare. OAO Corporation Information Satellite Systems would be responsible for space telecommunications, navigation and electric rocket engines, and OAO Russian Space Systems would supervise land-based and on-board radiotechnical systems, land automated control complexes and on-board and land-based optoelectronic systems. The success of the reform will determine whether Roscosmos can fulfil its ambitious goals for the next two decades. A document presented in April includes plans to send manned flights to the moon, deploy stations on Mars, and explore Venus and Jupiter. Roscosmos says it will close 15 programmes and focus on the Arktika pro-

ject, which will launch satellites to monitor the Arctic. One of the industry’s main problems is financing. Investment is less than a 10th of that of the United States and Europe, while labour productivity is only a half or even a quarter, says Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin. As raw materials costs and electricity tariffs rise, Russian satellites may become uncompetitive. Without change, traditional customers may stop working with the Russian satellite constellation because the same services – images and com-

The success of the reform will determine whether Roscosmos can fulfil goals for the next two decades munication channel leases – are available from other suppliers at half the cost. “More than 70 per cent of technologies that meet production needs are worn out and outdated. More than half of the machine tools are past their service lifespan. The average age of employees at defence-industry research institutes is almost 60,” says retired Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, who headed a Defence Ministry’s research institute. “What we should be doing is making an effort on the technological front and launching a modest probe towards the moon. On the political front, we should be developing private space exploration based on the American model. But if we continue to inflate managerial staff, lure space tourists and try to impress the world with mythical space programmes, then the Russian space industry will fall hopelessly behind.”

NASA

Industry faces major shake-up The next 30 years Among the plans Roscosmos has for the near future are the construction of a new cosmodrome in eastern Russia and a base on the moon.

Last year saw the loss of the Phobos-Grunt, a probe that was intended to explore the Martian moon Phobos.

Roscosmos marked a milestone last year with the Glonass satellite navigation system — Russia’s answer to GPS.

Competitive pricing gives Beijing an edge in cargo race K. Khutsishvili Russkiy Reporter Delivering cargo into near-earth orbit is lucrative business. Countries want hardware in orbit and are willing to pay. Russia has long been the global leader in commercial space launches. It charges less for a launch than its competitors – US$10,000 to US$12,000 per kilogram of cargo compared to about US$20,000 in the United States or Europe. Until recently, Russia was unrivalled in this sector. The workhorses, making US$700 to US$800 million a year, are the Proton and Soyuz carriers. These rockets are old but have proven reliable, until recently. The number of failed launches in the past two years has increased risks for customers as competitors become more active. A decade ago, Russia competed only with the European Union and US for commercial space launches. The US did not actively pursue commercial launches. The market has changed dramatically. In the past five years, China has not only started delivering its own cargo, it is also launching satellites for other countries. China made its debut launch in 2007 and, in the first half of this year, became the leading nation in terms of the number of launches with 10 Long March carrier rockets sent into orbit. In the same year, Russia made nine launches and the US has made eight. China is now Russia’s main competitor as a result of very competitive pricing.

This competition became even fiercer in May, when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced the successful launch of a South Korean satellite. Russian launch services cost half as much, but the South Koreans chose Japan because it has suffered only one failure in 21 launches over 11 years. Space programmes are also actively promoted in India and Brazil. In late May and this month, American company SpaceX sent its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). The Dragon was the first private ship to reach the ISS and return to earth. Russia is in need of new bargaining

SPACE chips, and the Angara space-launch vehicle, powered by an eco-friendly oxygen-kerosene engine, might be the one. The Angara, expected to replace the Proton, is under development by the Moscow-based Khrunichev Research and Production Centre. Commercial launches account for 2 per cent of the space market. The three key space services are communications, research and remote sensing.

Revenue from commercial launches: US$

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 9

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA Life on Mars is likely to become the next frontier

COMMENT

Andrei Kislyakov

In 2011, construction began on a new cosmodrome in the Amur region, allowing launches in Russia by 2015.

Roscosmos’ most ambitious near-term goal is the establishment of a permanent base on the moon by 2030.

IGOR MITROFANOV

Lunar bases will reveal ambition SHUTTERSTOCK/LEGION-MEDIA

The next step in mankind’s journey of discovery in space is likely to be Mars, says Vitaly Lopota, president of Russia’s Energia Rocket and Space Corporation. “Over the next 50 years, Mars will be the focus of space research and exploration,” Lopota says. “This planet could be a relatively comfortable place to live — air pressure is just a hundredth of what it is on earth. When looking into the task of space colonisation, Mars is a good place to start. Moreover, Mars is the only planet with enough water to support humans.” Russian scientists have already begun to explore this possibility. They have developed selection criteria for a team to fly to Mars, based on experiences in the Mars-500 project, which confined six astronauts to a spaceship-sized facility for 520 days in 2010. Specialists at the Institute for Biomedical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences believe the most pressing task is to create a self-sustaining system in space that will ensure a constant supply of oxygen, water and food, while providing for the elimination of metabolic waste products. American scientists believe that people who have spent prolonged periods of time in space suffer from a loss of bone density. Observations carried out

Russia is researching technology for the colonisation of Mars. on 13 astronauts, each of whom had spent six months at the International Space Station, revealed that their skeletal mass fell 14 per cent. Prolonged space travel also causes immense psychological strain. The effect of being so far from the earth, the monotony and isolation of space travel, cramped conditions, weightlessness, personal tensions, a substantial workload, the unpredictable nature of the job, and huge risks are all stresses a cosmonaut has to contend with daily.

The moon is our immediate objective in space. I believe its development will start this century. There will be lunar bases just as we have bases in Antarctica. The knowledge gained in Soviet times has not been lost. The unmanned Luna-Glob mission is expected to land on the moon in 2015. The orbit will be explored in 2016 and the heavier orbiter Luna-Resurs is scheduled to land on the moon in 2017. The Moon Test Ground project - a robotically deployed base - is our plan for the future. The first projects cost about 10 billion roubles (HK$2.48 billion), small change when speaking about ambition. This money stays here as infrastructure, jobs and new materials. Igor Mitrofanov is chief of the gamma ray spectroscopy lab at the Space Exploration Institute, in Moscow.

Roscosmos changes direction on prototype Aleksandr Yemelyanenkov The dream of Sergei Korolev, Wernher von Braun and their predecessors to design a powerful engine for long-term space flight missions may soon be realised. Roscosmos says the engineering prototype of a megawatt-class nuclear propulsion unit for outer space missions will be developed in 2017. Bench tests of a reactor for a nuclear-powered spacecraft may start in Sosnovy Bor, near St Petersburg, as early as next year, says Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin. In June 2010, thenpresident Dmitry Medvedev backed the project for a space transport and power module based on a megawatt-class nuclear power installation. Medvedev promised 17 billion roubles (HK$4.21 billion) to implement the project from 2010–2018, 7.245 billion of which was earmarked for Rosatom to build the reactor. The M. V. Keldysh Research Centre will receive 3.955 billion roubles to create a nuclear propulsion unit, and the remaining 5.8 billion roubles will finance the design of the transport and power module by the Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) Energia. The United States and the Soviet Union started working on nuclear rocket engines in the 1960s. “The original task was to create rocket engines that would heat hydrogen to about 3,000 degrees Celsius rather than burn fuel and oxidise materials,” says

Russian Academy of Sciences member Anatoly Koroteyev, who is the general director of the Keldysh Centre and head of research of the transport and power module project. “That direct method proved to be inefficient. We occasionally got more traction, but the jet stream the engine emits can be radioactive if the reactor fails.” Koroteyev says there were two critical parameters: extreme temperature and release of radiation. Neither Soviet nor American specialists were able to create reliable engines. They could not heat hydrogen in a nuclear reactor to 3,000 degrees Celsius. “We suggest a different approach,” Koroteyev says. “It is different from the old approach in the same way a hybrid vehicle is different from a regular car. In the latter, the engine spins the wheels, whereas in a hybrid car, the engine generates electricity, which sets the wheels in motion. In other words, there is an intermediary power plant.” Russian researchers have proposed the reactor generates electricity rather than heats the jet stream from the engine. The hot gas from the reactor spins the turbine that spins the generator and compressor, which provides the closed circuit circulation of the propellant. The generator produces electricity for the plasma engine with a thrust 20 times higher than that in a chemical engine. “The key advantage is that the jet stream coming from the new engine is not radioactive, because the working

Megawatt-class nuclear propulsion unit

Nasa member calls for combined effort Edward Crawley, member of the Nasa commission for manned flights, believes no country can send a manned mission to Mars on its own, and that Russia’s main contribution could be nuclear engines. “Russia has extensive experience developing both rocket engines and nuclear technologies,” Crawley says. Russia could lend its expertise in adapting to new environments and maintaining the health of astronauts. A Mars mission must bring together intellectual, technological and financial potential from the United States, Russia, European Union and possibly China. The transport and power module based on a megawatt-class nuclear propulsion unit ensures an energy supply that is up to 30 times the current level and uses only 10 per cent of the fuel required by the main rocket engine.

substances in the reactor and the closed circuit are different,” Koroteyev says. “This method spares us the need to heat hydrogen to extreme temperatures: the inert working substance in the reactor is heated to just 1,500 degrees [Celsius]. Yet, we managed to increase the spe-

cific thrust not twice, but 20 times compared to chemical engines.” Koroteyev says the Americans are interested in the project. “China may redouble its efforts to catch up, so we have to work fast, and not just so we can be half a step ahead. We need to work fast

in order to have a say in international co-operation, which is developing now.” Koroteyev hasn’t ruled out an international programme soon to develop a nuclear-powered spacecraft similar to the controlled nuclear fusion programme.

10 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Putin’s search for answers Fedor Lukyanov Ogonek Magazine

OPINION after the collapse of the Soviet Union, remains a dynamic and ambitious country with huge nuclear and natural resources, and a president who stands out for his honesty and bluntness. Many political observers believe Putin is a wily strategist with a “big plan” of expansion and empire building. But he is unlikely to lay much store on strategy, not consciously. Russia’s president likes to react. His favourite political tactic is to respond to stimulus, knowing the source and character of the challenge. Putin has not been opposed to change, but has frequently come to the conclusion that new generally means worse. The ever more turbulent situation outside Russia worries Putin because it resonates with internal manifestations of instability, turning them into louder and more insistent threats. Like many conservatives, Putin says the country needs time to ensure stable, sustainable, managed development, and that it is still too soon for liberal democracy. Over the years, we have resurrected the carcass of a state destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now we need to strengthen it. We still need time for further construction, said

NATALIA MIKHAYLENKO

hen Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 60 on October 7, he was one of the most influential politicians on the planet. Idolised and demonised, Putin is turning into a global brand. Two years ago, Forbes magazine put Putin in second place on its list of the most influential global politicians – after United States President Barack Obama, but ahead of President Hu Jintao. Judging by the statistics, China’s leader is certainly more influential, but Putin’s presence and personality are strong enough for him to be seen separately from the country he rules. He has become a symbol in the gloomy transitive state of the international system. Putin came to power promising stability at a time when the world stood on the brink of economic meltdown. Feverish attempts in the West to prop up the global system led it to collapse. By contrast, Russia was undergoing a stabilisation process led by Putin. Many people see Putin as the “archetypal” enemy of progress, a symbol of outmoded ideas and old-fashioned approaches. He seems to exist in a state of permanent and barely disguised rage against the policies of the world powers. His articles and public speeches are often based on the premise that the world is dangerous and unpredictable, and that the world’s most powerful countries only exacerbate these threats. Wars, invasions, interventions and reforms only come back to bite those who start them. The past 10 years yield numerous examples of this, from Iraq to Libya. Putin is not alone in his refusal to accept this state of affairs, but he is in the vanguard. This is primarily because Russia, despite its decline

Putin at a pre-election meeting in February. His choice of words was interesting. He avoided using “perestroika” (rebuilding) the term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead he used “dostroika”, (meaning careful completion of construction), to give a sense of work in progress. Putin understands that protests with which society met his return to power were based on more than just provocation from the West - although he also believes there was a strong element of this - and that they marked change. But he is still convinced the protesters are wrong, no matter how much they believe. History has shown that conservatives never find the extra time they need. Something always happens, and their efforts, even if correct and

constructive, turn to dust under the insistent march of time and change. Change is not always for the best, but is unavoidable. Having returned as head of state, Putin has not delivered any magic solutions, but he has a sense of what is dangerous. It is hard to accuse Putin of having no strategy – these days no-one seems to have one. The situation in Europe shows that institutions that appear wellthought-out and stable can crumble. As a conservative and a realist, Putin is soberly evaluating what has happened, but cannot find answers to the mounting problems we face. Fedor Lukyanov is editor-in-chief for Russia at Global Affairs magazine

Muscovites embrace intellectual stimulation Dmitry Gubin It always starts in September. Friends, acquaintances, former college classmates – they’re all on the phone, hoping that somehow I can find time, even if on the hoof, to talk to their children, or their friends’ children, who’ve reached college age. Of course, I agree willingly. The questions that 16-to-18-year-olds ask are for barometers of the latest fashion trends. But this year, a 20-year-old named Ilya hit me with radically different questions. The first was which public lectures in Moscow were worth getting to, now that the open-air lecture theatre at Gorky Park was closed? The second was what I thought of his new spectacle frames? Meaning, like, well, they’re kinda chunky, maybe a little nerdy – but that’s the fashion, right? And

then third ... no, let’s not rush into the third question in case it leaves you as startled as I was. The easiest of the questions was about the specs – they’re cool, you’re in the groove. But I did have a question of my own here – Ilya’s new glasses had plain glass lenses, with no vision correction at all. So, why did he need them? The answer came straight back. “Well, glasses ... they make you look kinda brainy, right?” The first question – about the lectures – was also about being brainy. The deal here is that Gorky Park isn’t just a park, it’s a trend space. Need to know what clothes are in vogue, what subjects to talk about, and what games to play? It comes down to another cool park idea – edification. The “Garage” project has moved here – not so much an art gallery, as a brainiac trendsetting art-loving fashionista space. At

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Gorky Park in the dark they’ve got open air, specially programmed movie screenings, while in the evenings there’s a lecture programme. Tickets go like hot cakes – for the films, and for the lectures. No one can say that there hadn’t been public lectures before. The Soviet Union had them. It’s one thing to go to a lecture called “The Painting Academies of Fifteenth-Century Italy – Ferrara, Bologna and Venice” - where you sit next to three jolly old ladies. It’s a completely different deal to head to a lecture by the writer and poet Dmitry Bykov, talking about Bunin. It’s a given that the audience will be bright young guys and girls. The lecture vogue has its own reasons for gaining momentum – politically and economically – and people want intellectual stimulation. A historian friend in St Petersburg admits

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to earning good money giving private lectures. They pay his airfare to Moscow, drive him out to a villa in the suburbs – and there he gives lectures all day on the topics of Tsar Peter III and Catherine the Great, to a few select millionaires and their families. Then it’s lunch, a Bentley to the airport, a six-figure fee. Another reason lectures are so popular is the libraries crisis. The era of e-readers and digitised texts might seem to have made them redundant ... except, perhaps, for the chance to meet writers. There’s an explanation on the technological level, too – in cloning Western technology in sales systems, Russian business has gone one further, and is now selling brains. The concept is clear, so it seems our Ilya has figured it all out perfectly. Dmitry Gubin is a Russian journalist and television presenter

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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Countries in partnership bid

ussian and Chinese venture capitalists will work together in major projects to boost investment in innovation. This month’s third Global Innovation Partnerships forum in Moscow provided the platform for investors from both countries to meet and agree on developing a framework for businesses, and for investors to encourage enterprise in innovation. “We believe that a strategic partnership agreement with the Russian Venture Capital Association will contribute significantly to the self-regulation of the innovation sector,” said Shen Zhiqun, executive vice-president of China Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. Asian countries are global leaders in

PROJECTS venture capital investments, with China leading the way, while Russia has developed dozens of innovative products in the past three years. Last year, China set a record for the

number of venture capital projects and the volume of investments. Russia is taking steps to encourage demand for domestically made innovative products. The country’s largest state corporations – Gazprom, RZD, Rosneft, Rosatom and others – have also adopted programmes to boost innovation. Until recently, Europe was Russia’s main trading partner, but Asia has been rapidly catching up and is becoming increasingly important on Moscow’s foreign trade agenda. “We plan to focus more on the AsiaPacific region,” said Igor Agamirzyan, director of Russian Venture Company, a government fund aimed at developing innovation as a genuine sector. The Pacific-Rim delegation at the

PRESS PHOTO

Moscow and Beijing to establish framework for expanding investment in innovation sector, writes Viktor Kuzmin

Zhiqun Shen, executive vice-president of China Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (right) with a Russian colleague at the forum. Moscow forum this month included about 30 representatives from venture capital and direct investment funds that manage resources totalling US$60 billion. China was represented by Citic Capital Holdings, SAIF Partners, CDH Investments, Northern Light Venture Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group Co,

Sequoia Capital China, China Venture Capital, the Private Equity Association and STIC Investments. The Chinese hold more than US$800 billion in potential investment capital. No contracts were signed at the forum, but plans for future business were hatched.

Firm wins top award for speech solution

PRESS PHOTO

A Russian developer has made history by becoming the country’s first winner at the prestigious Speech Industry Awards, which are presented annually in the United States for achievements in the global market for speech solutions. The St Petersburg-based Speech Technology Centre (STC) was honoured in the Star Performer category for its voice-recognition solution for law enforcement, the SIS II forensic audio analysis software, which is used by audio analysis experts in 36 countries. The New York City awards were organised by American Speech Technology magazine. “We are confident that as law-enforcement agencies explore new modalities for their biometric identification processes, they will recognise the value that voice recognition can bring to helping solve cases including kidnapping, extortion, organised crime, gang-related activities, terrorist threats, and domestic abuse, just to name a few,” says Alexey Khitrov, president of SpeechPro USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of STC. Speech technologies have been used in law enforcement for many years across the globe, and the panel said the SIS II software was STC’s top achievement in audio analysis, combining all of the solutions required for forensic

Tatyana Toropova

The Speech Technology Centre was honoured in New York City.

Innokenty Dementiev (left), executive director of STC

analysis. These include unique voiceand face-recognition solutions developed by the Russian company. STC has been the top Russian developer of speech technologies for more than 20 years. The company was established in St Petersburg in 1990 by a team of enthusiasts from the Dalnyaya Svyaz scientific development and production centre, a leading producer of multichannel communication systems in the former Soviet Union since the 1930s. Like many other companies in those days, it was started from scratch. The devel-

oper’s voice-identification system developed for Latin America remains the largest voice biometrics solution to date. Today, STC-developed systems are used by the Russian federal security service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Presidential Executive Office, the lower and upper chambers of parliament and the Ministry of Defence. They are also used by the Madrid police department and throughout Mexico. STC is also working on a tailormade system for Skolkovo Innovation City, the Russian equivalent of Silicon

The SmartTracker system makes use of solutions that do not depend on the language of the speaker

Valley. STC has a Skolkovo registration and has already received a grant of 1.5 million euros (HK$15 million) to develop a multimodal biometric voiceand face-recognition system. VoiceKey is a voice-authentication solution developed by STC that is used in call centres of banks and telecoms companies to help police and companies clamp down on fraud. The system works by identifying a caller’s voice and then providing the operator with comprehensive information about the client, all in the space of a minute. If the caller is on the bank’s “black list”, the system will warn the operator that the caller is compromised. Face-recognition systems are used to enhance security in crowded areas; Multimodal systems offer voice-identification and face-recognition options. The main customers for these services are law-enforcement agencies. The SmartTracker system makes use of solutions that do not depend on the speaker’s language – they can be used around the world, irrespective of language, accent or dialect. The company decided to become a Skolkovo resident to help with further development and gain access to new foreign markets, says STC innovation executive director, Innokenty Dementev. “We are engaged in research that is very popular and crucial in practical work, because public safety is at stake,” he says.

12 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Artists are true ‘geniuses’ Director gets a surprise from his all-Chinese crew on second collaboration, writes Dina Goder

ANIMATION In I Saw Mice Burying a Cat, the cat plays dead until he can get at the mice. The story has been received with rave reviews and marked Russian director Dmitry Geller’s (below right) first work in China.

FROM PERSONAL ARCHIVES (4)

elebrated Russian director Dmitry Geller will soon release his second animated film, which was made in China with an entirely Chinese crew. His first Chinese film, I Saw Mice Burying a Cat, has been successfully doing the rounds at film festivals for more than a year, winning the Grand Prize in Hiroshima in August. Geller’s collaboration with Chinese filmmakers began several years ago, when he was invited to make a speech at the animation school of the University of Changchun. The university invited him to work with its students. Geller suggested making a film together. He thought that in order for their film to become a full-scale training course, they had to make up a story with many characters and give one character to each student to “breathe life in it”. The story had to be constructed in such a way that the inexperience of the animators didn’t show in the film. The director chose a Russian folk story about a group of mice that joyfully bury a cat. The cat plays dead, peeping from time to time, ready to snatch one of the mice. There is a similar story in Chinese folklore. “I chose the 40 best students, meaning that 40 mice would be sailing in the same boat along with the dead cat,” Geller says. “As we were filming, I came up with the idea that those students who were having trouble with the task would have their mouse thrown overboard; those who were doing a decent job would have their mice featured in the background; and the most talented students would be working on the lead mouse and the cat.” This method proved be chaotic: Geller was running from student to student, correcting their projects, while others queued to have their work checked. He found the students had poor animation skills and had to teach them the basics. This shocked him, the more so because there are just four cinema schools in Russia that train animators and only a few graduates every year, whereas in Changchun, Geller worked in just one of several schools that had 10,000 students. The number of animation schools has skyrocketed in China, meeting grow-

ing demand from the industry, but there are not enough teachers. Geller’s wife, Anna Karpova, drew the characters for the film. She stayed in Moscow during production, but Geller managed to find background artists in China, and he loved them. “They are all geniuses. It is so hard to choose.” he says. Geller was also impressed by the desire and work ethic of the students who had only three months to make the film. He says: “These 20-something students worked 18 hours a day, asking for no breaks, and no one said that they were tired

or had a date. Some stayed and worked during university breaks, saying: ‘We’re staying until we get this done’, and you have to remember that these were the only breaks they got. I was greatly inspired by their attitude.” The result is a gentle and moving film with two parallel storylines. The first is the ship sailing in the twilight, with the dead cat and scurrying mice celebrating the demise of their foe. The second is of a dreamy mouse running in a field, looking at fireflies and listening to the sounds of the festivities in the distance. When the mouse finally reaches the illuminated boat, it doesn’t have time to learn the reason for the celebration and

becomes the first victim of the cat, which miraculously “comes to life”. The director maintains that the “innocent always suffer”. We see the innocent mouse rocking the sly cat’s cradle in heaven. The film gained recognition immediately, winning the Golden Monkey Award in China as the Best Short Film of the year, and numerous other awards around the world, including Russia. Even before the film was showered with awards, producers from Changchun invited Geller to make another film. This time, he decided not to turn the process into a training session, but wrote the names of his four most talented students - one is now a teacher of arts at the same university - whom he would like to work with. He was shocked again. The students had graduated and left by the time he started making Small Pond at the Foot of the Great Wall. But they all came back to Changchun to work with him for free. Small Pond at the Foot of the Great Wall tells the sad story of an old artist forced to work on a construction site to the amusement of the peasant workers. The film is almost finished. The motives of the film are clear. Geller juxtaposes a quiet dreamer with a harsh world. This it is not a fairy tale, but a drama. As the credits roll, we see the portrait of an elderly man – a dedication to Chinese animation director Te Wei, who died two years ago. Then we see a list of his films, in the middle of which there is a 25-year gap.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 13

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Net gain for Kournikova Glamour girl still hitting winners after premature exit from tennis, writes Inna Soboleva

he was the glamour girl of world tennis who earned millions from sponsors. Nine years after hanging up her racquet, Anna Kournikova remains in the public eye. Her looks may not have changed but everything else has. Kournikova has been accused of many things. Critics say she missed the chance to become a tennis great and that she walked away from the game too early. She has also been blamed for falling for the temptations of show business. Instead of making her fortune through hard work on the tennis court, she chose advertising, by using her natural gifts of long legs and stunning golden hair. The evidence - she never won a Women’s Tennis Association singles title in nearly 12 years as a professional. Since her retirement, Kournikova has proved that she’s no bimbo; just different - one of a kind. “Forgive me for being who I am,” she always tells her critics. Today, Kournikova lives in Miami with her pop star boyfriend, Enrique Iglesias, whom she met in 2002 on the set of the video for his hit song Escape. She says she is happy. “We have two dogs, but we haven’t thought about kids yet,” she told Spanish fashion magazine S Moda. “I would like to have kids, my own or adopted. But I’m only 31, there’s still time.” Kournikova still attends celebrity parties and does photo shoots for glossy magazines, but says none of this is important. She has started actively promoting a healthy and active lifestyle, especially among younger Americans. Together with the popular children’s channel Cartoon Network, she has launched a campaign to get youngsters off the sofa and involved in some kind of healthy activity, even if it isn’t sport. She has also worked with charities, visiting Russian cities as part of an Aids awareness campaign with Population Services International delegations, and also took part in a malaria-fighting mission in Haiti. She also tours US military

CELEBRITY

Instead of making her fortune through hard work on the tennis court, she chose advertising

Anna Kournikova Anna Kournikova is a retired Russian tennis professional. Her beauty and celebrity status made her one of the best known stars worldwide, despite never winning a WTA singles title. Fans looking for images made her name one of the most common search strings on Google. She is an ambassador for Population Services International’s (PSI) Five & Alive programme, which focuses on health issues facing children younger than five. With the Boys & Girls Club of America, she promotes active lifestyles for youngsters and with PSI, focuses on improving the health of the poor and people in developing countries.

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At the height of her career, Anna Kournikova was ranked No 1 in doubles.

bases as part of the United Service Organizations’ programme to entertain troops. Kournikova’s tennis career got off to an auspicious start. She picked up a racquet for the first time when she was five and liked the sport from the start, but for a long time only treated it as a hobby. She was seven when she realised she had extraordinary talent, started training more seriously and, a year later, won an open tournament in Moscow. It was at this time that she also started competing internationally. At the age of 10, she was offered a scholarship at the Nick Bollettieri tennis academy in Florida. In 1991, Kournikova moved to America with her mother, where she left a lasting impression on Bollettieri, one of the game’s most prominent coaches. “Anna is the most promising young talent around,” he once said. “We have seen [Andre] Agassi, [Jim] Courier, [Monica] Seles, but I’m absolutely delighted with the way Kournikova plays.” Success came quickly. At 14, Kournikova became the youngest player to win a Federation Cup match and, at 15, she won the world junior championship. At 16, she reached the Wimbledon semi-finals at her first attempt, something only Chris Evert had managed before. In 1998, Kournikova broke into the world’s top 20, at No 16. In Key Biscayne, Florida, where she was seeded 23rd, she beat four top 10 players in a four-day period, an achievement no other female has accomplished. She downed fifth seed Seles, No 9 Conchita Martinez, No 2 Lindsay Davenport, and No 8 Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, before losing the final to No 11 Venus Williams. Three months later, Kournikova beat Steffi Graf on grass at Eastbourne in a Wimbledon warm-up tournament. Only three players managed to defeat the German on the surface throughout the 1990s. In 1999, she won her first grand slam doubles title with Martina Hingis at the Australian Open and they finished the season ranked world No 1 in doubles. In November 2000, she made it into the singles top 10, reaching No 8, for the first and only time. She would make her last appearance in Hong Kong in 2001, reaching the final of an exhibition tournament before losing to Jelena Dokic and would later win her second Australian Open women’s doubles title in 2002, again with Hingis, but the dreams of those who saw her as the next great champion never came true.

14 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Salt, saints and sinners The streets of Moscow contain a rich blend of history, writes Phoebe Taplin

TOURISM

11 NATALIA MIKHAYLENKO

oscow’s streets are full of stories. In a single hour, one might uncover a house with a secret chapel in the attic, or the convent where a princess and a murderess were imprisoned. Solyanka Street, near Kitai-Gorod metro station, is the first part of the Vladimirka, an ancient eastwards trade route with sinister connotations - thousands of prisoners walked this way to exile in Siberia. The name Solyanka comes from the old “Salt Court” (1), where salt was processed and sold until 1733. The gate of a former orphanage (2) is opposite the church, framed by sculptures of Charity and Education. Catherine the Great gave 100,000 roubles to the “Foundling Hospital” and the hospital’s Ballet School was the first in Russia. Several buildings on this road survive from the 19th century and there is a great view from the end of one of Stalin’s seven skyscrapers (3). Turning left uphill along Yauzsky Boulevard, a 1930s apartment block hides an 18th-century mansion

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in the courtyard. From 1812, this house belonged to General Khitrovo, who gave his name to the whole area. Around the corner on Podkolokolny Lane is the site of the Khitrovka Market (4), the most notorious slum area in 19th-century Moscow. Stanislavsky sent his actors here as preparation for staging Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. Tolstoy was horrified by the “mass of destitute degenerate humanity” and wrote his essay What Must We Do? Turn right up Podkopaevsky Lane past the 17th-century church of St Nicholas. The orange mansion at No 5 once belonged to Boyar Vasily Shuisky who was tsar in the 1600s. Turn left at the end onto Khokhlovsky Lane, named after the 17th-century Ukrainian fashion of leaving a long lock of hair or khokhol on otherwise shaven heads. The gabled church of “Vladimir in the Old Gardens” at the end of the road takes its name from the imperial orchards that used to grow on this hill. The Ivanovsky Convent (5) opposite was founded in the 16th century by the wife

Stanislavsky sent his actors here as preparation for staging Gorky’s play, ‘The Lower Depths’ of Tsar Vasily III to celebrate the birth of her son, the future Ivan the Terrible. It became a prison for inconvenient noblewomen, such as Princess Tarakanova, (daughter of the Empress Elizabeth and her Cossack lover) or the infamous Darya Saltykova, who murdered 138 serfs for faults in their housework. The metro is on Zabelina Street. Beyond the domes of Varvarka Street is the Kremlin (6). Moscow’s red brick citadel has its share of legends. The round tower on the southeast corner of the walls contains a well and a secret chamber, and is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Ivan Bersenev-Beklemishev,

whose house was next door. Among Moscow’s many fabled underground tunnels are the secret passages of Ivan the Terrible’s lost library. Historian, Ignatius Stelletski, even persuaded authorities to allow him to excavate under the Kremlin in search of it. Head underground back at KitaiGorod to look for the mysterious Metro2. In Stalin’s time, this huge secret network was supposedly constructed underneath the public Moscow metro system and some sections of tunnel definitely exist. Three stops on the “pink line” bring you to Barrikadnaya, near Moscow Zoo. The Stalin-era Kudrinskaya skyscraper (7) opposite the metro was built by gulag prisoners. Legend has it that the foreman threw one worker into the wet concrete. Across the garden ring is Chekhov’s house (8); the plaque on the front door still reads: “Doctor A.P. Chekhov”. The first house on Malaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa is the Tunisian Embassy (9). This mansion used to belong to the infamous Lavrenty Beria, head of Stalin’s Secret

Service and the bodies of girls he murdered were discovered in the garden. More cheerful is the Gorky House (10) museum at the far end of the street. The incredible interior has three distinct presences: the architect, who designed the underwater-scape ground floor and the sculpted staircase leading up to a jellyfish lamp and pillar topped by writhing silver lizards; the merchant who commissioned the house and had a secret chapel built in the attic; and the writer, Maxim Gorky, who lived (reluctantly) in the house during his final six years. Turn left along Ulitsa Spiridonovka and follow it until you come to the gothic castle of the Morozov mansion with turrets and dragon gargoyles. Take the next right turn to reach the Patriarch’s Pond (11). In medieval times, before Patriarch Job drained the area to create fishponds, the area was said to be haunted. The opening scenes of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, where the devil appears, take place here. Bulgakov’s house (12) is just around the corner on the way to the Mayakovskaya metro.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 15

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Entering into the right spirit Drinking vodka is an important cultural tradition with a centuries-old history to it, writes Sergei Roganov

Make it a threesome. Drinking on your own is considered a sign of alcoholism

LIFESTYLE

Lard or ham The most delicious lard is from the bottom of the pork carcass. Podcherevina, as it is called, is a thin piece that usually consists of three or four layers of meat. The lard

Vegetables preserved in different ways: steeped, soured or salted. The most popular ones preserved in this manner are cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage with cranberries or blueberries, and Antonovsky apples (a special sweet and sour variety of ap-

ple found in Russia). The vegetables are especially tasty when they are steeped and salted in oak barrels. They are usually served chilled with vodka; sometimes before a feast, they are also chilled by being placed in the snow.

Herring is especially tasty if the skin is tarred with straw and twisted into braids. Podcherevina is typically served chilled alongside raw onion bulbs or garlic.

Herring is the most popular fish to eat with vodka. Pieces are thickly sprinkled with onions and chopped greens and flavoured with sunflower oil and vinegar.

Herring is served with boiled potatoes and garnished with butter, chopped dill and rye bread. The combination of vodka, herring and potato is considered a Russian classic.

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espite the seemingly simple business of drinking vodka, it is encumbered with rules developed over centuries. For many visitors to Russia, the main trial is the so-called “vodka test”, when your head is splitting the morning after moderate drinking. Vodka is a serious drink with its own culture. To begin with, vodka should be chilled; a bottle can even be chilled in the snow, if need be. Drink it all in one go. No matter how much someone has poured in your glass, you have to down it all at once. That’s because with vodka “you don’t leave any for later” and “only poor people look to see how much has been poured”. But, of course, it’s better to use short liquor glasses or shot glasses. Don’t dilute it. Diluting vodka with Coca Cola or fruit juice is a sign of weakness and of the pernicious influence of the West. In some places, the fruit juice often costs more than the vodka. Make up a threesome. Drinking on your own, even in a drinking establishment, is considered one of the first signs of alcoholism, but it doesn’t matter how much you drink in company. These rules serve as an outline for the ritual actions to be performed when you’re drinking with people. Everyone drinks the same amount at the same time. And having a drink without any form of ceremony is a sign of bad manners. You have to propose a toast before every drink. Contrary to popular belief, people in Russia don’t simply say “Za zdorovye!” [“To good health!”] as the equivalent of “Cheers!” or “Salut!”. Each person takes it in turn to propose a toast, and the toasts are always different. However, we could mention the most common ones, such as: “Here’s to everything!” “To our parents!” and “One for the road!” There are also some additional rules, not always mandatory, such as: “After the first, you don’t eat anything with it!”, “There’s only a little pause between the first and the second!”, and “Having beer without vodka is throwing money away!” And, of course, after every vodka one should have a snack, and here Russian culture really amazes with a variety and abundance of snacks “to go with vodka”. The most popular are “borsch” or “schee” - rich, thick, meaty cabbage soups with boiled or roasted meat – beef or veal “pelmeny” - Siberian dumplings. But more often, vodka is drunk only with zakuska or cold snacks.

Vegetables

Salad Olivier The most famous Russian salad is the Olivier. Another well-known, but less popular, is beetroot salad. The Olivier is a mixture of finely chopped boiled eggs, sausages and marinated

Meat jelly cucumbers, seasoned with mayonnaise. Beetroot salad is made with kraut, boiled beets and white beans. Salads are an essential part of any Russian meal before the new year.

The jelly from a pig’s head, rich beef bones and rooster are especially popular, because the broth creates a rich amber colour and has a particular taste.

The Russian root horseradish is grated and traditionally served with various kinds of meat jelly. Mustard can also be used instead of horseradish.

16 Tuesday, October 30, 2012

RUSSIA AND GREATER CHINA

Memories of a bygone era

Local war gamers relive horrors of Chechen ‘hell’ Shirley Lau

PRESS PHOTO

lashes of a boot, a birch-tree forest, an imposing grey Soviet-era socialist realist statue dusted with snow, the echoing voice of a distant narrator. The symbols are all there – voice, moving pictures and drawings pieced together as fragments of memory and carefully laid out on film to tell the story of a forgotten past. The 2003 film is entitled The Role of a Lifetime and was shown recently at Hong Kong’s non-profit art space, Para/ Site. The work is one of three by Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevicius for his exhibition, Deimantas Narkevicius: About Films. Narkevicius is well known for inserting different kinds of media into his work, often using random images from the past to underscore the realities of the present. He once said: “Although my works deal with contemporary themes, the underlying problems usually go back a long time. I started my work as an artist in a period of dynamic change for my society. The stress and neurosis caused by the dynamism diverted this society from both historical reflection and future concerns.” The exhibition, his first in Asia, was curated by Romanian-born Cosmin Costinas, who has been introducing artists from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc to Hong Kong. Born in Utena, Lithuania, Narkevicius gained international recognition when he represented Lithuania in 2001 at the 49th Venice Biennale. He has been called one of “the most representative artists of his generation”, and testament to that is a string of exhibitions and screenings from the New Museum in New York to the BFI Southbank Gallery, London. An art student from the age of 14, Narkevicius graduated as a sculptor, but became interested in site-specific objects after a visit to London in 1992. This interest evolved into interviews and filming – the perfect medium to express a

Deimantas Narkevicius uses cinematography to explore Soviet history.

Most of my generation in Eastern Europe saw the world through television narrative. He uses cinematography to explore Soviet and subjective history. His films, essentially documentaries, examine the relationship of memory to political histories. Employing documentary footage, voice-overs, interviews and photographs

Should Moscow put Chinese yuan on equal footing with dollar and euro?

he creates a visual collage of historical events, retold through narrative storytelling. “Most of my generation in Eastern Europe saw the world through television in an era when the world started to become media-ised,” he says. “The films we saw on our TV were from the Soviet Union and they were visually rich.” Using visual archives, documentary and voice-overs, he creates a nostalgic mood. There is a “melancholy implied in the representation of memory”, says Costinas, such as in Disappearance of a Tribe (2005), in which Narkevicius uses old personal photographs to tell the story of his late father.

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Russia’s wars in Chechnya, which still bring back painful memories for those involved in them, more than 10 years ago, are the inspiration for Hong Kong’s war gamers, eager to reconstruct battle scenes down to the smallest detail. While few in Hong Kong know the history of the two Chechen wars, a general idea of the level of violence in both conflicts is enough to encourage an idiosyncratic interest among Hong Kong’s war gamers in posing as Russian soldiers and Chechen separatists struggling for supremacy in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s. Recently, Wing Wong, a 27-year-old advertising professional, headed to Sheung Shui with two war-game friends and a three-strong photography crew. On their arrival at an abandoned school, their imaginary world of military heroes was brought vividly to life as they put on drab green military attire and helmets, filled their pouches with army-issue water bottles, and armed themselves to the teeth with Russianstyle fake guns. The attention to detail was remarkable. One of them wrapped a grubby, red-painted bandage around his hand, as if he had sustained a minor injury from a skirmish. To increase the drama, the team sprayed Russian graffiti on a wall, reading “welcome to hell” – the now-famous words heard by a Russian communications officer on his headset during the Battle of Grozny in 1994. All this fuss was meant for a photo shoot of the three young Hong Kong men’s portrayal of soldiers during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. “In the war game scenes, many people like to play roles. A lot of times it is American soldiers who are imitated. But we want to try something different,” says Wong, who started playing war games about six years ago. “The Russian style is for us somewhere between raw and sophisticated. And this role playing ... makes you feel somewhat manly.” When engaging in their usual war games in the New Territories, Wong and his mates are normally clad in casual street clothes with no dress code. But when it comes to posing for pictures,

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CITY the team members make sure they leave no stone unturned. A large portion of their clothing and gear are sourced from Russia. Wong stresses that his team has done extensive research on the history of the Chechen wars and they have discovered some interesting facts. “The Russian armoured vehicle used in the Chechen war in the 1990s, for example, was very different from the vehicles used in the West. Soldiers often stood on top of the vehicle, which could be very dangerous. But that was because it was a bit too low and small for them,” Wong explains. The team is now planning on another photo shoot, this time portraying as soldiers in the second Chechen war. But is it okay to take pleasure in two wars that cost some 150,000 lives? “I’m aware of the level of violence. But I don’t take sides,” Wong says.

SHIRLEY LAU

Filmmaker Deimantas Narkevicius excavates disparate images from the past, writes Diana d’Arenberg

The Hong Kong war gamers source much of their clothing from Russia.

Copies are available at: Russian Consulate in Hong Kong (2106-2123, 21/F, Sun Hung Kai Centre, 30 Harbour Road, Wanchai) Russian Language Center (701, Arion Commercial Centre 2-12 Queen’s Road West Sheung Wan) Sun Studio (Unit3, GF, Westley Square, 48 Hoi Yuen Rd, KwunTong) Red Square Gallery (11 Yuk Sau Street, Happy Valley ) ATC AVIA (Room 3105, 31/F, Tower 1, Lippo Centre, 89 Queensway Please write to saleshk@rbth.ru if you want to add your company name to this list.