The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Russia’s far east – a bridge to Asia, or to nowhere? Posted: 03 Sep 2012 08:41 AM PDT  Vladivostok mayor Igor Pushkaryov speaks during an interview on the newly built bridge across the Golden Horn bay in Russia's far-eastern port of Vladivostok August 9, 2012. Vladimir Lenin's vision of developing Russia's far east would not be out of place in President Vladimir Putin's talking points for the Asia-Pacific summit he is hosting this week in the Pacific port of Vladivostok. – Reuters pic "We will propose that capital from developed countries construct a super-highway between London, Moscow, Vladivostok and Beijing," said the plan, endorsed in 1922 by the Soviet revolutionary leader. "We will tell them that it will open up the untold riches of Siberia." Ninety years on, the Kremlin has redecorated Russia's window on the east in the hope of improving its image in the eyes of investors from the world's fastest-growing region, and reviving its flagging popularity among hard-pressed locals. Tsarist Russia completed a 9,300-km (5,800-mile) rail line to Vladivostok in record time, only to fall to the Bolsheviks a year later. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was inspired to develop the city by a visit to San Francisco, another Pacific city on a bay, in 1959. Now, Russia has pumped US$21 billion (RM65.27 billion) into its eastern seaboard to attract investors, tourists and gamblers from Asia, and persuade locals to halt the drift away from a city that, for all the grand designs, remains largely isolated from the rest of the world's largest country. Putin, 59, underscored a strategic pivot away from crisis-hit Europe to the rising economies of the Pacific rim by creating a government department for developing Russia's far east after his return to the Kremlin for a third term in May. But in Vladivostok, a city of 600,000 where the clocks run seven hours ahead of Moscow, the injection of capital has done little to lift the low regard in which many locals hold the leader who has dominated Russia since 2000. Although the city – whose name translates as 'Ruler of the East' – has received a makeover, with a new airport, bridges and highway intersections, residents say inflated contracts were won by insiders and the money would have been better spent on social services and housing. "I don't associate it with Putin. They took ages to get round to building the bridge," said 28-year-old biologist Yevgeny Skorkin, joining thousands of people on a mass stroll last month over the new bridge across the Zolotoi Rog (Golden Horn) inlet that opens up a vista across the city's port and the ships of Russia's Pacific Fleet in the harbour. 'CENTRE OF THE WORLD' Local artists fantasised at the start of the last century about a bridge that would connect two remote districts of Vladivostok, but the project remained a dream until Putin found US$500 million in the budget to build it. "Only now are we starting to live. We are creating a European city. The centre of the world is here!" enthused Vladivostok's mayor, Igor Pushkaryov, in a conversation with this reporter on the bridge, just as fog started to roll in. The centre of Vladivostok is quiet of an evening, but is at least well lit – in contrast to the murk of the 1990s when the city was plagued by power cuts. Laser cannons mounted atop the bridge pylons play against the night sky. But the foreign eateries and cafes that dot cities in Russia's European heartland, like McDonalds and Starbucks, are nowhere to be seen. Eyeing a second term, the 37-year-old former businessman hopes that the attention of Russia's leaders will not fade after the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this weekend: "We really want this relationship to continue. We are happy people – we did it!" Such positive sentiments are not shared by all. "Nobody experiences particularly warm emotions," regional lawmaker Artyom Samsonov says of his fellow easterners' attitude towards Putin, who in a national television question-and-answer show in 2007 promised new investments to halt the depopulation of the Primorye region as people sought work elsewhere. Five years after Putin's volley of promises, the young, educated people of Vladivostok are still leaving, while the city can boast another trophy of regional development – a second bridge built at a cost of US$1 billion. Leaders will sweep in their limousines across the world's biggest cable-stayed bridge – its pylons nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower in Paris – to the summit venue on Russky Island. They will be put up at a newly-built university campus, with some delegates sleeping in student dormitories. "You start to think, how much did they spend on this bridge and who, at the end of the day, needs it?" said Samsonov, a 37-year-old opposition activist. "There is no relationship between the costs and the benefits." THE RIGHT TO RIGHT-HAND DRIVE Samsonov's civic initiative was among the first to organise protests against the crisis measures launched by Putin during the economic slump of 2009 that included imposing punitive tariffs on imports of second-hand foreign cars. The step helped save state car maker AvtoVAZ from collapse, but infuriated many locals who had supplemented their incomes by bringing in used, right-hand-drive cars from Japan. They took to the streets. "The authorities were absent in Vladivostok for a number of hours," recalls regional parliamentary deputy Vladimir Bespalov, an opposition communist. "Police chiefs, regional administrators, the mayor – none was able to deal with several thousand people who were ready to destroy, wreck and overturn," he said. "The city was on the brink of chaos." Putin dispatched elite OMON riot police from Moscow to put down the protests, and paid with a loss of public support in last December's parliamentary election, when his ruling party – dominant elsewhere – placed third. Even in Russia's tightly controlled electoral system, Putin fell short of an outright regional majority in the presidential election in March. He polled 48 per cent in Primorye, far below his national tally of 64 per cent. Konstantin Bovdik, a qualified Chinese teacher, long ago gave up his career in education and made good money – 60,000 roubles (RM5,912) per month – working on the Zolotoi Rog bridge. Now the 34-year-old could lose his job. "Well, this is it. The bridge is built. The summit will end. And we feel the economic crisis breathing hard down our necks," said the tanned anti-corrosion specialist, wearing a blue boiler suit and orange hard hat as he shouldered two three-metre steel beams. "All the money goes back to Moscow, and then gets pumped out to London," he said. "They steal everything and then hit us over the head with coshes ... This is a police state." Primorye Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky, appointed this year to run the region of two million people after his predecessor was fired amid a slew of corruption allegations, said the authorities needed to work to restore public trust. "There is a general lack of confidence among the people in the authorities. Power needs to be more open," said the 44-year-old engineer, a native of Yekaterinburg originally brought in to run the new university on Russky Island. Former governor Sergei Darkin has, meanwhile, landed a job in Moscow as Russia's deputy minister for regional development. "It's spitting in the face of the masses," says Alexander Latkin, the 65-year-old director of the city's Institute of International Business and Economics. CHINA SYNDROME With the Soviet collapse of 1991 a fading memory, fears that a rising China might colonise and eventually annex the east are scoffed at by local experts – even if Moscow occasionally plays up the perceived threat to Russia's territorial integrity. "We still face the task of defending our far eastern territory from excessive expansion by citizens of bordering states," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev intoned at a Cabinet meeting last month after returning from a trip to Vladivostok, where he opened the Russky Island bridge to traffic. "There are fewer Chinese here than there were 10 years ago," replied sinologist Viktor Larin, adding that low-paid jobs were now being taken by migrant labourers from former-Soviet Central Asia and nearby North Korea. The Chinatowns of Russia's far east had all but disappeared, he said, as migrants were lured home by economic growth rates more than twice as high as Russia's. The contrast on each side of the border is stark, the Chinese territories booming and drawing in ever more workers while the Russian Far East struggles with the drift westwards. China's more than 1.3 billion population needs Russia's Siberian and far eastern natural resources, the oil, the minerals and timber timber, and "it's cheaper to buy them than to fight for them," said Larin. "They don't need to settle here." Fears China might occupy swathes of Russia's eastern territory were, he said, a "collective, subconscious myth". Russia has nothing to fear by opening up the east – maybe this time it will succeed, according to Primorye's first post-Soviet governor Vladimir Kuznetsov, who went on to serve as Russia's consul general in San Francisco. "Vladivostok was founded as a window to the Asian world. Then there was revolution, civil war, Soviet rule. When I became governor my chief task was to open up the city. It was the second attempt – and it didn't work out," said Kuznetsov, now a tutor at the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island. "Now, we have a third chance – the APEC forum." – Reuters |
| Mixed martial arts thrill new fight fans in Manila Posted: 03 Sep 2012 03:13 AM PDT  File photo shows Rocky Lee from Taiwan celebrating the defeat of Florian Garel (R) from France during their Pacific Rim Organised Fighting's PRO Fighting 5 MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) match in Taipei July 17, 2011. MMA is a fusion of fight styles that melds the stunning strikes of boxing and muay thai, the sleek submissions of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the devastating power of wrestling. Now sanctioned in more than 40 US states, the sport is experiencing explosive growth in viewership and participation. – Reuters pic A tied, yellowing banner marking the date of that brutal battle in 1975 reminded fans of the Araneta's place in boxing history, but most of the 16,500 people packed into the domed venue were not even born when Ali met Frazier in that last great clash of heavyweight titans. While the full contact sport of MMA has gone from strength to strength over the last 10 years, boxing, and the heavyweight division in particular, has fallen on hard times. Years of greed and self interest, and a lack of direction from the alphabet soup of governing bodies, has brought the once proud sport to its knees. Only a handful of superstars such as the Philippines' own Manny Pacquiao stand between boxing and sporting irrelevance. Victor Cui, the CEO of Asia's biggest MMA promotion ONE Fighting Championship, said one of the keys to success was figuring out what the current generation of fight fans want. Sitting at the edge of the cage, as South Korean Kim Soo-chul rained elbows and punches down on home hope Kevin Belington, Cui said part of boxing's demise lay in its "old school" approach. "Manny Pacquiao walks on water here, but the days of people buying tickets and being happy just to see two people fight are long gone," he said. "Where MMA has succeeded is recognising the overlap between sport and entertainment. Whether it's MMA or the Olympics or football, you have to entertain, and sports that don't do that are going to wither and die." Nodding to the five star generals and the heads of major Philippine banks and corporations watching the action from the VIP section, Cui said the 'one size fits all' approach to hosting live events was out of date. "From those fans up there with the beer and the cheapest tickets, to the VIPs who walk down the red carpet and enjoy a glass of wine before the fights, I have to make sure I deliver to each and every one of them," he added. 'THE FUTURE OF FIGHTING' While boxing continues to bank on diehard fans shelling out for a main event and lacklustre undercard on pay per view, MMA has taken to the Internet to open up new revenue streams and tries to give better value for money by stacking fight cards. Through reality television shows and the canny utilisation of social media, MMA has also become much more accessible than boxing, helping fans connect with fighters and building brand loyalty. But while boxing has always been considered the gentlemanly form of fighting, the raw violence and lack of regulation in the early years of MMA saw it shunned and scrapping for survival. Only after evolving from bare-knuckle brawls in underground carparks to highly-regulated bouts between professional athletes has MMA become the mainstream money-spinner it is today. Alvin Aguilar, who helped bring MMA out of the shadows in the Philippines with his URCC promotion, said fans were frustrated by boxing – the unscrupulous promoters and overpaid fighters – and were increasingly turning to MMA. The gloves are smaller, a steel cage stands in place of a ring, and a fighter's fists are not his only weapon. Knees, feet and elbows are used to gain victory, as are an array of grappling submissions. Just like boxing, however, bodies are broken, blood splashes on the canvas and fans pay good money to watch. Barely audible above the roar as local fighter Eric Kelly smashed Jens Pulver to the ground, Aguilar said his countrymen had a long-standing love affair with combat sport. "There's no such thing as a Filipino man who has never been in a fist fight," he said. "But boxing these days, it doesn't do much to entertain fans outside of the fight itself. "MMA entertains. For my first event I expected 500 people to come, but 5,000 showed up. I keep saying it, the next Manny Pacquiao is going to come from MMA." There was much to entertain the fans on Friday. American Phil Baroni, the self-proclaimed 'New York Bad Ass', strode to the cage giving one-fingered salutes to the crowd. They cheered him harder. The crowd roared when two Korean ring girls danced to the K-pop smash 'Gangnam Style', and went wild when a delirious photographer jumped up on the cage to join them. Sitting in the front row, 24-year-old Arthur Navarro was loving every minute. "I'm too young to know about Ali versus Frazier, but boxing is not enough for me," he said. "The MMA is fast and all action. It's the future of fighting." – Reuters |
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