Book
Toward the Great Ocean—2, or Russia’s Breakthrough to Asia
In 2012, the Valdai International Discussion Club presented its report “Toward the Great Ocean or the New Globalization of Russia” for the political and expert communities in Russia and abroad. The present report, “Toward the Great Ocean-2”, is a follow-up on the previous one; it has taken into account the experience gained in implementing some of the recommendations contained in the first report and results of its broad discussion.
The authors of the present report hold that the shift of the center of gravity and the pivot of Russia’s foreign and foreign-economic policies toward the Asia-Pacific region is a natural and top-priority response to the challenge faced by the country in the global and diverse world of the 21st century. We have been witnessing an unprecedentedly fast shift of the center of the world economy and politics to Asia. Asia’s economic growth has become a “locomotive” driving many economies in the world, which have reoriented themselves to the supply of raw materials and goods to China, India and Southeast Asian countries. None of the leading states in the contemporary world can claim a truly global status without a strong presence in the Pacific. Russia, too, can and must use opportunities opened by the “Asian century.”
The problems of formation of organizational and economic mechanisms necessary to strengthen the position of Siberia in the economic space of the country were reviewed. The proposals refer to the reformation of the state regional policy and modernization of the regional strategic planning, provision of the implementation of the “Strategy of Socioeconomic Development of Siberia” and breakthroughs innovations in Siberian regions, and economic mechanisms of production development in this macroregion. A special emphasis is placed on measures for the fundamental modernization of Siberia’s mineral resource complex.
On October 12–13, 2012 the Second Asia-Pacific Forum was held in Moscow, organized by the Russian International Affairs Council and the Russian APEC Study Center in partnership with the International Affairsmagazine. Representatives from government agencies, Russia’s expert and business communities, the United States, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines attended this event. The forum included plenary sessions and a series of panel discussions dealing with specific areas of Russia’s cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries, ranging from nuclear power to cooperation on information technologies.
The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) hereby extends its gratitude to all participants in the Second Asia-Pacific Forum. This report could hardly have been prepared without a significant input made by each Forum participant in summing up Russia’s APEC presidency and identifying ways to deepen Russia’s integration into the Asia-Pacifi.
This report presents the key conclusions and proposals advanced by forum participants for public debate. RIAC plans to continue studying Asia-Pacific issues from the vantage point of implementing Russia’s strategic interests in this region, and is hopeful that the debate will continue
A dictionary of political and social concepts of the late Soviet Union and in the first years of transformation.
Since 2015, the Free Port of Vladivostok regime has been functioning on the territory of five Far Eastern regions. It offers a simplified customs regime and a reduction in customs duties for entrepreneurs, as well as tax benefits and an immunity from time-consuming audit inspections. The Ministry for Development of Russian Far East introduced this economic instrument along with the Advanced Special Economic Zones to create an economic environment that will attract foreign investment to these territories, foster grassroots entrepreneurialism, and stimulate international trade with the Asia-Pacific countries. However, the local stakeholders negatively assess the results of the Free Port’s functioning. Over the past five years, the regime has not been able to fully reveal its potential. This article presents an analysis of Free Port’s development and highlights the most significant problems that impede the implementation of the concept of the Free Port, including legal regulation, strategic contradictions, malpractices, and infrastructural restrictions. The study is based on the analysis of official documents and legislative acts, statistical data, and analytical materials published by the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and the Far East Development Corporation, as well as sixteen semi-structured interviews in Vladivostok.
In the article the value of educational tourism in the university education system is considered as a technology of educational, scientific and cultural development of a student. International educational tourism as a technology of development of a student is investigated on the basis of personal experience of the author, received thanks to the participation in the academic cooperation project between Mari State Technical University (Russia) and Concord University (USA) in the sphere of service and tourism. International educational tourism is considered as an additional resource of the educational process.
Over the last two decades national policy makers drew special attention to the implementation of policy tools which foster international cooperation in the fields of science, technology, and innovation. In this paper, we look at cases of Russian-German collaboration to examine the initiatives of the Russian government aimed at stimulating the innovation activity of domestic corporations and small and medium enterprises. The data derived from the interviews with companies’ leaders show positive effects of bilateral innovative projects on the overall business performance alongside with major barriers hindering international cooperation. To overcome these barriers we provide specific suggestions relevant to the recently developed Russian Innovation Strategy 2020.
The experience of the school in the field of cooperation with domestic and foreign higher education schools, public administration bodies, and ministries and departments of the Slovak Republic is presented.
In 2012, Russia assumes the Chairmanship of APEC, and is keen to build on its memberships of both the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Russia is geographically and historically part of Asia and the Asia Pacific, and has been a dialogue partner of ASEAN since 1996. Still, the obstacles of distance and languages have led ASEAN member states and Russia to know and interact little between both sides. As growth poles in the world economy, there is much benefit in greater interaction between their rich economies. To commemorate the 15th Anniversary of the Russia-ASEAN dialogue partnership in 2011, the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS and its counterpart from MGIMO-University, Moscow co-organized a two-day conference that year, in which papers were presented offering perspectives from Russia and the ten ASEAN member states. Representatives from academia, and the public and private sectors offered insights on topics including geopolitics, bilateral relations, business and economics, and culture and education. This is a timely book that affords the reader insights into where ASEAN-Russia relations currently stand and suggests how they can improve and move forward.
The BRICS countries have come a long way in terms of science and related fields, but there is still much that the group could do concerning multilateral cooperation to encourage innovation and address its members’ common challenges.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.