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October 20, 2009 (LPAC) – The economic agreements signed by China and Russia during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to China Oct. 12-14, demonstrate the potential for rapidly transforming regional as well as bilateral international relations, if Lyndon LaRouche’s “four power” agreement among the U.S., China, Russia, and India is carried out. The agreement under which China will help Russia construct a national high-speed rail system, can play a key role in helping China break from its current dependency on labor-intensive exports to the West.

The agreements also reflect the principle Lyndon LaRouche urged so strongly in 1989-90, after the Berlin Wall fell – that western Germany utilize the existing infrastructure and industry of the east, relatively backward as it might have been, to the full, to keep the economy in motion and to form a springboard for economic expansion and introduction of advanced technologies as rapidly as possible. Eastern Germany has never recovered from the decision to shut everything down.

Building infrastructure in northeastern Asia also means dealing with extreme geographic, weather, and other challenges. While obviously nowhere near the challenges of space exploration, these projects will force the participating nations to develop new technologies, as China had to when building its rail line to Tibet.

As a commentary published in the national Peoples’ Daily on Oct. 16 stated, the Memorandum of Understanding on high-speed rail construction in Russia, signed by the Chinese Ministry of Railways and the Russian Ministry of Transportation, “signifies that China's one-sided importation of technology from Russia has come to an end. Nowadays, it is China's turn to help Russia build high-speed railways. Besides, China can also import nuclear technology from Russia, while exporting to it the related technology for liquefying high-quality coal at high temperatures.”

China has been building a huge national high-speed rail network since 2005, which will have 13,000 km of track by 2012. In their cooperative project, which will both reconstruct existing lines in Russia and build new ones dedicated to trains which can run 350 km/hour or more, will increase Russia’s high-speed lines from 650 km to 10,900 km over the next 20 years. The two nations also signed a freight transport agreement Oct. 14, which will increase traffic between China and Europe.

The next day, Russian and Chinese enterprises signed an agreement to build a “super shipyard” in Vladivostok, ships, and other maritime infrastructure using the most modern technologies, Novosti reported Oct. 17. Eastern Russia lacks modern shipyards, an area where China has been moving forward, and the project will reduce Russian dependence upon foreign builders.

Other Eurasian rail cooperative projects could also be pulled off “the back burner,” where they have languished the past several years. On Oct. 15, Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin signed an agreement with Mongolia’s Transport Minister Khaltmaa Battulga, to build a railroad which will make it possible to exploit mineral resources of the South Gobi region. As Yakunin stated, the rail line will give landlocked Mongolia access to Chinese, Russian, and North Korean ports. Chinese, U.S., and South Korean officials and entrepreneurs were present at the conference on expanding Mongolia’s rail network, where the agreement was signed.

Today, transport ministers of China, Belarus, and Lithuania, signed an agreement in Vilnius, to expand their East-West Transport Corridor initiative, which they are inviting all neighboring nations to join. The project is to enhance Asian-European transport infrastructure. Azerbaijan, Russia, and Iran will hold a conference in Tehran Nov. 3-4, to discuss the planned North-South railway corridor, which intends to unify rail transport among the three nations, and ultimately link Europe with South and Southeast Asia. The plan will upgrade existing infrastructure and build new rail lines, especially in Iran.

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has proposed using China’s massive rail construction, as the benchmark for India to expand and rebuild its own large but dilapidated rail system, the Hindustan Times reported Oct. 17. China has been expanding its rail network at least three times faster than India has, and investing 50 times more funds. China has also been requested by Kathmandu, to expand its Tibetan rail line to Nepal. The project could stir India to build long-discussed rail lines into the Himalayas.

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Beijing Oct. 15, President Putin held a previously unscheduled, 90-minute meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani, and the two discussed Russia’s potential to help build Pakistan’s economy, which is in an existential crisis due to the unending warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan itself. The two nations’ relations have long been distant, but they had created an inter-governmental commission, which they will now re-launch by December. The commission will focus on rail and energy infrastructure and heavy industry for Pakistan.