China’s Xuanyuan Group for Industrial Development plans to create a high-tech industrial park in the Amur region in Russia’s Far East, the company reported today. According to RT, TASS reports the Xuanyuan Group signed a declaration of intent with the Amur Region Investment Attraction Agency to invest up to 10 billion rubles ($102 million) in the industrial park, which will create over 400 jobs, and bring new technology to the region.
It is only one of the first deals signed on the first day of the annual Eighth Eastern Economic Forum, in Vladivostok, whose purpose is to encourage foreign investment to develop the underpopulated Russian Far East. (The Amur Oblast, a gold mining center since the 1850s, in Southeast Russia, on the Trans-Siberian Railway, has a population of about 800,000.) The EEF this year will run from Sept. 10-13, and its organizers expect as many as 7,000 people to participate. Over two decades, the Russian government has spent increasing amounts on infrastructure, education, university systems and housing bonuses, to build up the vast Far East, which is underpopulated and underdeveloped, in part, because of permafrost, cold weather (winter high temperatures average 16°F) and so forth.
The Xuanyuan park is intended to produce robots, 3D printers, drones, wind turbine blades, storage and transportation tanks for liquefied natural gas and helium, and other technological goods.
