La Stampa: 300,000 Chinese to reside outside Minsk

The Chinese will constitute a half of all workers of a “Chinatown at Europe's doors”.

Beijing plans to finance the construction of a pharaonic project in Belarus – an industrial park near the village of Bykachyna, Ilaria Maria Sala writes for La Stampa.

“A project of a manufacturing city at Europe's doors has already been designed. It will be constructed in Belarus by China to become a bridgehead between Russia and the European Union and an important sales channel for Chinese industrial goods. The project can be called pharaonic with China's investment of $3bn. Under the contract, at least a half of all workers, whose total number will reach 650,000 people, technologies and materials will be from China. Belarus prepares an area of one and a half Manhattan in a forest near capital Minsk. Two more billion dollars will be given by Belarus. The city will have enough apartments to house 155,000 people,” the author writes.

“One of the goals of the project is bringing Chinese exporters closer to the EU borders. Besides, the agreements between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus allow products of the new city to be sold to the Russians and Kazakhs without customs duties. For China, it means the implementation of the country's new industrial policy: since the increase in the standards of living in China, the country began to locate its industrial facilities abroad, the same what international companies have been doing to China for many years,” the newspaper informs.

“The city of the future doesn't have a name so far. Some call it the Chinese-Belarusian industrial park near the village of Bykachyna. It's known for sure that the city will be constructed along the M1 highway that links Moscow and Germany via Belarus and Poland. The construction is due to be completed by 2030, but the industrial park will start working in six years, by 2020,” the article reads.