Part 1. China is building the Great Green Wall while funding deforestation in Russia

For many decades, our Russian Taiga has been brutally destroyed for the export of timber to China. A ban on the export of roundwood, i.e. unprocessed timber, was introduced quite recently! Now the timber is cut, processed into finished raw materials within the country, and only then driven to the Celestial Empire. Whereas earlier, up to January 1, 2022, our taiga was “mowed” to the root, all of it was loaded at a frantic pace onto trains and logging trucks, and then, in endless convoys, driven to China.

Almost all regional authorities managed to profit from this! Moreover, our government confidently pretended that nothing was happening. In response to our protests and even actual expeditions to the massive clear-cuts, they unanimously declared: “There are no problems.” Only in 2021, when the crimes became so numerous that it was simply impossible to hide them, did the top officials in the government confirm the global destruction of the Russian Taiga.

Thus began at least some reforms. But, to be honest, there have been no radical changes! They simply created a TOR (Territories of Advanced Development) project for Chinese businessmen and invited them to the country for permanent residence. The TOR law allows Chinese businessmen not to pay taxes, to receive colossal preferences from the state, to cut down our Russian Taiga, process it within the country, and instead of roundwood, now send processed sawn timber to the Celestial Empire.

The ban on the export of roundwood from the country and the creation of territories of advanced development were necessary to redirect the flow of money from the sale of the Russian Taiga not into the pockets of individual officials, but into the federal state budget. That is, if previously the money was divided among high-ranking officials, effectively creating and covering up “forest banditry,” now everything has been brought under a centralized economy with the money going to Moscow.

That’s all.

For those who are not familiar, it’s worth mentioning briefly what preferences were offered to Chinese investors for doing business in the country:

• 0% corporate profit tax for the first 5 years from the moment of receiving the first profit, and 12% corporate profit tax for the following 5 years.
• 0% property tax for organizations for 5 years, and 1.1% for the next 5 years.
• 0% land tax for 3–5 years.
• A reduced rate of insurance contributions — 7.6% for 10 years (as opposed to the standard 30%).
• A lowering coefficient for the extraction of mineral resources from 0 to 1 for 10 years.
• Simplified hiring of foreign labor without regard to quotas.
• Reduced timeframes for inspection checks (reduced pressure on business).
• Provision of land plots by the state for investment projects at preferential rental and purchase rates.
• Provision of necessary infrastructure by the state.
• Simplified customs procedures and reduced related costs.
• Additional legal support.

And starting from 2025, the opportunities for TOR residents are being expanded, providing them with even more various gifts from our government.

Thus, by becoming a resident of TOR or MTOR, Chinese investors receive a colossal range of tax and administrative preferences, allowing them to make huge profits from developing Russia’s natural resources.

Including our Russian Taiga.

The TOR law also applies to our citizens, but is oriented precisely toward foreigners. Initially, territories of advanced development were created and are now expanding in Siberia and the Far East due to their “favorable positions” near China.

According to data from 2023, the total volume of Chinese investments in Russia exceeded 50 billion dollars. Also, as of 2024, over 9,000 Chinese companies were registered in Russia — three times the number of all German companies that operated in our market before 2022.

Thus, today Chinese entrepreneurs form the largest group of foreign investors in our economy. The main and most coveted “piece” is investment in logging.

Suppose we have such large companies as “RFP Group” (Far East), “Asia Forest” (Khabarovsk Krai), “RosKitInvest” (Primorsky Krai), “Asia Les” (Eastern Siberia and the Far East), as well as the “Suifenhe International Forest Company,” “China Paper Corporation,” and others. There are a huge number of them! As a rule, the founders or shareholders are Chinese citizens.

The law on territories of advanced development allows Chinese businesses to expand fundamentally in Siberia and the Far East, taking root and building up their own business infrastructure.

It’s not without reason that high-ranking figures in the government recently recommended we learn Chinese. 

Therefore, when I’m told: “Well, they banned the export of roundwood, and they even imprisoned many officials,” I always try to explain: for the last twenty years in Russia, there has been a total destruction of forests; essentially, the entire forest sector was in the hands of “forest bandits” under the patronage of regional authorities.

All that has changed is that instead of exporting unprocessed timber, Chinese investors were invited to Russia, given numerous preferences so they could cut down the taiga here and process it right away. And they also took control of the economic sector of the logging, redirecting money to the federal budget, instead of it being “stuffed into the pockets” of regional officials.

The fattest officials who managed to steal billions were publicly imprisoned to push through the necessary reforms. This demonstrates fairness in the eyes of society and whitewashes the management system! After all, no one wonders: if the Russian Taiga was mercilessly destroyed for decades and officials managed to steal billions, did they really not notice it earlier in Moscow?

How could they not see it? 

“GREEN WALL”

And now to the news. While the Russian Taiga was mercilessly destroyed for export to the Celestial Empire, the Chinese government itself was deliberately restoring its own forests. And now they are already summing up the first results.

Right before New Year 2025, they happily announced that they had completed the construction of a 3,046-kilometer green belt around the Taklamakan Desert, which is part of the large-scale project “Great Green Wall.”

The Chinese began implementing this project back in 1978; they plan to fully complete it by 2050.

Now they have successfully completed part of the “green wall” around the second-largest moving sand desert in the world. It is called the “Sea of Death,” and the sands cover an area of up to 300 thousand square kilometers! The territory is comparable to the size of Italy, the Philippines, or Ecuador. It is almost 1.5 times larger than Great Britain and almost 5 times larger than Switzerland!

Imagine the scale of the project to restore protective forests. Over 600 thousand people participated in the planting, who over the course of 47 years planted an artificial forest belt around the desert! In total, more than 30 million hectares were planted.

Now China plans to increase the width of the “Green Belt.” They are also building global projects to expand water horizons and plant additional protective-category forests throughout the country.

However, all these projects are attempts to contain ongoing environmental disasters and demonstrate the Chinese government’s attempts to take control of the climate in their country! Alongside other ongoing “climate management” plans in the Celestial Empire. 

The artificial protective barrier already causes extreme bewilderment and does not fit in with modern scientific data at all. 

And yet, while our authorities are destroying forests for export to China, the Chinese are trying to restore them on their territory.

PRIORITY PARADOX

All this is happening while our Russian Taiga is mercilessly destroyed and sold off into private hands for global exploitation. And let me remind you that in 2006, a new Forest Code was adopted in Russia, which effectively makes tenants the owners of our forests. The authorities even publicly called them “the real masters of Russia’s forests.” Mostly, the forests are leased for 49 years for large-scale logging and the arrangement of areas for sports and recreational hunting!

In addition, we are now trying to stop utterly unimaginable bills on the logging of protective-category forests. Not only is the protected status of reserves in the country being deliberately reduced, but now the Ministry of Natural Resources is openly trying to legalize clear-cutting of forests around sacred Baikal, as well as allow businesses to clear-cut protective-category forests in all mountainous wildlife refuges.

The reasons vary! They say it’s “for the people” and “for building a tourism cluster.”

So, the paradox of priorities here is that while we are destroying our own Russian Taiga and inviting Chinese investors to cut our forests, China itself is successfully carrying out projects to restore forests in its country.

The “Great Green Wall” project, which is already being successfully implemented, is comparable to Joseph Stalin’s “Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature”!

In 1948, by order and under the direct leadership of Stalin, our Soviet ancestors began to erect large-scale protective forest belts around cities, agricultural fields, along roads and rivers! But in 1953, after Stalin’s death, implementation of the plan was halted, and it was never completed.

The plan for the transformation of nature in the USSR still raises many questions. 

The fact is that when creating forest belts or rearranging rivers and bodies of water, they did not take into account the characteristics of specific regions — from climate to soil composition and species diversity. And the “universal” schemes developed in the center might not have suited specific areas, leading to new environmental problems instead of solving the old ones.

Now our neighbors, the Chinese, are successfully implementing a plan comparable to Stalin’s project. Unfortunately, they are making the same mistakes that were made during the creation of artificial protective forest projects in the USSR. Typically, party directives “tailor” reports to ideology, resulting in many experiments leading to errors on the ground.

In any case, China is now trying to restore forests. And the need for timber is being met by the Russian Taiga, which is being torn apart, turning mighty forests into shredded mosaic remnants.

January 2025. China has completed creating a “green belt” around the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the west of the country. The ikusstvenny protective barrier of forests has already stretched for more than 3 thousand kilometers. Billions of trees hold back the “Desert of Death” and temporarily elevate the greatness of the Celestial Empire.

January 2025. The Ministry of Natural Resources is trying to legalize the clear-cutting of ancient forests around Baikal and the clear-cutting of protective-category forests in all mountainous refuges of the country. And priority is given to Chinese investors, for whom “territories of advanced development” were created.

• Read the second part of the article “The Great Green Wall: a tragic project of the Chinese government”

© PAVEL PASHKOV