For many years I have been persistently hearing that China is about to seize Siberia. The fake is more than 40 (!!!) years old, it is still from the times of the USSR, and against the background of stories about “in half a year already” whole generations have grown up, but thanks to timely updating, the fake lives on.
Let's analyze what and how it really is, taking for examples the most widespread propaganda at the time of this writing.
China came out on top in the world in timber supplies to the USA and the EU
The fake looks something like this:
and is, in fact, "leading". I got it around the network around May 2018 (remember the dates, it will come in handy a little later).
This means that this fake drives single false “facts” into consciousness, relying on and referring to which it will be possible to later throw in something else, on a larger scale.
Promotional video:
We are looking for the original of the theses mentioned in the text "China came out on top in the world in the supply of timber to the USA and the EU."
We find a huge number of scary, over-emotional cries “Well, that's all - it's not the time now, babonies, to talk when tears are choking, we do not reflect, we spread,” but finally we get to the bottom of the original.
True, there is a little bit different postulated.
Moreover, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) confirmed to the AJOT that the US surpassed Russia as the top temperate hardwood exporter to China.
Stupid situation. Those who repost this stuffing, calling themselves “we are ilita, universal owners of IQ above 160, fluent speakers in several European languages and connoisseurs of 50 shades of Parmesan and brands of other people's watches” - they either massively repost a stupid mistake in translation, or deliberately lie (surprisingly, never such was not, right?). Because the news is that the United States has surpassed the Russian Federation in timber exports to China. At the same time, the United States has fewer forests than Russia, the rate of deforestation is higher, and sales to China are higher. It turns out that the news about the fact that the United States is a sawmill country and an economy based on the export of raw materials is about the United States. At the same time, the United States is also dumping - the average price per cubic meter of timber from the United States is lower than that of the Russian Federation.
Separately, about the introductory phrase “China came out”, pushing the reader to the conclusion “That is, under this power, but it was not so before.” This is also a lie - the rate of deforestation in the Russian Federation over the past 10 years has decreased significantly, as well as the export of timber - and now it is much lower than the Soviet indicators. The lead to “… well, we understand WHERE China got all the timber, thanks to which it increased its export”, is thus also false. However, for the sake of her, apparently, the picture is distributed - including paid promotion in expensive VK publics, which take 30-50 thousand rubles for publication and do not do free reposts at all.
The second thesis in the text is “deforestation is prohibited in China”. Where this is taken from - it is not even possible to find it. In China, as elsewhere in the world, the forest cannot be cut down in reserves and sanctuaries, but in the forests it is possible, you just need a permit. As in the rest of the world. The thesis itself about “China lives on imported timber and lumber” is a bit wild, because the believers in it must then somehow figure out how a country of 1.4 billion people lives in the scenario “all lumber is imported”. It is believed that this is technically impossible.
But, of course, all these boring logical things cannot outweigh the emotionally sobbing presentation “by the way, and all the sticks in China have been made from Christmas trees near Moscow for 20 years already” and “only the most expensive wood, cedars and pines of Siberia go to Chinese sticks”. Those who wish can cut softwood sticks and try something to eat with them. I'm sure you will.
The image upgrade “Siberian cedars are cut down” exploits a fairly common template about “Real Siberia”, where everything is natural and healthy - there is even a whole sect with this name, which is very popular among women of Balzac age. That you need to go into the forest, there you will smear yourself with cedar, eat a cedar, drink a cedar, breathe a cedar, and everything will be cedar. On the covers of such books, everything is usually primordially homespun and a blonde porn model in a kokoshnik, who only saw Siberia from a business jet that took her to work in Dubai. Quite a standard approach to the buildup of emotions, to turn off reason and logic.
The final line in the picture is also indicative - it is a common meme, needed to “signal” how to relate to the entire text. The target audience of such stuffing is stupid and does not like to think very much - but it likes to react quickly (as they teach computer games and social networks). “Don’t reflect, spread” is a reference to this.
It's a little funny, of course, that the local ultra-democratic “orange” president, who got into a stupid story because of an unsuccessful plastic surgery in Austria, spoke loudest about getting up from his knees in Ukraine.
The Chinese sell us our water from our Baikal
The stuffing is quite old, “The Chinese are buying out Baikal” - I heard this as a schoolboy. The beginning of the 2000s. Now the revised fake looks like this:
The actualization in the mass consciousness of this archaic meme began somewhere in the time of the failed “white ribbon revolution” (this, of course, is just a coincidence). Here is 2014 - “Putin sold the water of Baikal to China”, here is 2015 - “Shallow Baikal: the Chinese will pump out water”, and a frame article with a set of all imaginable fakes for 2011.
The meaning of the actualization of the meme is clear - add a new addition to the old yeast about “China is capturing Siberia” “… because Putin personally ordered it, so there is a sale of the country”.
Let's look for what is actually hidden behind this picture.
The essence of the fake is clear - a bottle with Russian letters, hieroglyphs, and the word "Baikal" should prove that all of Baikal has been sold to the Chinese. No more, no less, just like that.
Spelling on the container - Long Cai Bing Hai - we find exactly one company with that name. This is the LUNTSAIBINKHAY company operating in the Russian Federation. There are no more such firms, an error is excluded.
This company sells two brands of water on the Chinese market - “LONG CAI BING HAI” with a volume of half a liter and five liters “YISIBEIER”.
Products are positioned for the "upper" segment of the market - well, as it should be for "Northern, foreign, from the country of big white people, which means useful" - as well as imported honey "from which children will be tall", as well as flour from Russian wheat, as and red fish. This is a Hi-End position, something like “Gluten-free French mineral water in pink bottles for successful women” in Moscow gyms. Here is an interview with the owner of a Chinese television, it was done in Beijing, i.e. metropolitan exhibition of "green products".
But the database of legal documents for this company gives us very interesting information about what is happening in general.
So:
Vzhukh - and instead of "Putin sells Baikal to the Chinese" - the specific owner of a particular OJSC "Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill" connected a Chinese company for money to his water supply pipe.
All products are sold only in the PRC, in the Russian Federation they are not simply not sold, but cannot be sold purely technically - it does not pass SanPin and does not even hide it. Russian inscriptions on the bottle are mandatory for products actually produced in the Russian Federation, and not because this water is massively put on the shelves of Russian stores.
Those. There is no “The Chinese are selling Baikal to us” - they are bringing with them what they do not plan to sell on the territory of the Russian Federation. Because in Russia this water will not be bought, but it will work out to its Chinese to sell it at a high price. As an exclusive product. Although, in essence, industrial water from the pipe of the plant.
However, the question may arise - what kind of Chinese legal entity appears in the text of the court decision - with the name of LLC “LAKE BAIKAL - LUN CHUAN”.
Here's the info:
There are no other legal entities with this name.
How much "the Chinese own" is clear without additional comments.
OK, we sorted it out - as well as with "Putin personally allowed them, but the locals, crying, could not do anything" and "The Chinese are selling us our Baikal." Everything turned out to be fake, as usual, as with “our forest is being cut down” and so on. It remains to figure out the production volumes of this enterprise - after all, it is postulated that Baikal is growing shallow before our eyes, and solely because of a specific firm, completely Chinese, which completely pumps out Lake Baikal, because Putin personally said “Download of course”? Let's crunch with numbers.
Baikal's area is 31,722 square kilometers. One millimeter of the lake level will be approximately 31.7 million cubic meters.
Firm "LUNTSAIBINKHAY" in 2016 bottled about 50 thousand cubic meters per year, and in 2017 reached a working volume of about 100 thousand cubic meters per year. For the level of Lake Baikal to change by a millimeter, the company needs about 317 years at this rate. Yes, and if we take all sorts of subtle topics - that, for example, a river flows out of Lake Baikal - is shallow at all, the Angara is called - then the volumes will generally become ridiculous. The materiel in numbers can be viewed, for example, here.
Based on scientific data, without damaging the Baikal ecosystem, it is possible to extract up to 400 million tons of water per year - this is 0.5% of the expenditure part of the lake's water balance. Compare this with one hundred thousand cubic meters and the thesis “Baikal is growing shallow before our eyes - thanks to Putin”. The Chinese take less per year, moreover, bottling in very conditional sanitary conditions, than a pulp and paper mill spoils water per day. Taking in a year is much less than a spring flood per day.
However, there are also Russian producers of water from Lake Baikal who officially sell it on the retail market of the Russian Federation. And they even shoot commercials for China, also wanting to enter this market. Only these are Russian manufacturers whose products meet Russian quality standards, which are tougher than Chinese ones, and can be purchased. Yes, it is more expensive than mass brands bottled by Pepsico and Coca-Cola companies in the Moscow region - but this is quite logical. Why don't they write anything about them? Oh yes, because this will not work to deduce “Putin sold Baikal to China”.
Result
A Russian commercial firm has connected to the pulp and paper mill's water intake. The volume of taken water is less than the measurement error and, in principle, cannot influence the level of Lake Baikal, the expenditure part of the water balance of which is orders of magnitude larger. Water from the water intake of the pulp and paper mill is bottled and transported to China as a Siberian exclusive for successful Chinese. They do not sell in Russia, because SanPin will not pass such water, and no one will pay so much to actually transport water from Lake Baikal to the European part of the country. Confirmed data, all timber business in Siberia belongs to China!
This stuffing is also more than 20 years old - about “secret Chinese cities with a population of over one million in the taiga, where the Russian government does not operate” and other things like “in fact, Yeltsin has already given the Far East to China” was said back in the early 2000s. But now the inconvenient thing about Yeltsin is being removed and the stuffing-in is urgently reclassified, based on memory “yes, that's right, they've been talking about something like that for a long time”:
Let's go through the text, wading through the characteristic “tearful-tearful” presentation of the format “God, babonki, but what is being done - just burst into tears and, wringing his hands, it remains to moan sorrowfully - alas”. This feed, of course, shows that the target audience is the same Internet infantiles with a woman-consciousness and emotions ahead of reason, as, for example, in the news about high-tech breakthroughs of the Light Western Countries - where everything is also emotional, “They did IT again. We have created a miracle, which we consider with trembling, sobbing with happiness to be involved in this, there is no time to think, we are emotional, enjoying the tremor of our emotions”.
The volume of timber harvesting per year in 1 million cubic meters is not huge numbers, but zilch.
We take data for one of the last years of the USSR, 1981, for which there is information on exports to other countries, and we see that the USSR exports 358.2 million cubic meters per year. USA in the same year - 411 million. The Irkutsk region alone in 1981 produced up to 18 million cubic meters. "Huge figures" of logging as much as a million cubic meters from the largest company in Russia means that since the days of the USSR, the rate of felling has dramatically decreased.
Author i.e. either he did not even bother to study the scale of the market at all, or he deliberately tries to work with an illiterate audience, pressing with numbers. A million cubic meters! At the largest company! Whoa!
Further, about:
Secondly, we literally began to tear apart information about this company, and this is what information is: in 2018, most of the shares passed into the hands of China. The owner of the share is GREAT GAINING LIMITED from Hong Kong.
The authorized capital on both sides is billions of rubles.
“They literally began to tear apart information” - this is a good emotional moment for the reader to understand that the Authorities are Hiding, but Caring People got to the bottom of the Truth.
The usual googling of the company name hides this turnover. You can do this too, I will help with a link in Russian.
Here.
and so on (type the address into a search engine).
This is the place of mass registration, a carriage of nominal firms is registered to this address. These are offshore companies for tax cuts.
Those. the man, without hesitation, from the fact “the Russian office, in the interests of a particular Russian owner, reduces its tax payments towards the state” deduces “Putin is selling Russia”. Excellent. A holy suffering businessman and a bad official, embezzler, how sweet and familiar.
An outright lie is also contained in "The authorized capital on both sides - billions of rubles." GREAT GAINING LIMITED has a minimum authorized capital for Hong Kong of HKD 10.000 (this is just over 70 thousand rubles), i.e. it is an absolute "gasket" that does not perform any function other than tax reduction. And for whom, really for Putin? We look - and it is owned, through denomination, by a certain TOLOKEVICH L - and lo and behold, the owner of TSLK - Leonid Tolokevich. What an amazing coincidence, how cleverly these Chinese disguised themselves!
The author's manipulation with offshore companies is rather primitive and suggests that the final conclusions are matched to a clearly formulated task. The author takes the fact that large firms use offshore companies to reduce taxation - and so they do all over the world, but the author leads to the false “… only in this country”, then selects Hong Kong offshore companies - discarding the fact that leadership in this area and the maximum percentage is still in Crete and Malta (it is banal it is cheaper and simpler there), and writes the conclusion - "Everything was sold to the Chinese, Putin sold it to the Chinese, so they sold everything, so Putin is selling everything." A normal move, the audience is sobbing, there is silence in the brain, we are emotional. After all, they did not pay for “Private owners withdraw money through Malta”. Mention “The largest financial flow - through offshores in the BVI, and this is the UK” - was not paid. They paid for the thesis about China, and they push it.
With this sorted out - what other "arguments" are left for the thesis about "Everything belongs to China"?
Let's go through the legal entities mentioned in the text.
TSLK
"The largest company in the country" has been in liquidation since 2016. Those. posting from June 2018, postulating “This company was given the rights to cut down huge volumes, now it will begin” is a lie.
Shay Tai LLC
The director is someone Tai She. Liquidated in May 2018. Yes, and she had nothing to do with deforestation - her activities were “Retail trade in hardware, paints and varnishes and glass in specialized stores”. The author is deliberately lying and added this hastily googled company because of the Chinese owner in order to create the illusion of mass character. Gina LLC
In the text:
Another Chinese businessman with a similar name, Li Jian Jun, in the Republic of Buryatia, owns the Jina LLC, whose main activity is the sawn timber trade.
LLC Gina from Buryatia is, exactly one. To enhance the effect, the author lies that the owner is Chinese; in reality there are three owners, one of them is a Russian. And the company LLC Gina does not have a license for timber extraction, its licensed type of activity is “Exploration and production of minerals, including the use of waste from mining and related processing industries”. Author i.e. again, I found that, the main thing is that the keywords “China” and “Siberia” were, but missed - LLC Gina cannot cut down the forest.
Mentioned side by side in the text, LLC "EXWOOD" and LLC "Kristall" were closed in 2006 and 2011, respectively. Other firms mentioned in the context of “Owned by Li Jian Jun” are involved in construction, i.e. erecting buildings and structures in Transbaikalia. Those. about "All these firms export timber to China" - a lie.
LLC "Business center on the mountain"
This is really a legal entity of the business center, it is not engaged in either the production of lumber or their processing. The author again found "anything, the main thing is that the Chinese names shine."
The list can be continued for a long time, the essence is simple - the author once entered the database of legal entities and simply wrote out companies owned by people with Chinese names. And from this it is inferred "… which means there are simply no other firms, so everything belongs to them." Obviously, this is not just manipulation, but outright lies and order processing.
Result
In the super-emotional text of Pavel P. - the author of the site, self-named, where in the right column his quotes are displayed to himself, as well as earning money on this topic, monetizing the emotions of people who find it easier to react to tearful lies than to think - everyone is false thesis. From “Here's a Hong Kong offshore - which means all of Siberia has been sold to China by Putin” to “Here are some firms owned by Chinese - although firms are engaged in different types of activities, it all shows that Siberia has been sold to China by Putin.”
Pavel P. could not confirm in any way that “in Western and Eastern Siberia, I officially announce that practically all the forestry business belongs to the PRC,” and also repeatedly fell for the obvious lie - that LLC “TSLK”, for example, is the largest timber processing company in Russia. In fact, there are completely open sources, the same rating of the top 50 of the oldest magazine "Forest Industry", or the rating of the National Forestry Agency, which lists the real largest timber processing companies in Russia. With a really huge fleet of equipment, the number of personnel, and other indicators that are obvious for big business. But he could neither confirm nor indicate the sources of reliable information.
The moment of hasty preparation of the material for publication is also quite interesting:
May of this year, i.e. a month ago.
A person is urgently looking for any material on a given topic. Those. the topic is already there, and the wording has already been approved - the author collects any material, that everything is exactly as the customers approved him. In that order, and not vice versa - that is, not “I went and this is what I saw”, but “I have to go and so that there is definitely material from there with the right accent - send me this”.
A person is looking for any proofs in panic, even fake ones - moreover, “we guarantee confidentiality” (!!!). Why is this, sorry, if we are talking about the fact that "Putin has officially transferred the territory to China"? In this case, you just need to come and fix it. Well, if the scale is huge and everything is official. The same coordinates of felling sites - which, according to the author, are darkness. Which "the author, constantly traveling, sees for years." Or … is it all just fiction on a given topic?
It turns out that the author - unemployed, I note - has already paid for the expedition, he already knows when and where he leaves, and what he will see there - but he has zero proofs and asks for them from subscribers. In order to then “bring” these videos and postings collected on the net, like “I've traveled here and I HAVE SEEN PERSONALLY”. Perfectly.
That is, “I have been traveling across Russia for years and tears are welling up, and now I decided to make a film,” “I myself see it all the time” - and for May there is no material for “a film that has been created for years,” but the topic and budget are already there.
Indeed, a magical picture.
The procedure for promoting this material is also interesting. In addition to paid (and not cheap) promotion in liberal and Ukrainian publics in social networks, the author - “famous writer” - on the site, each article has a counter of visits. Which, in the case of this article, goes over a million. However, a small experiment shows that for some reason, as a counter for this article, the author simply displays the number of attempts to open any page of the resource. I wrote a test script that presented itself as a Google search bot and simply opened the root page of the site a thousand times - and during the operation of this script, this article had 1002 more visits. A very interesting move, is it really so critical for the author who “just brings the truth to people” to show the reach of the audience to someone that he goes to such actions? What for?
Petition on change.org An author who makes a profit by collecting money for unnamed "expenses related to the protection of Russian forests" made an obvious move for any external order for such movements - a petition was created, but not on the Russian, but on the American site. Despite the fact that in mid-2018, anyone knows that there is a Russian ROI website for petitions that need to be considered.
But after all, the Russian site will have to somehow be responsible for the publication of false information, and if the goal is “to pump the topic, to attract the people,” and not to take some action on the basis of the results, then why ROI? Change.org is perfect - and it's more convenient for sponsors, just for the links in their materials, they need everything to happen on their “own” platform, known to the consumer of potential materials, “Here's what actually happens in Russia”.
We open the text of the petition and see a lot of what has already been discussed above. Coupled with a fabulous intensity of emotions and a lack of facts:
Several years ago, massive deforestation began throughout Siberia and the Far East, including reserves and relict taiga.
(a rather trivial lead to “… well, you understand who it started with” - in fact, there were massive fellings under the USSR, now their volume has sharply decreased, so much forest is not necessary to cut corny).
As part of the cooperation of the two superpowers, Russia and China, the Russian Federation transferred millions of hectares of forest to the PRC for felling!
A common lie, i.e. no one transmitted anything. The author will undoubtedly refer to secret documents known only to him and to believers, but the obviousness “is not the time to think, we react, more emotionally” just creeps out of all the cracks.
After the transfer of forests to China, at the level of local authorities in these regions, open "forest banditry" began: feeling their impunity far from Moscow, all and sundry began to cut down forests under any pretext and sell to China.
Here, of course, the intensity of absurdity is completely epic, and with the logic of all the rules - however, the author, apparently, did not even google about such a word. If the lawlessness of local authorities and businessmen does exist, then it is already a problem of commercial corruption, and not an "international agreement on the transfer of Siberia."
Solid woodworking plants have been built on the border with the PRC, in addition, China has become the main exporter of wood to the United States and other countries.
We have already analyzed this above - i.e. the author writes outright lies in the text of the petition. “Solid woodworking factories”, as is clear, are so solid and freshly built - especially taking into account the fact that dragging a forest across the border is not carrying amber from Ukraine with backpacks, as Chinese tourists do - that there is no evidence of this large-scale industrial action for some reason- then no.
What is significant - all of this - every throw-in - "liner" and the main one - again for May 2018. Up to the mention of Baikal.
What an interesting puzzle that fits together. To be continued …