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Comment by bangkoknights | Hacker News Reader

> The hub will put Chinese exporters within 170 miles of EU members Poland and Lithuania and give them tax-free entry into Russia and Kazakhstan, which share a customs union. It will also let them draw from a workforce that’s 99.6 percent literate and makes $560 a month on average, half the Polish wage.

Imagine a Shenzhen on the edge of Europe. This is probably a hammer blow for domestic manufacturing in EU countries.

Chinese outsourcing and freedom from EU regulation will be just an hour or two away from every single entrepreneur in Europe.

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You've got to be kidding me. Belarus is a landlocked tinpot dictatorship with an unreformed state-run economy, notoriously arbitrary government, strangulatory red tape, sanctions up the wazoo and virtually no access to EU markets, as it's outside every single European institution:

http://boingboing.net/2011/03/12/venn-diagram-illustr.html

Hint: Belarus's flag is not in there at all. Add in a near-total lack of workers skilled in post-1950s technology, English, or for that matter any language except Russian, and I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to locate a factory.

You are right about the arbitrary government and red tape. I think you are wrong about "virtually no access to EU markets", but I will not argue it here. You are wrong about "lack of workers skilled in post-1950s technology", and completely wrong about the implication that there could be a shortage of suitably skilled labour to run the factories.

In the former Soviet union, Belarus had a very significant and comparatively modern industrial sector, producing vehicles, consumer electronics, machinery etc. Minsk in particular is heavily industrialised, and according to the Wikipedia entry:

After the last war the development of the city was linked to the development of industry, especially of R&D-intensive sectors (heavy emphasis of R&D intensive industries in urban development in the USSR is known in Western geography as 'Minsk phenomenon').

So I suspect if there is a recent history of "R&D intensive industries", finding workers to man even advanced factories should not be an issue.

> near-total lack of workers skilled in post-1950s technology

[citation needed]

>I'm hard pressed to think of a worse place to locate a factory.

How many factories have you placed? Would you put one in Bangladesh?

The article touts Belarus' monthly salaries of $650, but in Bangladesh, you can hire people for $60. And besides, multinationals don't operate their own factories in .bd, they just contract out to the lowest local bidder.

Everything you describe sounds like China in 1980. They designated Shenzhen as a special economic zone and it became a model for the rest of the country. Whether or not Belarus benefits in the long run, who knows, but it's a good deal for China.

The EU sanctions expire in a few months, and currently only target individuals and companies, there is no general trade embargo so access to EU markets should be fine. Also China and the US are outside every single European institution but there is plenty of trade.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/15/belarus-eu-sanctio...

Being landlocked won't be an issue for exporting finished goods to the EU, but perhaps there will be an issue for raw materials and component supplies.

Pop quiz, hot shot: if you're looking for an export powerhouse next to the EU, what's Belarus got that Turkey doesn't have?

Belarus doesn't have civil war and terrorists blowing things up on its border.

Yeah, because you can freely import anything you want into the EU... /s

Not worried in the slightest, to be honest.

The bottom, meet the EU. The EU, meet the bottom.

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