British Columbia, as the incessant propaganda from Victoria in the last few days has been trumpeting to the point of sensory deprivation, is indeed the prime North American entrepot for trade with Asia.

But these things are always relative. British Columbia and Western Canada can shape up well against, for example, China's resource suppliers in Latin America, Africa and even Australia, which has now put so many of its eggs in the China basket it risks a Humpty Dumpty fall if China is hit by a manufacturing recession.

There is, however, now another player in the competition to supply and trade with an Asia that is expected to continue to be the world's most vibrant economic centre whatever happens elsewhere.

After a decade of often shambolic reconstruction and investment programs, Russia's Far East is emerging as not only a major supplier - potentially THE major supplier - of resources for Asian industrial and urban development, it is also establishing itself as a centre for trade and manufacturing.

There was yet another sign last week of what has become a steady flow of stories about the emergence of Russia's Far East, sometimes called Eastern Siberia or Pacific Russia.

The Honda automotive company announced it is setting up a plant in the Vladivostok area to assemble up to 50,000 vehicles a year. While the plant will at first use parts shipped from Japan, just over the horizon from Russia's main Pacific Ocean port city, the expectation is that Russian factories will soon be able to provide parts of the necessary high quality.

Honda is a latecomer to the Vladivostok region, which is already established as a manufacturing hub for Japanese vehicles to feed the entire Russian market. Toyota and Nissan are up and running and Mazda recently announced it also will set up a production plant there.

What these and other foreign companies have seen is a serious determination by the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, nine time zones away in Moscow, to provide the infrastructure Pacific Russia has lacked to tie it into the Asian market.

Vladivostok is being billed as the setting next year for a regional economic coming-out party, often portrayed as Pacific Russia's equivalent of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games in 2008.

In preparation for hosting next year's 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, Moscow is spending about $15 billion to build a full spectrum of facilities from roads, bridges, airports, railways and energy pipelines to hotels and a conference centre that will become a science university.

The legacy will be making the region a gateway for trade with Asia, just over the doorstep.

Russia, of course, has to overcome questions about its reliability as a supplier. Then there's the matter of endemic corruption, though this is not as much a barrier to business for Asians as it can be for some North Americans and Europeans.

But as it moves into Asia, Russia has been leading with its oil and gas industry, perhaps the best organized and certainly the most profitable of its enterprises.

Russia already exports liquefied natural gas to Japan, the United States, South Korea and Singapore, and supplies oil to China via pipelines.

There are now plans at advanced stages to build gas pipelines to China as well as to develop a regional electricity network based on hydro generation in Russia, aimed at lessening China's dependence on polluting coal-fired plants.

One of the most ambitious plans is to construct a natural gas pipeline through North Korea to South Korea.

South Korea recognized early on, more than a decade ago, the potential of trade with the Russian Far East and quickly became the dominant supplier of durable household goods.

Russia has not forgotten this early expression of confidence. Moscow sees South Korea as an important strategic partner, not only for trade, but also as a source of investment in its modernization and privatization programs.

There are also plans afoot, if Pyongyang can be persuaded to abandon its suicidal policies of isolationism, to extend the Trans-Siberian Railway across North Korea to the South, putting South Korea's products only a few days shipping container ride away from Europe.

The Vancouver Sun