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Thursday, July 08, 2010

NZ the new pacific cold front between America and China


So what does NZ do as the new pacific cold front in the struggle for global dominance between China and the US heat up? Fran O'Sullivan (who has been on fire of late as a columnist breaking news) has written what maybe her best column to date about China's intent to test their competitiveness in a Western economy

This was made clear when the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) visited Auckland recently on a low-key scoping trip. CRBC was not among the bevy of top-level Chinese firms who accompanied Vice-President Xi Jinping on his official visit to New Zealand.

And who are CRBC? Why they are the builders of infrastructure for every authoritarian regime China plays with...

CRBC points to its success in constructing famous projects like the Fourth and Fifth Mosul Bridges in Iraq, the Friendship Harbour in Mauritania, Addis Ababa Ring Road in Ethiopia, the North Section of West Kowloon Expressway in Hong Kong, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Highway and Suramadu Sea-Cross Bridge in Indonesia.

...need a bridge or a public execution facility? CRBC are your builders of choice. But what is the real danger here? CRBC have available to them massive low interest loans direct form the People's Party, their version of capitalism is to aggressively undercut everyone else with access to Government funds to run everyone else out of business...

The study reported suggestions by a senior executive at one Chinese company that low profits were maintained in order to increase market share at the expense of local, international and other Chinese companies, with the hope that less viable companies will be weeded out and only the most effective companies will remain.

...under the neo-liberal rules of global capitalism, CRBC want entry to NZ to test out how they operate in western countries not corrupt despots reliant on cheap labour. Just like China used NZ as a test case to include forced immigration from China to NZ being included in our Free Trade agreement Helen signed with them, China wants to use us again as a test case study for their lowest cost possible State funded capitalism.

How will America respond to this and will they see it as encroachment into their sphere of influence? Would it serve American interests to make sure CRBC fail? How would China's new desire to engulf us with their huge companies impact our national sovereignty?

It's not just our dairy farms China are interested in.

1 Comments:

At 8/7/10 8:34 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Godd post, though you show a hint of 'yellow peril' at the end. I have no problem with Chinese owned companies - state owned or not - competing in NZ (in fact, they already do).

What I do have a problem with is this daft NZ-China Free Trade Agreement signed less than 2 years ago. It supposedly turned round a big trade deficit with China to a surplus in NZ's favour in its first year, but this was based on the recession-led drop in NZ imports, coupled with China's increased buy-up of forestry and dairy products.

What Kiwis forget is that these are one-off gains - there is a physical limit on how many trees and how much dairy we can produce, so we won't see ongoing big gains in our exports to China. By contrast, China makes it's cash from manufacturing, which can be expanded to a far greater extent. So Chinese imports to NZ will grow and grow...

Kiwi's tend to only think FTA's affect privte goods and services sold, but this was mostly deregulated prior to the NZ-China FTA. The real growth for China is using the FTA to force their way into council and govt contracts.

Look at the Pacific - Chinese companies like CRBC bring thir own staff from China, take the money, build the road or bridge, then leave with almost all the cash. Ruins your balance of trade, and provides nearly no work for locals. This has caused riots in Papua New Guinea.And that is why they included the Chinese workers clause in the FTA - all the well paid jobs go to Chinese migrant workers.

Kill the FTA, and the problem is solved. But we can still trade with China, just on FAIR trade terms!

 

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