China - 'Just business.'18:50 Apr 09 2012
Times Read: 628
China
Are you at all concerned about how economic expansion of the world’s fastest growing economy is now touching the lives of almost everyone on earth?
China
China has by far the world’s biggest reserves of cash; almost three trillion dollars at the last count, and it’s using that money to buy into assets across the globe.
The Pacific
Sixty per cent of the American submarine fleet is in the Pacific, monitoring China’s military expansion.
USA
China’s exports to the USA earned it $296 billion in 2009, while imports from America were just $69.6 billion.
Peru
State-owned Chinalco has bought Toromocho, an Andean mountain made of copper ore. By 2013, this could be the most productive copper mine in the world.
Brazil
China’s money is helping build one of the world’s largest port complexes near Rio de Janeiro.
UK
China is the third biggest supplier to the UK, selling £23.2 billion worth of goods, behind Germany (37 billion) and the US (26 billion).
Africa
There is around one million Chinese working across the continent, from oil workers in Namibia, to chicken farmers in Zambia.
Turkmenistan
Now the world’s leading consumer of energy, China gets most of its natural gas via a 1,000-mile long pipeline, costing billions of dollars, from Turkmenistan.
Antarctica
China now has three “research” stations on Antartctica, though international treaties ban the exploitation of the regions mineral assets until at least 2048.
New Zealand
Chinese dairy company Bright Dairy and Food bought a majority stake in South Island’s Synlait Milk for more than $56 million in summer 2010.
This expansion has led some to say that China is acting like the imperial powers of the past; countries like, Britain, France, Germany and Belgium.
It is a claim that the Chinese are quick to deny though. Charles Tang is a linch-pin of their trade with Brazil and says, “… China is not trying to conquer any territory; it is not trying to dominate any country…” he told a reporter from his lavish home in Rio. “China just wants to do business, to buy, sell and invest. China is not colonising any country and is not taking resources away, without paying for it.” He had then added, a smile on his face, “That is quite different from my recollection of British imperial history.”
Well, I learnt of our Imperial history at school. And, the main reason many of the early interventions into the countries we went to where much the same as those given by Mister Tang, ‘trade’. Just look at the two main principles involved in the economic invasion of the Indian sub-continent, ‘The East-India Company” and their rivals, The Dutch East India Company. They were both driven by commerce and justified their own actions in that country as, “just business.”
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