It’s not all about the money, Mr Prime Minister. There are the political factors to consider.
Joseph Muscat said on Sunday that when “the second largest economy in the world approaches you for investment in the energy sector, you don’t say no”.
By this he meant that when China – China itself, and not a Chinese company – approached his government to buy 30% of Malta’s state energy monopoly, he didn’t think he should turn down the offer. The result is that Malta’s state energy monopoly is still a monopoly, and it is still state-owned, but now there is another state sharing the ownership: communist China.
The gist of everything Muscat says about deals and decisions points to an outlook in which money is the primary, perhaps the sole, decision-clincher. Nothing else is factored in. If it makes money, then it’s good. End of story. Perhaps this is what he meant when he said that he wants to run Malta like a business.
The trouble here is that governments administer the state and have considerations that go well beyond the making of money. Political considerations are of the essence. Is is a good political decision to hitch Malta to China’s bandwagon? No, it is not. Trading with China is fine, in the sense that it cannot really be avoided. Selling 30% of the state energy monopoly is not fine. It’s a monopoly. Aligning Malta politically with China is not fine, either, because China is a communist dictatorship which oppresses and abuses its own people. You cannot call yourself liberal and then make the world’s single greatest oppressor and human rights abuser your new best friend.
But Muscat doesn’t think of China as the world’s single greatest oppressor. He thinks of it as the world’s second largest economy.
Meanwhile, for an update about what the world’s second largest economy is up to, look at the latest report in the Telegraph.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10608245/China-kills-off-discussion-on-Weibo-after-internet-crackdown.html
Actually, when you think about it, ANY country having a stake in something as sensitive as Enemalta, should give rise to misgivings.
When the investor is China, misgivings should have given way to alarm. What are they getting from this? Certainly nothing pecuniary, as the Chinese must have done their homework and realized that they will never recuperate their money, let alone turn a profit.
So if the goal isn’t monetary, than again, what is the reason?
The same reason Putin’s Russia keeps building gas pipelines to its satellites whenever something like the Nabucco line pops up: leverage.
China has bought influence within the EU structures by buying influence in the Malta government by buying influence in the Partit Laburista.
China is run as a communist state, not as a business. Whatever it does, the payoff is political.
Do you imagine that China holds a large chunk of the US foreign debt because of the attractive interest rates?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140211/editorial/Government-that-listens-after-it-slips.506291#.UvoWLcId-TN
I wish one could say “why bother about this sod” but he happens to be the PM that a nation, with a high population of pedigree ignoramusus, elected.
With his attitude, if Muscat were a woman, he’d have been sleeping around to get what he wants.
What’s the difference, really?
it’s in bad form to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Politics is not about money. J’accuse more than Joseph Muscat – the foundation was laid by his predecessors too – but he manifests a pathological obsession with money to new disgusting depths.
Therefore, listen up: what we need is a man to show us that politics is NOT about money. Simon Busuttil could and SHOULD be that man. He has the right sort of intelligence, the right temperament, and his CV proclaims as much.
So what is he waiting for?
Won’t work, Baxx – if you put even as little as €5 in someone’s pocket in this country, he’ll suck you off in public for life.
Yes, the world’s second largest economy, which however has one fatal flaw; no internal market.
Given the major long drawn dip in demand, as well as an innate inability to provide education and emancipation rights to the remote provinces, preferring to displace millions into its megacities, China’s economy tethers on collapse.
The problem central government has are wayward figures registered year on year, if it’s growth, it shoots to near meltdown, if it’s a slowdown, it decelerates to a stop on a dime. No internal market means no dampening mass leading to erratic overcompensating maneouvres.
The damper however, requires radical democratic progress, it can be said an internal market requires the rights to choose.
People can’t be forced to give up their life, poor it may be to fill the ghost cities, to date, over tens of millions of empty apartments. Nor can one move smoothly to wealth if it means Beijing smothered permanently in a dense thick fog.
That’s not an open market, that’s the Communist Party’s caricature of what they think it is.
As soon as Angela Merkel renounces her idiotic energetic strategy and do away with Germany’s dependence on cheap silicon, China’s in deepest trouble.
Actually, the world’s largest economy hasn’t enough energy sources to feed its vast consumption. So it buys its energy from one of the world’s not largest economies. From Russia.
There.
And it also copies everything from everyone, including the world’s smallest economies, but that’s by the by.
At the risk of sounding racist – not that I care – here it is: The Chinese haven’t invented jack shit in the last two thousand years. We, the Europeans, invented everything. They copied everything off us. So who’s the largest economy now?
Of course Joseph Muscat isn’t really European so he wouldn’t see it that way.
Just to put ‘the strongest economy’ in perspective’
2012 GDP in $:
China: 6,091
USA: 51,794
Germany: 41,863
UK: 39,093
Malta: 20,848
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
If he has such great business acumen, why didn’t he stay in the family business and spare us all.