http://www.independent.com.mt/mobile/2014-06-29/news/malta-a-source-and-destination-country-for-women-and-children-subjected-to-sex-trafficking-5652709376/

By extension, it is fair to assume that Muscat will also take a firm stand against the arrest of human rights activists:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140614/world/China-arrests-prominent-rights-lawyer.523333

The irony there is that Sai Liang Mizzi’s contract is declared a state secret, as though it is perfectly normal to say such a thing.

@fautdemieux

People in China are being systematically driven out of their homes and off their land in the name of development. Some are killed for protesting too much.

Those stories rarely make the international news because 1) it is next to impossible to report freely from China, and 2) any internal independent reports are removed asap.

Periodically, homemade videos of people being removed from their land pop up online. Those are the few that make it. Most disappear from view almost as soon as they are uploaded.

China is very efficient at suppressing dissent and criticism. They call it the maintenance of social harmony. In Muscat-speak, that would be energija pozittiva.

There are fortunes to be made from formal relations with China. Your mistake is in assuming that the net benefits accrue to Malta.

Malta’s prime minister is going to China’s eco-forum because he has been summoned and must obey. It is not essential to attend an international forum to meet his Chinese counterpart, not least because China’s head of government, Li Keqiang, is not going to be there.

According to his LinkedIn account, Mr. Shiv Shankaran Nair has been Special Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the government of Vanuatu since February 2013.

He advises on quote “European Relations, Trade Issues and inward Investment.”

Mr. Ham Lini is current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister in charge of Trade and Commerce.

Hmmm.

http://mt.linkedin.com/pub/shiv-shankaran-nair/19/bba/0

Does this mean that Ham Lini is Shiv Nair’s contact in Vanuatu or that the PM despatched Ham Lini with both Muscat and Lini working to Nair’s / China’s agenda?

Fautdemieux, just take your money, and shut the fuck up.

You businessmen wrote my country’s foreign policy in Libya, and now you’re doing it in China, and the awe-struck politicians were only to glad to follow your orders.

Oh and it’s “faute de mieux”.

‘800 million living in absolute poverty in the provinces, waiting for forced displacement to Chinese megacities to replace those 200 million earning 2 dollars a week, once these are exhausted, make sure the Chinese government still holds the trump card; excess labour at impossibly low costs.’

I’m afraid that the reality in China is rather different than what you are describing. For information about poverty, see this: http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN

Also, for the record: I can’t explain, nor would I seek to justify, things (like contracts) that I don’t know anything about.

Perhaps fautdemieux could explain how a civil servant’s contract becomes a state secret.

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-07-05/news/asia-investment-envoy-sai-mizzis-contract-still-a-state-secret-5725356033/

Am I to assume her role includes doing stuff I better not know? It’s the nature and contents of the contract that’s being held from us, not just her blessed salary.

Economic growth and wealth cannot be removed from democratic principles and safeguards, anything else and it becomes stealthy power brokering. .

There isn’t enough space or time to review every one of your points – especially on issues of ownership of vital national interests, where I thought I’d been clear that I agree with you.

I’d only note that you seem to have missed my point about the Confucius Centre and Cultural Institute – both of which are, essentially, state-owned Chinese enterprises. These were introduced in Malta with the encouragement of the previous, Nationalist, government – the latter given a prime location in Valletta just steps away from the Foreign Office.

[Daphne – You are completely wrong and so is your argument because it is based on this essentially false premiss: that the Maltese government encouraged China to set up shop here to the point of ‘giving them a prime location just steps away from the Foreign Office’.

And in case you’re wondering how I know all this and have the information instantaneously available, the explanation is simple and not suspicious. There is only one other house (with several front doors) on that stretch of Britannia/Melita Street between Merchants Street and St Paul’s, and my grandparents lived in it for around 50 years. My father grew up in the house next door to what is now the Chinese Cultural Institute, and that’s where I visited my grandparents right into my own adulthood.]

Presumably you disapprove of them because you think there will never be any prospect of reciprocity? (as an aside: there are a number of European cultural centres in Beijing, though obviously none of them are able to explicitly promote human rights) Or do you object to them in principle because of your views about China?

[Daphne – I could not have been more clear. The one thing of which nobody can accuse me is ambiguity or lack of clarity in speech and thought. I do not use obfuscating language, either.]

As to the final point re: attendance at the event, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. One side of the argument about attending these events (yours) says that doing so devalues Malta. The other side would probably say that if Malta wants/needs something from China, and if the Prime Minister receives an invitation to attend the event (the Chinese want as many foreign VIPs in attendance as possible), he has to consider the message that would be sent by a refusal.

[Daphne – Again, you are wrong. People value you as highly as you value yourself. Malta already has a major problem because it lacks clout in and of itself. Any clout Malta has is by virtue of its membership of the European Union. The minute you align yourself in terms of value with Vanuatu, you have a problem. And Vanuatu did not even send its PM but his deputy. Russia? We all know why Vladimir Putin thinks his chief of staff should be there, though he is too important to go himself (see above).]

The price of dignity may be that your entreaties in other areas are politely ignored – precisely because we have so little leverage.

[Daphne – I trust that this is not how you conduct yourself in your personal life. If it is, then you have a problem. The best way to ensure that your entreaties are ignored – and not politely, either – is to divest yourself of your dignity. Haven’t you ever noticed that the more you put yourself out for someone, the more accommodating you are to them, the likelier they are to take you for granted and treat you like crap, while chasing after those who put themselves on a pedestal and who behave as though they’re the ones bestowing the favour of their attention? This is the operating principle in every sort of human relationship. Muscat has something China is gagging for: an EU member state tiny enough, undemocratic enough and vulnerable enough to be swallowed whole. Yet he is behaving as though he’s the one who’s desperate for something that China has. A tragic error.]