Today’s China-related announcement: a China-Malta agreement on SPORTS

They have got to be joking, right? But they’re not. These agreements with China, on anything and everything, are now coming as thick and fast as the mayor of Qormi.

Yesterday it was films. Today it is sports. Tomorrow, what? And you have to take it as read that they’re not telling us about the really big agreements, the ones which should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

According to TVM’s report, China and Malta are going to “exchange coaches in certain sports”.

But read further and you will see that this is agreement is all about introducing traditional Chinese sports to Malta while Malta introduces no European sports to China.

These traditional Chinese sports include dragon-boat racing, wushu, weiqi and Chinese chess (surely that’s a game and not a sport?).

Malta will also be “providing facilities to Chinese athletes who participate in events in Europe and North Africa”.

All this sounds rather one-sided and unbalanced: an agreement by which China promotes its culture in Malta and gets ‘facilities’ in Malta for Chinese athletes, and Malta says ‘thanks for the privilege of allowing us to be your stooge’.

Why do I get the feeling that all these agreements for China to promote itself in Malta and be served by Malta are somehow tied to a pre-electoral deal the Labour Party struck with the Communists, which Joseph Muscat signed when he visited Beijing as Labour leader in 2010?

He did sign a deal – it was in the news. It was that most extraordinary diplomatic thing: a bilateral agreement between a government (the Chinese dictatorship) and a party in Opposition (the Malta Labour Party).