China, the Voracious Economic Giant, Steve the Supplicant

Given how fast Stephen Harper is working behind his veil of secrecy to sell out Canada to China, this timely warning from Der Spiegel:

"I love nature," says Huang Nubo, 56, a businessman with an estimated net worth of at least $1 billion (€772 million). The founder and chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, Huang discovered a market niche: He builds resorts with an emphasis on sustainable design. His company benefits from the new wanderlust and "green" consciousness of the affluent Chinese upper and middle classes.

Huang has trouble understanding why his latest project is so controversial. "I'm hurt by the mistrust with which I and the entire Chinese nation were met." He is talking about Iceland and, more specifically, about an almost virgin piece of land in the northeastern part of the island, complete with waterfalls and snow-covered peaks, called Grimsstadir a Fjöllum. Huang fell in love with this wildly romantic stretch of wilderness during a visit to Iceland. He wanted to acquire 30,639 hectares (about 120 square miles) of land and invest about $200 million in the property. The plans included a 120-room hotel, a golf course and a riding facility, which could all be reached via a new airport built specifically for the site.

...Some of the public in Iceland, a NATO country, saw the potential deal as a sellout and even envisioned looming geopolitical problems. One commentator likened the entrepreneur to Dr. No, the villain of the 1962 James Bond film of the same name. Huang's party connections were brought up, to support the theory that it was merely a cover for sending an agent to Iceland. Many had their suspicions about the "noticeable" proximity of the Grimsstadir site to a deep-water port. Was this man really working for the Communist Party and planning to build a base for Chinese polar ambitions?

 ...The fears of some Icelanders may sound like paranoia, but they are not unfounded. China and its entrepreneurs are acquiring all kinds of assets all over the world, and in many cases their actions are strategic in nature, including the acquisition of farmland in Mozambique, copper mines in Afghanistan and ports in Greece. China is on a global buying spree, and it sees the current economic crisis in Europe and the United States as an historic opportunity to energetically press ahead with its offensive. The financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that China's so-called red capitalists spent $23.9 billion on shares in foreign companies in the first half of 2012, or three times as much as in the same period last year.

The commodities sector is a case in point. In Mid-July, the state-owned energy giant Sinopec spent $1.5 billion for almost half of Canadian company Talisman Energy's oil and gas rights in the North Sea. Almost concurrently, CNOOC, another Chinese energy giant, bought the Canadian firm Nexen for more than $15 billion. Planners in Beijing hope that these deep-water drilling specialists will help them achieve the breakthrough in industrial policy that they need to expand in the Pacific. CNOOC is the main Chinese player in oil and gas exploration in disputed waters that are also being claimed by neighbors Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Japan, with which there is even talk of possible war over the claims.

[Sany president] Xiang [Winbo] is bursting with self-confidence, but also with patriotic zeal. He was behind a nationalist Internet campaign that successfully derailed a plan by the Carlyle Group, a US private equity firm, to acquire a majority stake in his Chinese competitor, the Xugong Group. "We can sell everything, just not our country," Xiang blogged polemically at the time.

Why, then, should Germany "sell itself" to China, and why is the Putzmeister deal any different?

Xiang chuckles to himself, and answers the question in a roundabout way. "I am convinced that German industry has no choice but to join forces with major Chinese companies like Sany," says the Sany president. He explains that while Germany has the superior technologies, China controls an enormous market. German companies, he says, need that market to expand and generate profits.

We, and especially our leaders, need to understand this phenomenon.  We're in a very weakened state across the West.  We're caught in a debt trap our austerity-blinded leaders can't steer us out of.   It's going to take us years to recover.   China, quite understandably, sees this as its opportunity to transform China and, at the same time, transform us.   The transformation China envisions is permanent and genuinely global.   China is intent on becoming the developed world's "head office."

Should we be content with this?   Just as the West, particularly the United States, once siphoned assets and wealth from weaker regions of the world, China seems poised to do something quite similar to us only they're planning to scoop up more than just resources.

Despite his pretensions to be a true economist, Steve Harper is an idiot.  This guy didn't even see the crash of 2008 coming, not even as it overwhelmed the country.   He had to prorogue Parliament because he was caught so wrong-footed.   He doesn't see what China's overtures mean either and he will sell us out before we ever get to throw him and his rotten Conservative Party out.  It's telling that he's doing it in classic Beijing style - with the stroke of a pen, behind closed doors.