Chinese “tycoon” Li Ka-shing is lucky he’s not an American. The NDP would be marching in the streets;
The Vancouver Port Authority has confirmed that Hutchison Port Holdings, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, is one of the international terminal operators that has shown interest in the project.
Patrick McLaughlin, the VPA’s director of planning and development, said Li Ka-shing’s company is creating the most buzz.
“We want to start this by going to the international community and say, ‘We’ve heard you’re interested, we need to confirm that,’ and from that, pick someone who is interested in being a partner in this process,” McLaughlin said.
Hutchison operates 46 container terminals in Europe, Central and South America, Asia and the Middle East. It doesn’t have a presence in North America, so Terminal 2 would allow it a foothold in the market here.
McLaughlin said the port authority will invite expressions of interest within two months.
Discussions about Terminal 2 so soon after the approval of the third berth at Deltaport is galling to some area residents. Terminal 2 was not included in the environmental assessment for the Deltaport expansion and would add three berths at Roberts Bank. The entire project is estimated to be worth $1 billion.
WND has the background;
Careful examination of the Chinese tycoon’s growing empire and his cozy relationship with the Communist Chinese government reveals the potential for an insidious manipulation of Western ports, markets, utilities and telecommunications that could apply crippling pressure to the United States and her few remaining allies. Indeed, through Li Ka-shing’s empire — a front for Communist Chinese expansion — the Mainland does not need to invade Western democracies or launch missile attacks against them to flex its muscle. It can simply threaten to shut down public utilities and key industries which it now controls — throwing Western markets into complete turmoil, if not disaster.
We can always “nationalize” the ports, you know, like the second rate socialist country we are.
“Careful examination of the Chinese tycoon’s growing empire and his cozy relationship with the Communist Chinese government reveals the potential for an insidious manipulation of Western ports, markets, utilities and telecommunications that could apply crippling pressure to the United States and her few remaining allies.”
Li Ka Shing’s initial foray into the B.C. economy occurred when he bought the Expo 86 lands in downtown Vancouver, over the objections of real estate experts who said the lands should have been parcelled and sold at auction.
Li bid what seemed like a lot of money to the small town rubes who governed the province, and they sold it for what now seems cheap, cheap cheap.
Li had so much respect for the B.C. government, he sent his granddaughter to conclude the deal. A Chinese businessman friend was astounded, and said in Hong Kong such an action would be seen as an insult, but our media focussed on the glamourous, attractive young woman, and the rest is as they say……
Selling our ports to foreigners, from any country, is an invitation to disaster. Gotta go, work calls.
I’m calling Bull Sh*t on you this time Kate.
Just like the BS in the US ports management boondoggle!
While it may be true that we would hear a loud squealing from our home grown American hating socialists the real problem lies in our own culture.
The xenophobic and ignorant response to globalized services is a pathetic and weak response to economic and business competition. If you think some player is exercising an unfair advantage of some kind then that issue can be dealt with. The facts of the matter are that Canadian and American industries and businesses have gotten weak and soft. While other nations have been building their economic base ours has been undermining it through smug self satisfaction, meddling regulatory efforts, parasitic unions and taxation to fund worthless government social programs.
We are now reaping what we have sown and the solution is to collectively grow up and behave like men or women instead of frightened and indulged children!
The Chinese have been buying access to North American deep water ports since the Clinton days….west coast US has a couple of ports China has purchased exclusive access to. Also China has developed/purchased deep water ports in Equador, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Panama canal. They have front companies procure long term leases on these waterway facitities but the reports show that the lease money has come from Beijing.
If anyone has picked up a global investment publication in the past 15 years they realize that the aggressive effort by China to secure access to the globe’s critical ports and waterways is part of long term supply chain planning done by Beijing.
It is really past time for our North American Politicians ( and our population) to address the economic threat that China’s aggressive global monopolist agendas represent to our own economic security.
In the modern global business cycle, like it or not, we are in direct competition with this aggressive economic power…our lifestyle, wages and employment depend on our success in competing with it.
But by and large I see Canada’s Leftish corporate welfare/politically insulated business culture directing investment, capital and Canadian resources into China to feed their economic aggression. The threat is real and China is THE aggressive, unscrupulous, grasping capitalist- monopolist of the era…yet the Left do war dances against the evil mercinary US our largest customer…go figure…left side selective myopia? Or just genetic left side economic dyslexia?
Li Ka-shing is a capital, not a “front for Communist Chinese expansion”. Yes he is on friendly terms with his home government. Even here in the “free” west an uncooperative capitalist can get in trouble with their own governments (e.g. Conrad Black). Li Ka-shing wants more Vancouver action because he wants more wealth, and more geographic diversity for his investments.
OMMAG”The facts of the matter are that Canadian and American industries and businesses have gotten weak and soft. While other nations have been building their economic base ours has been undermining it through smug self satisfaction, meddling regulatory efforts, parasitic unions and taxation to fund worthless government social programs.”
AMEN!!
One of China’s “unfair advantages” in competing ( aside from a large slave labor force) is an actual hands off policy by Beijing where commerce is concerned…tax rates are low or non existant…so is state welfare programs…regulations for industry are few….Export regs are virtually non existsnt.
However, as much as I agree with your statement about NA business/corporate culture/industry becoming decadent due to politically protected markets, subsidies and insider contracting,…as much as it pains me to say, unionist “cost inflation” is most active in the Public sector ( who produce no value-added procution we can export)…the private sector certainly has competative disadvatage against China with union wages, govt regualtions and demand economic market tampering….but even if we were relieved of most of this we still cannot compete against a nationalized business plan which rides on the advatage gained by the economic repression of the working class in wages and lifestyle.
We could compete if we lost 50-80% of the tax burden in both business and labor but we would all have to resign ourselves to a produtive work week of 60 hrs with little or no time ioff at roughly 1/3 the takehome we have now.
Granted we have made ourselves uncompetative with lush welfare and taxing systems as well as protectionist corporate welfare….but we are facing a labour force advantage in China that we cannot hope to meet.
I speak as a former industrial contractor who had to submit job bids against Chinese and mexican competators…I would lowball the quotes to get a lousy 3 points profit and Mexico would cut my throat by 30-40% but China killed ua both with quotes tat came in at 70% less than my bids…same matrials ( bought without excise) and labor at 1/10th my cost.
Honestly speaking, how many of you actually avoid buying Chinese goods? Not a bait from a troll. Americans have a knack for worrying about Chinese domination while buying Chinese goods to save a couple of dollars. I m curious as to where Canadians stand on this.
I avoid buying Chinese made goods whenever possible. It’s sometimes a pleasant surprise to find clothing that is made here in Canada.
As far as our largess into Communist Chinese domination, most of the fault lies with our governments and the previous bunch who were business partners with the Chinese. Through the purchase of a Calgary firm, they are now emplaced in our oil sands.
I won’t buy anything made in China….problem is there are so many north american industries with their production moved to China that it’s hard to tell what’s made there….the new import rules allow then to bypass the country of manufacture requierment if the item has its head offices in the US. Also because it is a US based company ( with production in china) the goods do not show on official government trade stats as chinese import.
If you could see how much of your goods are of Chinese manufacture you would be shocked….virtually ALL small domestic brand appliances..a lot of the textile and clothing trade ( Levis etc.)
Walmart is the single greatest buyer of Chinese-made goods in North America.
Gunny99 : “I avoid buying Chinese made goods whenever possible.”
This is the way to think as a Canadian…every purchase of foreign manufactured goods is a lost Canadian job.
Gawd knows I’m no Unionist or Protectionist but the current Chinese monopolization of global manufacturing is absolutely unprecedented…double didgit growth per year….if we do not protect and encourage our value added industial sector, we will become a nation of poor paying service industry or resource harvesting workers with a massive reduction in lifestyle from that afforded us by manufacturing and supply chain jobs.
Lorne (the red) Calvert tried to negotiate oilsands leases with CNPC directly instead of going to the competitive bid process that has served Alberta so poorly. 😛
Walmart is the single greatest buyer of Chinese-made goods in North America.
Does anyone like Walmart anymore?
But seriously, it’s an interesting thing to watch the implacable logic of globalization and neoliberal economics come face to face with the Western nationalist interests. If we’re uncomfortable with a Chinese corporate presence in Alberta’s oil fields or in BC’s ports, then surely we should also be uncomfortable with, say, Nestle controlling 80% of Peru’s milk production industry, or with Walmart controlling 40% of Mexico’s retail sector.
But then neoliberalism was always about deregulation at home coupled with the aggressive opening of new markets abroad. It was fine when it operated in an outward direction; less so now that it’s becoming a two-way street. Our free market chickens are coming home to roost.
I think I’m a pretty free trade kind of guy, but China’s mercantilists operate in a way that often makes a mockery of the principles of free trade. Unfortunately, the former Clinton and Chretien governments spent a lot of time sucking up to the PRC, and it is costing us now. Chinese companies (and the PRC gov’t with which many are intertwined) play a bare-knuckles style of business that is not generally practiced in the west outside of the Cosa Nostra or the Yakuza. I’m not saying that we should run away screaming or refuse to make deals, but we need to be wary about selling off critical pieces of infrastructure.
Umm, Rupert Murdoch has a close working relationship with the Chinese Communists…but so what? That just makes good business sense.
I have more of a problem with a state-owned oil company like CNOOC with no disclosure or transparency rules buying say, Texaco. But Li Ka-Shing is an independent entrepreneur based in the Friedmanite paradise of Hong Kong.
I buy Chinese goods. Not because it is almost impossible not to – and that is certainly valid – but because I don’t see how not doing so has any effect on our own industries. Our industries, as clearly outlined by WLMr, have ‘unionized’ the production side beyond economic sustainability.
More and more goods are not made in ‘first world’ countries but are designed and funded in those countries and manufactured in other countries. We have split up the production process into many sections and globalized them. I don’t see this changing. And, with our modern communication system – the notion of the isolate self-sustaining nation is long gone.
Not only that, but I don’t think we can live within such a globally networked world within closed economic bases.
As far as low Chinese wages are concerned, that can’t last indefinitely, as the Chinese people themselves are intensely focused on one thing only: making money. They aren’t interested in communism or ideology. Just ‘making money’. They aren’t going to put up with low wages for long.
‘hutchison’. gee, THAT doesnt ‘sound Chinese’ eh?
see how clever they are, catering to the REAL country bumpkins and the ‘need’ for all those subtle signals that the ‘right’ decision is being made instead of cold hard brutal analysis of the big picture…..
go for it Mr Li.
oh, and all you canikistanis, remember when dealing witht the Chinese on business: GET IT IN WRITING, DONT FALL FOR ALL THAT ‘COORDIAL’ ‘A HANDSHAKE IS SUFFICIENT’ DEAL MAKING.
Last December Walmart was selling men’s gumboots with Made in Canada stamped on the soles for $10.99.
I’ve posted this link before, but it’s quite relevant to this topic:
http://www.goiam.org/uploadedFiles/Pick_A_Fight/SURGE/SURGE_Summer.pdf
It’s depressing and scarey.
The neat thing about ports and mines are that they’re not easily moved… It’s not like China can pick up its marbles and go home.
If China controls the ports, mines and utilites and acts in a hostile manner, we can declare China a hostile country and freeze all of it’s assets in the country. We can then place those assets in “trust” and have them operate as usual.
China has more to lose than gain in pissing off its clients. They hold a lot of their wealth in the treasury bills of western democracies where they do business and hold their equities in assets in the same country that are immovable.
What do we own in China?
They need us more than we need them.
robert bollocks – getting a deal in writing is basic business practice in any country. That includes Canada. There are unscrupulous thieves in Canada as well. Mr. Strong, remember, is Canadian. So is his friend Chretien. And Martin.
johnlee – the ‘made in Canada’ might refer only to the final brush-up and putting-in-the box. The rest was done elsewhere.
If this deal goes through then it will be very easy for contraband of all types to flow from China through HK then to Canada and then to the US. Chariman Mo’ and Cretin will get a cut I’m sure.
(real conservative)
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b5efbd02153.htm
“China Ocean Shipping Co. (COSCO), partly owned by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, plans to operate out of Boston beginning next January, while the huge Hutchison Whampoa company expands its presence in Latin America, now one of Beijing’s prime targets.
COSCO, the same company caught red handed trying to smuggle thousands of assault weapons for distribution to U.S. street gangs, already has a strong presence in California and according to the Washington Times is now looking to the U.S. East Coast for new operations, thus straddling the nation.”
Read this whole article for a rundown of what can only be interpreted as a military campaign. Yes it could just be some old greedy rich tycoon at work but our governments would be foolish to act on that basis.
Re:2:46 p.m.
E.T. My use of the word “stamped” was misleading (2.36 p.m). The ” Made in Canada ” came from the mold that was made to make the boot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-Shing
Li Ka-Shing owns the following Communist enterprises in Canada:
CIBC, Husky Energy, real estate in Yaletown
His two sons Victor and Richard Li are now both Canadian citizens. And Victor tried to buy Air Canada.
Yep…these are the acts of a subversive.
But there is a good point that if Haliburton had tried to buy the port, the deal would be much more scrutinized.
Jeremiah: Honestly speaking, how many of you actually avoid buying Chinese goods?
Not me. When I can get a desk fan or a digital voltmeter for $15 I’d be silly not to. I am not so depressed as others here about the situation. These trade ties will make it increasingly difficult for the Chinese leadership to wage war in the future over, say, Taiwan. Their increasingly powerful business class will have something to say about that.
It’s the lefties who should be freaked out the most, given the lower working standards and wages there. However I have confidence that that will continue to steadily improve.
A: Our free market chickens are coming home to roost.
And our economy is doing better than ever. This is predictable under free market principles.
Warwick: They need us more than we need them.
I agree completely. I forget who put it this way:
We send them green pieces of paper, and they send us all kinds of stuff.
Warwick: “They need us more than we need them.”
I beg to disagree. It’s all about buyers and sellers, investment and return. If there’s no buyers who cares if Canada has billions of barrels of oily tar.
If a foreign company wants to invest in growing assets in our country why isn’t that a good thing? If what Hutchison does is create a better link between a huge buyer and robust seller how is that “insidious”?
My only real complaint has more to do with the Chinese government allowing Canadian companies an equal amount of access to their assets as Chinese companies have with Canadian assets. The China’s Yin must be balanced with an appropriate amount of Canada’s Yang.
Like it or not, Li and his family have been in business in Western Canada for 20 years. I’m not so sure about CIBC (widely held) but they are Husky Oil — upstream and down, all the way from the upgrader to the pumps.
even when you do ‘get it in writing’ with the Chinese mainlanders, watch they dont up and change the regulations or some such thing or plant a loophole escape clause in the agreement knowing full well the conditions will come into existence they can opt out via the loophole if they so choose.
google how many foreign internationals get stung time and again setting up plants and doing business with the chinese according to the western model.
robertbullocks and MartinB: A guest on the Money Talks show, I believe it could have been Viktor Adair but not sure, was negative about investing in China; because it is a Communist country. Communist countries have a nasty habit of seizing assets without compensation.
My comments concerned a patterned acquisition of assets surrounding the US which could be used strategically. When China is ready to assert itself as the worlds superpower, how will the US get it’s Navy from East Coast to West? Any country whose military is part of government is generally regarded as a threat. No matter how much the civilian component just wants to do business, the military component will always see military action as most efficient method of acquiring assets. Check out Japan up to WW2. They could have acquired all or most of their designs by business means.