On Monday 2 December 8 pm, our usual Rotaract meeting at The Local in Sanlitun.
This time we had even more Rotaractors and guests, to listen to our speaker: Graham Norris, who is also Director of Communications at AmCham China. He discussed “China Outbound: How Rising Chinese Overseas Investment is Reshaping Global Business.”
I am pretty familiar with the topic – it is also a part of my book “Toxic Capitalism” where I focus on Chinese M&A abroad in their quest for energy, raw material and other resources (including food). Graham showed several well-known examples of Chinese going abroad with pockets full of money, with ideas as far-fetched as building a golf course in Iceland and digging a new Panama Canal – in another country.
Read more on Graham’s blog: http://www.chinareloaded.com/
As for the canal mega project see here what The South China Morning Post, on October 29, reported (edited):
A Nicaraguan delegation traveled to mainland China and Hong Kong last week to discuss what could be the world’s largest waterway project, the South China Morning Post has learned.
The 21 politicians, academics and leading businessmen were hosted by HKND, the Hong Kong-based developer established only last year, which has been tasked by the Nicaraguan government to build a $40-billion canal through the Central American country.
Laureno Facundo Ortega Murillo, the son of Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, led the group.
In June of this year, President Ortega signed a deal for the ambitious canal project with Wang Jing, CEO of Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd. (HKND), a mysterious new Chinese company that claims to be privately owned and independent of the Chinese government. But, as with virtually all Chinese companies, HKND remains opaque and refuses to reveal financial data, governing structure, and stock holdings that are routinely publicly available from companies in market economies. Wang Jing himself is similarly an enigma wrapped in a mystery. One of China’s new billionaires, Wang, reported to be 41 years old, amassed his wealth as CEO of Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group, which manufactures wireless devices, telecom terminals, and core network devices.
“Wang has business interests in infrastructure, mining, aviation and telecommunications, according to HKND’s website,” Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. “He controls or serves as board chairman of more than 20 companies in 35 countries around the world, the website shows.” However, the Bloomberg article noted, “Wang pledged transparency for the project but gave very few details about his own background. He refused to answer a reporter’s question about where he attended school.”
“I am 100 per cent certain the construction will begin in December 2014 and we will finish in five years in 2019,” Wang was quoted as saying in a July 30 report in London’s Telegraph. However, within a few days of that rosy prediction, the project was engulfed in controversy and uncertainty, as opposition coalesced in Nicaragua over concerns that the project was being rushed through without proper feasibility and environmental studies being completed.
The above gives a good picture of the often murky deals being announced by Chinese going abroad. Are they for real? Where does the money come from? Do they actually have the money? Are they a front for some dark entity of the Chinese Government?
I won’t try to answer those questions…
