Terry Glavin: While you were panicking about Trump, China made some moves

[shockedcanadian]

Been saying this for awhile, and I still don't understand how China gets a free pass. God help us and future generations, we seemed to have lost our principles and willingly focus on the irrelevant while China and Communism threaten the world of great global expansion.

Terry Glavin: While you were panicking about Trump, China made some moves

More than 30 of Beijing’s state-owned enterprises listed in Hong Kong—including Sinopec and CNOOC—have already amended their incorporation documents to place the Communist Party at the pinnacle of their corporate structures. The new control rules also apply to nominally private Chinese corporations, vesting party committees with vetting authority in overseas investment decisions, foreign-exchange matters and dividend distribution. And the requirement to formally empower internal Communist Party committees is now being extended to foreign companies operating in China.

If you enter into a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned-enterprise to do business in China—it’s often the only way in—then you better be prepared to facilitate the establishment of an internal Communist Party committee to tell you how to behave. Last week, Samsung Electronics and Nokia both confirmed to the Reuters news agency that they have complied, and Communist Party units have already been established in their Chinese operations.

Well, global warming, then. Surely China is serious about that. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has praised Beijing to the skies for its innovations in clean power and its move away from coal-powered electrical generation. So has the Center for American Progress, a lavishly-funded Democratic Party think-tank and talking-points outfit. “China is indeed going green,” the Center gushed last May. “The nation is on track to overdeliver on the emissions reduction commitments it put forward under the Paris climate agreement.”

Except it isn’t.

China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, so all the Paris Climate Accord enthusiasts were happily patting Beijing on the back last January when China’s National Energy Administration announced that more than 100 planned coal plants would not get the go-ahead after all. But as the German environmental research group Urgewald has pointed out, all Beijing did was expand its carbon footprint elsewhere. Chinese companies are now opening up the ground for at least 700 coal projects offshore, mostly in Africa, but also in Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

 

[SeaGal]

You know the old saying 'Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas'.

How could any business venture in China expect things to be different? So far the Chinese government has not interfered with Hong Kong.

I'm more disturbed by the whole coal controversy. The US is an exporter of coal. China is a 'valued' customer. We have extensive coal reserves and they produce cheap, though dirty, electricity. Nobody is going to put the brakes on China, or India - and only hypocrites can continue to advocate for the extraction of penalties from the US.

Clean up the coal, export natural gas and go to work on safer nuclear facilities. Nuclear is the best chance for clean and affordable energy, imho.