[Closed] We'll soon be owned by China...

As China owns a significant amount of the worlds debt they are effectivley the mortgage broker or loan shark of the world already.

Proper expression as expressed by Chinese should be ??? ... 😯

The BBC understands the projects the state-owned China Development Bank (CDB) wants to invest in include High Speed 2 and the next generation of nuclear power stations.

So the Chinese government will in effect own significant stakes in our railways and nuclear power stations - that's the bad news. The good news, according to the Tories, is that the British government won't - apparently that would be really bad news.

Further bad news, or good news if you're a Tory, is that Labour are also perfectly happy with the Chinese government, not the British government, owning significant chunks of our railway and nuclear energy infrastructure, proving once again that there are no discernible differences between Labour and the Tories, for all their "arguing".

And in even more good news for the Chinese government the Liberal Democrats don't give a toss about anything just as long as they get driven around in chauffeured ministerial limousines.

Still, I guess we should be grateful to the Chinese government for investing in UK infrastructure projects which our government refuses to invest in - railways and electricity are quite important so I don't know how we would manage without Chinese help.

God bless the Chinese government for taking time out from helping poor African nations with their infrastructure projects to help us with ours.

I wonder if the Chinese government could also help us with the cost of replacing of our Trident nuclear missiles, that seems to be even more expensive so where would a British government find the money for that ?

Ernie you need a holiday, you worry and moan about stuff you can do nothing about. China will be busy at home with their very own self created debt bubble very soon.

erinie if the British Government owned a stake it would only be with money borrowed from the Chinese anyway, The French government already has a large stake in our power production sector. Do you have a list of all projects and suitable investors/backers/credit providers?

and why is it that foreign ownership is such a bad thing? Most of the major projects will overrun, go over budget and take a very long time to return anything approaching a profit. In the mean time the UK gets to reap the benefit of investment and the added income and economic benefits of these projects to local construction jobs etc. with significantly reduced risk and exposure to the UK finances.

There are lots of reasons that people/companies/countries make the investments that they do.

Westerners often invest in emerging countries because they can get a higher return; albeit with more risk.

China has invested heavily in its own country over the last 30+ years. But that's an "all eggs, one basket" situation. Investing in mature, western countries like the UK diversifies their investments and probably carries less risk for them.

Coming over here, signing 20 year deals with British companies to buy their products

It's all perfectly legal investment from the Chinese dictatorship...

Talking to a venture capitalist who work lot in/with China. It was about the independence referendum but can be stretched to this. Basically he said no one cares. UK would be a small provenance there Scotland a City. Overall in China the budgets we're talking about are small. The worry shouldn't be who holds the debt but how are we going to pay it back and what did we have to give up to secure it?

Folks feared the same thing in America with Japanese investment in the 80s. As you'd expect, all the bits of America that Japan bought remained in America and the country is still there doing OK.

I do wonder where all the money has come from that 'our' banks have been giving out willy nilly for mortgages recently, originated from China perhaps? Or maybe Russia?

Or have they been doing exactly the same as prior to 2008 and just re-circulating the same numbers again? 🙄

And given that the French seem to own our utilities, along with the Germans, the Chinese might as well join the party.

Still, I guess we should be grateful to the Chinese government for investing in UK infrastructure projects which our government refuses to invest in - railways and electricity are quite important so I don't know how we would manage without Chinese help.

[url= http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/News-Releases/Record-investment-in-Britain-s-railways-as-Network-Rail-publishes-its-full-year-results-20ba.aspx ]Network rail announces record investment[/url]

[url= http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/News-Releases/Record-investment-in-Britain-s-railways-as-Network-Rail-publishes-its-full-year-results-20ba.aspx ]£38B of investment[/url]

[url= http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/10874996.__37_million_investment_to_electrify_Bolton___Wigan_train_line/ ]Investment in the North[/url]

[url= http://londonfirst.co.uk/our-focus/londons-transport-infrastructure/crossrail-2/ ]Crossrail 2[/url]

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/16/hs2-divert-cash-southwest-railway ]HS2[/url]

Despite the rhetoric from "[i]I'll say I'll nationalise anything if it gets me votes Milliband[/i]" considerably more development of rail infrastructure will have taken place under the current government than the previous one.

It's also worth saying that of recent new rail projects, most of the original project development also started under tory governments e.g.

Jubilee Line extension
Extension to London Overground
Crossrail
Channel Tunnel Rail Link

Under the last government despite their willingness to borrow and invest money [s]pi55 money up the wall and leave a £650B debt[/s] , very few new rail projects were progressed - they managed to electrify only 10 miles of line in 13 years. The current government will have funded projects to electrify 2000 miles of track and the "beasty", a specially developed overhead-line construction train from Windhoff is putting in the stanchions, overhead supports and cabling at the rate of 1 mile a night on the Great Western Line at the moment.

There has been more Chinese investment into the UK in the last 13 months than the previous 30 years.
I have some interaction with all this through my work, I think it is one of the most unreported stories out there, as essentially in the long-run it means UK PLC will be a sub-division of China PLC.
There are two main reasons: 1) the West is broke, China is rolling in savings and 2) the globalised economy makes it easier than ever to invest (buy-up) other nation's assets.

Countries with current account deficits import capital. Countries with current account surpluses export it. We are the former, they are the latter. Why fear the capital investment? That's how it works. Good news that they are here.

The phobia re foreign investment is very odd. Almost UKIP-esque!

I do wonder where all the money has come from that 'our' banks have been giving out willy nilly for mortgages recently, originated from China perhaps? Or maybe Russia?

It's been "created".

Stop buying the stuff then. i.e. never again set foot in Decathlon or buy on line from P... .

Hmm casual xenophobia or racism. Perhaps it's people becoming aware of the consequences of cheap labour manufacturing to generate wealth. We gave em the money to buy us out so why complain when bring it back.

Nothing compared to their investments in Africa, they're buying up mineral rights and building infrastructure to export the minerals as a long term investment to keep their country going....

They ship in 1000s of convicts to build roads, ports, railways etc as 'free' labour and when the project is completed the prisoners are released (in Africa) to start local businesses.

To be fair to them, they seem to have been making a steady stream of investments in the provision of restaurants and take-aways in places where I've lived over the years. Its doesn't seem to have had a detrimental effect on the local economy, but has greatly improved the quality of the beef and green peppers in black bean sauce

Lots of rose-tinted views on here.
This isn't about money, this is about Power.
Of course it matters if a sovereign nation sells its national assets to another country. It means it is no longer a sovereign nation.
And let's not forget we are talking about a totalitarian country, which has shown time and again that it will crack down on dissent, including in its state sub-divisions in Africa.

So after all these years a communist state has worked out how to win the cold war.

Just buy your enemies. Very Terry Pratchett

"Let others boast of martial dash
For we have boldly fought with cash
We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes.
We own all your generals - touch us and you'll lose.!"

Of course it matters if a sovereign nation sells its national assets to another country.

But HS2? What are they doing to do if we fall out with them - dig it up and take it home?

If it means more Chinese food, I'm kinda happy.

Though have to say I'm not a huge fan of the Chinese.. 😕

The only Chinese dish I like is Chicken in Black Bean sauce as it actually tastes of something other than MSG. Much prefer Thai food as it has proper flavour.

Interesting notions of national assets, but still......

Despite the rhetoric from "I'll say I'll nationalise anything if it gets me votes Milliband"

Is that suppose to be some sort of joke, the joke being that it is the complete opposite of what Miliband says ? Which is that he categorically refuses to commit the next Labour government to nationalising the utilities and the railways, or anything else for that matter. It's not very funny.

There is of course nothing wrong with trade with China, which obviously should be encouraged. That however is quite different to the Chinese government having significant stakes in our infrastructure at the exclusion of our own government.

We will have the ridiculous arrangement whereby, for example, the UK taxpayer will be subsidising our railways but the Chinese government will be making the profit from our railways. We will in effect nationalise the losses but let the Chinese government nationalise the profit.

The Tories and New Labour clearly don't have a problem with our utilities/railways/infrastructure being nationalised, just as long as it's foreign governments involved and not British governments.

Presumably they believe that the Chinese government is more competent than themselves, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence or make a very strong case for voting for them.

"Of course it matters if a sovereign nation sells its national assets to another country. It means it is no longer a sovereign nation."

This is true but we did that some time ago to many countries (companies not controlled in the UK). If you consider our governance, that's gone to the EU so we cannot consider ourselves a truly sovereign country. China and the rest of Asia are the new world order and we helped make it that way. Interesting times I'd say. Wonder how it will be viewed by historians in 50 to a 100 years time, I suppose will we will have to wait for the translation from Manderin to find out.

So after all these years a communist state has worked out how to win the cold war.

Just buy your enemies.

Well it took Germany two world wars before that particular penny dropped regarding the rest of Europe

Anyway....

Since we require capital from overseas, part of national assets have always been "owned" by others. We own the net assets not the gross assets.

China has a problem with a glut of domestic savings that it needs to allocate to make some return. We are the opposite. Great that we are able to attract those relatively cheap funding sources to the UK.

We borrow huge amount ps of money from foreign investors in order to fund giv spending in the UK. This has always involved a distribution of the "profits" in the form on interest payments etc. In turn, we invest in infrastructure in other countries - should that be stopped too? Are we as bad as the Chinese? (rhetorical questions)

"Presumably they believe that the Chinese government is more competent than themselves"

Given the evidence that's right, perhaps not having to trouble yourself with voters and doing whatever you want with your citizens plays a role. If you are always in power then long term planning is easier.

Like all rich powerful countries China is sowing the seeds of it's own political demise right now. Just like all empires they fall, could be a while though. Look at the USA now, we are witnessing it's decline as a superpower.

China has a problem with a glut of domestic savings....

Oh so we're helping the Chinese government out with their problem of having too much spare cash, that makes me feel better - it's nice to help people.

We are helping each other - the world works well that way Ernie unless you want to be an isolationist!

China is sowing the seeds of it's own political demise right now.

That doesn't sound good - should we be handing over chunks of our railways and nuclear energy to their government ?

We are helping each other

Well of course, we're going to hand over taxpayers money to them so that they can make profits which we don't want. Everyone's happy, right ?

We should be (happy) if we thought about. Gov expenditure is financed via taxation and borrowing. If there is no borrowing, then either taxes have to be higher or expenditure has to be lower.

Gov/HM Treasury have to decide what is the best way to fund expenditure. The reason why we (as you put it) hand tax payers money over to "them" (nasty foreigners 😉 ) is precisely to reduce the tax burden domestically. No one is handing over tax payers money willy-nilly. To suggest that is to misrepresent what is going on.

200 years ago, Britain ruled and owned the world - that's where most of the wealth/infrastructure we enjoy today comes from
Now the Chinese own the world. No-one stays on top forever...

They've been creeping up slowly on the wealthy West to this position since the 1980's - quite deliberately as a long term plan - the man on the street is only just realising this - hence the levels of emotion.

Governments, however, have known this for a couple of decades, hence they've been dishing out credit so we could maintain our high standards of living. The credit crunch was just the inevitable and obvious result of this clearly unsustainable policy...

Life goes on. Just because all we know is being one of the wealthiest countries in the world and in our lifetimes all we've experienced is ongoing economic growth does not mean that the future will be the same.

There's a serious study [url= http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21604188-counting-long-term-costs-financial-crisis-wasted-potential ]here[/url]which suggests our current situation looks very similar to our future ie: the relative wealth and growth our grandparents, parents and we have enjoyed for the last 200 years has come to an end. Credit was only going to replace genuine growth for so long, and now the reality of our situation has made itself clear.

TBH if I were UK government, I'd also be doing deals with the emerging economic superpower - if they have the money to spend, then take as much of it from them as we can. Either that or just try and manage a slow decline in living standards and I can't see many Brits being happy with that...

Despite the rhetoric from "I'll say I'll nationalise anything if it gets me votes Milliband" considerably more development of rail infrastructure will have taken place under the current government than the previous one.

My season ticket costs me £480 a month...or three times the amount it would cost in France for a journey the same distance.

All I want to see is the cost being brought down, I understand that I'm subsidizing £32bn of debt incurred by Railtrack...

"That doesn't sound good - should we be handing over chunks of our railways and nuclear energy to their government ?"

Ernie, they arent going to come and take them away. When they make the same debt mess that we have (and most of the west except Norway) they'll sell assets to who ever is under writing their own economy. Simples really.

Simples really.

Gosh, that's a relief. When you said "China is sowing the seeds of it's own political demise right now" I got a little worried.

But now that you've pointed out that the Chinese can simply sell bits of our railways, nuclear power stations, and any other chunks of our vital infrastructure that they might happen to own, to whoever they want, I feel a whole lot better.

Just as long as they don't sell it to the British government/people eh ?