The economic power of China has grown enormously in the last decade because of the west's insatiable appetite for cheap consumer goods. This comes at the cost of ethically marginal manufacturing where people are virtually imprisoned in garrison towns, paid in company script and denied the right to leave with savings in cash intact. It also comes at the cost of Chinese government run companies (Essentially all of them in a communist country) contributing to the country's coffers and permitting China to buy vast interests in strategically valuable places.
China has already bought vast swathes of African shipping, oil and agricultural businesses and are steadily moving Chinese managers into positions of power in many African countries. Chinese purchases in southern European ports where racially biased employment practices are used to ensure Chinese staff and management in what ought to be a fair employment market show again that the business aspects of the owner's tenure runs a close second to strategic concerns.
Today, the announcement that China has bought a huge stake in London's Heathrow airport predicts that the same practices will be carried out there also. It will be easy for China to move people and materials from land-side to airside or vice-versa because they will control a big chunk of the airport at London and at its other holdings Gatwick and Luton. China also recently bought a huge stake in Thames water, a previously state run company, privatised by Conservatives and given to their upper-crust old school chums to be sold privately for vast profit. Why sell your water supply to a foreign power that could use it to poison the capital city?
The dangerous fact of a totalitarian state disguised as a friendly power with tons of cash and an ever smiling demeanour is paid for by your shoes, iPhones, televisions and other plastic goods manufactured by the million ton in China. This is a scarily dangerous situation for all occidental concerns.
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