Australia is a sovereign country and we must find ways to curb China's influence. But that will be difficult where we have liasser faire driven governments who shrink the economic pie and have us fighting over a shrinking pie.
The only problem now is that you have the likes of the ALP and others pandering to China in part because economic prosperity and jobs are tied to China. And that is the irony - on a stockmarket site such as Hotcopper it is obvious that without China the sharemarket would be screwed especially as it comes to resource projects. But China can also impose undue influence through deciding which projects succeed or fail, or how to play the game to taking over companies they want to take over (i.e. promise binding agreements but take there time to deliver and/or take a stake in a project and sooner or later the project becomes hostage to that influence and or a successful Chinese takeover.
You can thank the pathetic laisser faire economics approaah of Australian, USA and many European government's that has decimated local manufacturing and put China into the box seat. Reaganism and Thatcherism was code for let the private sector do what it wants and let China grow and dominate, and like cancer this scurge in economics approach (i.e. the Laffer curve is a joke, just look at increase in debt in the USA) then found its way to Australia and likes. For a number of industries in manufacturing labour costs are not the principal cost, it might be electricity and it is an embarrassment that the USA and Australia with ample gas has let its industries be destroyed, with manufacturing facilities transfereed to Asia (Australia was dumb enough to let Japan do it first to them in the first place before falling in love with China).
A case in point of the stupidity of laisser faire economics is in relation to gas. Even reading the thread the other day many don't realise the problem with the domestic gas market is it is not large and multinationals will never supply it unless forced to do so. Full stop. It doesn't affect anything because there is a different cost structure relating to gas for the domestic market than LNG - capex costs are much much lower in the former (as you supply the domestic market raw gas via pipelines) and much larger in the later (LNG is condensed gas to 1/600th of its volume by a large large large capex spend) but yet domestic gas prices overeast are an absolute embarassment given China who buys LNG from us pays a lower gas price than Australians and energy is a key cost to steel making, lithium carbonate, aluminium making among many many other industries etc and that is why Australia, through government stupidity, will always remain a dig it and export it nation (i.e. pathetic politicians) and the Chinese know just how pathetic our politicians are. Unless get China onboard for climate change - if believe in it - then the climate change agenda is also an avenue for shifting energy intensive manufacturing sectors to China as well IMO (i.e. China's CO2 emissions are growing by the way and without China and India doing something to reduce their emissions growth what the other countries do will have minimal impact if you believe in it - get the drift).
(This article makes sober reading) Source:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-chinas-co2-emissions-grew-slower-than-expected-in-2018
I said my piece on gas in this post: Post #:
40028903Here is an excerpt from that post:
"
In other words there is already gas available for domestic market but multinationals are not interested because they want to grow facilities to export offshore - the reason is the domestic market is small and overseas boards are not interested with a pissant supply deal in the domestic market when more gas and money can be exported by LNG (hence why WA has a reservation policy multinationals have to supply and they know that before entering any deals with WA). Take the Gorgon project, it is a 15 million tonne per annum LNG project and its gas exports are equivalent to 2 1/2 times total gas demand in WA - so Gorgon argues well that market is been supplied by Woodside/Apache right now so not much for us to supply, but State said, well we are reserving that and you know that because if we run out of gas there you will supply under our agreement and it won't affect your LNG operations and you still have way too much gas in the field so don't argue or go somewhere else (Gorgon and now same for Wheatstone they said ok we hear you even though unhappy because we don't give a toss for your electricity generators and Alcoa but a deal is a deal).
So hence the need for a domestic gas policy in WA (and probably Australia) because the domestic market is small (yes small so multinationals are not interested in a few bucks in the domestic market however it is important) when the rewards are bigger by exports, but the National interest says some gas must go into the domestic market to protect local industry and power generation. WA understands that - the east coast doesn't and btw even if multinationals supplied gas into the domestic market on the east coast it wouldn't affect the gas they could export in terms of LNG - there is lots of gas just an unwillingness to understand 'market failure' and ensure multinationals supply gas into the domestic market overeast and it wouldn't affect operations as can supply full LNG and gas in market (and have cost recovery - just a desire they don't want too and that is the problem). Repeat, enough gas for both LNG and domestic gas but multinationals are not interested - that is the market failure argument. How addressed is the argument, and this we had a deal just avoids the knowledge they have enough gas for LNG and don't want to supply domestically (even if paid cost recovery plus profit) because they don't want to.
So lots of gas, and noting exploration even more gas, that should be able to supply LNG and thus achieve Australia's dream of the world's largest LNG producer whilst still supplying gas into domestic market using pipeline system to give energy security (and obviously the supplier be rewarded on their costs plus profit, but the domestic market is only a fraction of the LNG market as previously posted)".
What cracks me up is China is the first to say we are breaching world trade conventions when someone decides to do something - i.e. Trump's tariffs is an illustration whether you like Trump or not - but no one questions its closed economy nature like controlling who invests in China and what products are made in China etc etc. Or asks the question why are there so many electronic companies in China - i.e China controls the rare earths market and threatened to ban rare earth exports and without these kiss a number of your electronic industries goodbye and this led to Japanese companies establishing operations there and other countries did likewise (get the drift).
The level playing field is not flat. And as I said many posting here also crack me up - move out of laisser faire economics and they complain but then moan about China's increasing influence etc etc And what were those 'protests in Melbourne' about with Chinese students doing pro China protests and the softly softly approach taken by our pollies in that regard LOL.
The way the Australian economy is going and our industries become foreign owned sooner or later the only employment opportunities for Australians will be selling coffee to each other (with obviously teh coffee been imported LOL).
Rant over
