China at 75

As the People’s Republic of China turns 75, a legacy of economic success faces challenges

In the 1990s, at China’s southern port of Xiamen, containers loaded onto ships were declared to customs as holding valuable export goods.

At a time when China was striving to expand global trade in a bid to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Beijing provided substantial tax rebates for logistics companies, turning many into millionaires.

But there was a secret: many of the shipping containers were empty.

This fraud in China’s maritime industry saw exporters colluding with customs officials, exploiting state subsidies and pocketing significant sums while creating an exaggerated narrative of the country’s booming exports.

It only came to light in the early 2000s with the exposure of a notorious smuggling case involving businessman Lai Changxing, whose extravagant lifestyle and corruption shocked the Chinese public.

Today, China produces 98 percent of the world’s shipping containers, which have become a symbol of the economic superpower’s rise and fall.

After sending “made in China” products worldwide for nearly four decades, China’s bubble has been popped by the trade war with the United States and party chief Xi Jinping’s crackdowns on key industries such as property and technology.

Those containers that drove China’s economy and global influence are now once again sitting empty, piled up at Chinese ports.

On the People’s Republic of China’s 75th birthday, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is facing its most significant political and economic turmoil since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

As one of the longest-surviving authoritarian regimes in modern history, the CCP is grappling with challenges that expose deep vulnerabilities and threaten party chief Xi Jinping’s overarching vision known as “the Chinese dream”.

There is part of me that loves Communist China.

Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million

Lifting 800million out of poverty is an extraordinary achievement, especially when you consider 40% of Americans currently live in poverty.

The Communist Party must be congratulated for such vision and drive of purpose top serve the people and provide them with the infrastructure to propel them into the future as a Super Power.

Their commitment and leadership in green tech is worthy of celebration.

However.

There is also a part of me that despises Communist China.

The corruption, mass surveillance, predatory Chinese business interests, the brutal persecution of the Uyghur’s, their Grey Zone war against the South Pacific, their use of meth to undermine the Pacific, their shadow banking infrastructure that facilitates global criminal cartels, their desire to invade Taiwan, their appalling human rights record and their rapacious exploitation of anything and everything that moves along the Belt and Road Initiative are as repellant as the sins of any great power.

If we are serious about countering Chinese influence in our country, then why aren’t we protecting our Chinese-New Zealand population far more from harassment by the Chinese Communist Party?

‘We don’t feel safe here in New Zealand’: Call for urgent inquiry into foreign interference

• • A pro-democracy group of Chinese New Zealanders is calling for an urgent open inquiry into China’s foreign interference activities in New Zealand and the Pacific.
  • The New Zealand Values Alliance says the New Zealand Chinese community do not have the same freedom of speech and association as other Kiwis.
  • It says New Zealand needs to face up to the domestic and external security risk, to better protect its own people as well as its national security.

The manner in which the CCP threatens and bullies their diaspora in our country has been well documented by Professor Anne-Marie Brady, if NZ wants to counter negative Chinese influence and wants to strengthen our national security against the CCP, reaching out to our NZ-Chinese community in a meaningful way would do far more to protect us than AUKUS ever will!

Happy Birthday China.

 

 

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