The Native Iowan

It is a glorious morning here in QLD. Very cool out, 26c/ 79f. The sky is overcast. The scent of rain in the air. Fauna outside my door is noisy. The weather is conducive to being active.

The wildlife indoors, G.G., and Nova are all chirping and squawking like baby birds wanting a good feed. The teenaged hounds are still in their darkened room, sound asleep.

The school holidays have officially started so we have all school aged kids home for the next two months. I have decided to keep the stress down by demanding little from them all. Keep the house clean and stay on our projects outside (and at the farm) and we’ll all get along.

Two months can be a damned long time!

Funny bit of luck yesterday: One friend in the US and one here in Aus ended up on tangential discussion in regards the Chinese push in the pacific region. It’s a strange, neo-colonialistic situation where the Chinese have used cheque-book diplomacy to buy much of the pacific, and, strangely enough, a lot of Australia too.

Here is my discussion with my esteemed compadres…

… Your query per Australia and the Chinese Pacific…

I do not believe the Aussie’s will or can stop the trend you mention. A quick online search and you’ll see how much China owns here in Aus. Ports, airports, heaps of agriculture, etc, etc. Chinese students make up a huge portion of the offshore $ generated by the education sector. China buys massive amounts of Aussie raw-resources. To the point where Aus really does not manufacture or value-add much at all anymore.

Little or no refining of petroleum products, almost zero steel manufacturing, Aus has gone totally loony with “Carbon-Reduction” so they sell their high grade coal and iron ore to china and India and re-import the steel. The labour unions here are very strong and wages are way too high to be doing dirty work here, anymore.

So they sell their resources and buy-back finished product, and pay the general population not to work real hard, if at all.

The joke here among us emigrants is that to get work done, to find a decent service provider or tradesman, you need to find someone other than an Aussie. Plenty of South Africans and English and Irish and Germans and Kiwis who are keen to work. Not so many Aussies.

This is a decent discussion on Chinese ownership of assets in Australia: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/how_much_of_australia_china_owns

In my long term thinking, the Aussie’s sold the farm a long time ago. They may be “just waking up” to it all.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about a) the imbalance of trade between China and AUS, and b) the undo pressures China places on Aus.

It’s common for China to flex its muscles over even little matters. trade wars over beef and wine happening as we speak.

It’s common for leaders of business and politics to be sanctioned by China (mostly in obtaining visas) for speaking out against China. In past years said leaders would recant and beg forgiveness in order to receive the lollipop called a visa.

More recently the tide is turning.

The bit of news you refer to mainly deals with the State of Victoria. The Labour Leader, Dan Andrews, has been selling the farm at a furious pace. His draconian handling of the Kung Flu has made him very unpopular. There have been way too many bungled events, which there has been no accounting for. He is in bed if not being whored by the Chinese. I have not read up on the agreement he has with China but I am certain it ain’t in the long term favour of Aus, Victoria.

But then Gringos think in decades and the Orientals think in centuries.

Here’s a recent bit of waffle on the topic…. https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/politics/daniel-andrews-defends-controversial-belt-and-road-deal-with-china/news-story/9937d52d237124bae97193d1ceb5c908

I personally do not think it takes much understanding to see, clearly see, what China’s patient plan is.

And with modern worlds like Aus and NZ the plan can work… Aus has only 25mil population. (NZ only 6 mil) Resource rich, but labour deficient. Not enough dirty hands to do the dirty work. So sell what you have… ???? Live off the proceeds as long as they last?

China has offered short term prosperity in exchange for short term benefits. But as (and we are close) the tooling, and smelting, and refining capacity here is dismantled, there comes a time where Aus prices itself out of the manufacturing game all together. Becoming a land where everything is imported and the only workers are involved either with service providing, extraction, transport or general construction.

Manufacturing of almost all flavours are basically gone already.

An interesting side topic…
Aus ordered a new submarine fleet quite some time ago… but the ban on being Nuke-powered was stupid, meant they had to retrofit a standard off the shelf nuke sub… and they had already dismantled- sold off – their capacity to build such, so had to go off shore. This has been on-going for at least 4 years and has no date for completion noting they have not started building anything yet.https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/05/national-disgrace-submarine-debacle-blows-out-to-90-billion

Very sad, but an example of the cost of things once you sell your capacity to manufacture.

Smiles