Buying used bridges never good business practice
The Granville Bridge seems to be falling apart, with bits and pieces during its renovation landing on Granville Island below. Quick, want to buy a used bridge? If so, your business acumen matches that of those Canadians still keen to make quick money by kowtowing to Chinese suggestions that we join their “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a con job making its merry way around the world and putting the world’s economy under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) command.
The Belt and Road Initiative is a massive global infrastructure plan by the CCP that aims to connect Asia, Europe and Africa through a series of railways, ports, bridges and coal plants. China’s ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu in Ottawa recently said he wants Canadian businesses to collaborate with Beijing and says Canada can use the initiative to both “reduce global carbon emissions and fight poverty,” somehow simultaneously. In addition, Cong said Canadian companies could “win lucrative contracts to build projects in the global south,” a tried-and-true lure to seduce more Canadian businesses to support Beijing’s plans for global dominance.
The Canada West Foundation is already on board. It says BRI projects are “key to understanding Beijing’s relations with other countries. It is part foreign influence tool, part international development project and a lot of making China more competitive,” says the Calgary think tank. “The BRI creates both opportunities and challenges.” Cong argues BRI does not aim to spread the CCPs model of governance (i.e. communism), but experts say BRI already gives China massive global leverage over supply and production chains.
UN Secretary General António Guterres has praised BRI as a model for co-operation among countries in the Global South, saying it has “immense potential” to boost living standards in poor countries and slow climate change. Perhaps Mr. Guterres has not spent much time on Granville Island, dodging nuts and bolts falling from above. Its hard to think clearly when your hard hat sits too far left on your head.
Despite strong opposition to the BRI in Washington, where senior politicians point out that the BRI has resulted in “debt-trap diplomacy” wherever BRI has been accepted (i.e when a country is given a loan it cannot pay and then must hand over assets like ports and harbours to Beijing) it appears some Canadians have not yet learned their lessons. Italy, which like Canada is a G7 country, signed onto the BRI in 2019, seeking an investment boom after a series of recessions. The country now plans to withdraw, arguing BRI did not yield any economic benefits.
China has spent $1 trillion US on BRI in the past decade, and the first question prospective bridge buyers should ask is a simple query that never seems to get asked; exactly where did this enormous Chinese wealth emanate? Well, from western consumers spending vast fortunes on cheap Made in China goods without asking questions about the bottom line. Which is, exactly who is winning the struggle for control of the global economy? So far, Chinese Communism is a trillion dollars ahead and looking for yet more “greenish” buyers.
Speaking of salesmen, let’s listen to recent statements by Dominic Barton, better known to his Chinese friends as Bao Damin, formerly an adjunct professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University who served as Canadian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2019 to 2021, and who was the Global Managing Director of global consultancy McKinsey and Company before that. It was during Barton’s decade as global director for McKinsey and Associates that the company became notorious for serving kleptocrats and oligarchs from Moscow to Riyadh, and assisting Purdue Pharma with marketing the killer drug OxyContin, which resulted in Barton being called to testify in proceedings that cost McKinsey $641 million in claims settlements.
According to distinguished journalist Terry Glavin writing in the National Post, while Barton was McKinsey’s managing director the company played a foundational role in “transforming China into a ravenous, coal-burning state-capitalist empire, the sworn enemy of liberal democracy everywhere,” including the militarized terraformed islands in the South China Sea that have put the U.S. and China at the edge of military confrontation. After leaving his ambassador’s post, Barton became chairman of Teck Resources, the Canadian coal-mining giant partly owned by China’s sovereign wealth fund. Teck’s main clients? China’s huge coal-burning steel mills.
To date many naïve Canadians seem oblivious to the vast investments the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese businesses under their control have made all around the world, from small island countries all over the South Seas that are turning into Chinese military bases, to countless real estate purchases in Europe and Africa, as well as secretly increased CCP involvement in Canadian business and politics. Should we wish to build bridges between Canadian businesses and developing countries for mutual benefit, best not to pay attention to glib con men purporting to swing a good deal while lining their own pockets at the same time.
Michael McCarthy is a freelance writer and has been a frequent contributor to Postmedia publications. His latest book Follow the Money; How China Bought the World, is available on Amazon.