Friday 28 October 2011

marco, polo

Through the lens of history and particular Weltanschauung that has kept relations between China and much of the Western world at an awkward age--not really maturing beyond mystique and fear and trade that seemed to erupt like spontaneous generation until the 1970s, this outreach of munificence--offers to buoy up the image and reputation of the euro and the EU--is difficult to put into context. I don't believe fears of quid pro quo and other obligations are entirely valid, because it is in China's best interest to sustain its biggest export market, and prior trade deals and wonky, uncomfortable balances of exchange or supersaturation of markets, cheap and laxer labour seemingly popped into existence from nothing, overnight, for America and took on threatening airs, which were probably unjustified. The EU is not under new-management and is a far sight less beholden, financially and politically, to Chinese vehicles of recapitalization than it would be to the sacrifice, the martyred attitude, of local big banks and their minders. Just as it only takes the gentlest of persuasions to set off one's latent xenophobia, as with questions of immigration and multiculturalism, stories of Chinese investors buying up vineyards in Bordeaux or copying Austrian villages on the sly I am sure are enflaming and raise suspicions.
Investment opportunities surely can be sour and toxic things, but Europeans, though they should never stop watching their governments, are not ransoming their principles on this nor compromising their voice in trade relations, jobs, the environment or human rights. Maybe Chinese intervention was not absolutely necessary and only leaves the EU with the bigger challenge of not letting a bailout enable more of the same sloppy behaviour, but it did not come unbidden and unwelcome. With so much of the world economy built on illusion and deception, and the utility of wealth diminished the more one has of it, money at rest, when it could go to a greater good, assuaging some baseless (instead of being in hock to those fears) is a positive development.