Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#101

Post by sfifs »

varjag wrote: post #75
erikb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that the US and EU politicians aren't actually fine with it.

If they were fine with it, there wouldn't have been quotas for China in the first place.

Remember that the prime objective of a politician is to retain power. These quotas are responses to demands from electorate to do something to win their votes... not necessarily because they want or don't want them. In fact it's probably in their best interests to play it both ways as what the GP comment implies.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#102

Post by danmaz74 »

crdb wrote: post #37
pravinva wrote: post #3

The slippery slope towards empire for the east India company didn't start by protecting dams and dredging or performing economic activities. It began by superior ammunition and military services that they provided to the various kings and nawabs who were warring with each other.taking sides, and extracting political power in return. Equity ownership means nothing if it's a business that has zero market value. Politic…

I wouldn't call it a slippery slope so much as events precipitating the situation. The revolt in 1857 led to the dissolution of the East India Company and a formal takeover of India by the British government [1]. The British Raj lasted almost a century and could have lasted longer had the British Army and economy not been so weakened by WWII. It will be interesting to see what happens should a country attempt to seiz…

Things could be more similar to what happened with US investments in South America. See for example what happened in Chile when Allende nationalized US owned copper mines...

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#104

Post by sfifs »

iamshs wrote: post #76
robbiep wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not true that they mainly (or even significantly) employ chinese on Australian Farms - these farms are generally managed by the previous owners or managers and staffed by Australians, with australian Agronomists. In actual fact, very little changes on a day to day basis, except there is more funds available for infrastructure and capital goods purchase (and property values are driven up). Which, when you think…

Well Shepparton and Mooroopna has quite a substantial number if Chinese farm workers. In Safeway, nearly whole Saturday is busy with Chinese farm workers shopping. I haven't really enquired on which specific farm they work, because they generally shun interaction and also due to language barrier. Also, Shepparton has a substantial Punjabi farming population and I can tell you from experience that the farmers do take…

Sounds like you might be unsure whether they are foreign contract workers or immigrants. Punjabis would almost certainly be immigrants

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#105

Post by scandox »

grecy wrote: post #94
fatman13gg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why having freedom of speech, independent judicial system and accepting human rights as common values has to be the prerequisites of being a global power? Technically if you are rich and powerful then you are a global power. Edit: sensing lots of incoming downvotes. Point is that democracy may not be the only way to global power.

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted, you are absolutely correct. I would argue that many of the world's billionaires are not particularly nice people, but that doesn't stop them being immensely rich and powerful. I see no reason the same can't be true for a country. If it has an immense amount of wealth, it will be powerful, irrelevant of human rights, etc.

Political power is not something you can bank. It cannot be stored. It cannot be measured statically at a particular moment in time. It is rooted in networks of people and in ideas. Very rich people can exercise political power only by proxy in our culture: by effectively buying it from people who have the real thing. This is both expensive and limited. It can evaporate in a moment.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#106

Post by danmaz74 »

mamon wrote: post #52

This reminds me of an airport in Radom (Poland). It was built few years ago, because it was an opportunity to get some money from EU (and for local politicians to get some bribes :) ). For the first two years airport was unused - the only airline that signet contract got bankrupt. Currently it has another airline operating and serves 10k passengers per year. That's what happens when EU starts giving away money.

A very big difference is that EU convergence funds aren't debt you need to repay later - while those Chinese investments are. Those countries are getting into deep debt, sometimes to build things they don't need.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#107

Post by seanmcdirmid »

fatman13gg wrote: post #92
scandox wrote: post #89

Found this quote from Ai Weiwei in yesterday's Guardian very interesting: “Can China be a global power? I don’t think so. It can gain an advantage, that’s true. But it doesn’t have soul. It doesn’t have heart. It doesn’t trust its own people. So it has no self-identity in the sense that it has never accepted human rights as common values. No freedom of speech, no independent judicial system. If those don’t exist, how…

Why having freedom of speech, independent judicial system and accepting human rights as common values has to be the prerequisites of being a global power? Technically if you are rich and powerful then you are a global power. Edit: sensing lots of incoming downvotes. Point is that democracy may not be the only way to global power.

Consider the difference between hard and soft power. China can definitely wield a lot of the former with "rich and powerful", but the USA today wields both. Watch Chinese movies...even those...especially those with big budgets...and it becomes very clear that china has a problem.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#108

Post by seanmcdirmid »

adventured wrote: post #65
1_2__4 wrote: post #31

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the US real estate market parallels. Arguably China is already in a position to exert significant influence over multiple markets in the US with nothing more than threats - real or implied - of enacting currency controls. Entire markets - if not the entire RE market in the US - would collapse overnight if China decided to prohibit the free flow of money into US properties.

> if not the entire RE market in the US - would collapse overnight if China decided to prohibit the free flow of money into US properties. That's a comical extreme exaggeration. China has a minuscule share of and influence on the US real-estate market overall, including all of its metros. They have a several hundred billion dollar position in a hundred trillion dollar total market. They've only begun to have big infl…

In some RE markets Chinese money is influential, but definitely not in all.

If you don't remember, Japan tanking coincided with the S&L crisis, SF and LA real estate took almost a decade to recover.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#109

Post by jpatokal »

puranjay wrote: post #72
jpatokal wrote: post #34

One thing worth noting is that, with a theoretical max capacity on only 1 million, this airport would actually be pretty tiny by world standards. (The largest do >100m, and even Colombo Airport pulls in nearly 10m.) By comparison, another famous white elephant airport, Ciudad Real in Spain, was built for 10m and currently serves precisely zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_Central_Airport

I was in Sri Lanka in summer this year. Outside of international tourist arrivals (all at Colombo, which itself is a tiny airport), there is practically zero internal air travel. The country is so tiny that you can go across the breadth of the country (Colombo to Trincomalee) in 4-5 hours by bus. Or you can take a helicopter/private plane (which are pretty cheap) and do the same distance in like 45 minutes. I can't e…

Easy: Direct international flights, particularly for tourism. For example, in Thailand, the airports of Phuket and Krabi are only ~2 hours apart by car, yet cater to 15m and 5m pax/year respectively.

Now I'm sure it made no sense to build the airport at Sri Lanka's current stage of development, but as the country gets richer, it's almost certainly going to become useful sooner or later.

Re: What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence

#110

Post by sumedh »

robbiep wrote: post #39
hyperdunc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China does a similar thing with agriculture. Huge plots of land in Australia and New Zealand are controlled by Chinese farming companies and staffed by Chinese. All the food they produce goes back to China.

It is not true that they mainly (or even significantly) employ chinese on Australian Farms - these farms are generally managed by the previous owners or managers and staffed by Australians, with australian Agronomists. In actual fact, very little changes on a day to day basis, except there is more funds available for infrastructure and capital goods purchase (and property values are driven up). Which, when you think…

> What the hell is a chinese person going to do coming to australia and farming

Met 2 Chinese guys from China in a hostel in Melbourne who could speak little, they said there going to work on a farm somewhere in rural Aus and lot of other other people from their village where working there.

I didnt ask if they were working legally or not.

Post reply on HN