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

nytimes.com

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

#61

Post by tempay »

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.

> That's what happens when EU starts giving away money.

I'm unconvinced how bad this actually is.

An organisation with a ~150 billion euro budget in going to inevitably have some abuse/waste of it's resources but equally I can think of dozens of projects that have positive outcomes. Sure, it's still not okay for the ones like the airport to exist but I think focusing on them undermines the good that can be done by having a source of cash that can be used to improve the world.

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

#62

Post by monpetitjules »

princeb wrote: post #10

A number of Chinese businesses are setting up 100%-Chinese factory compounds overseas. These compounds are located in a foreign country, but they are fully financed by Chinese, built by Chinese, employ only Chinese, have accommodation for the Chinese employees, have a completely sustaining internal economy where employees can buy food and entertainment and send mail, posts, banking, remittance, insurance, through Chi…

Here in the Malaysian part of Borneo there are a lot of Chinese tourists. Most of the time they travel with Chinese Travel Tour Agencies, they go to restaurants owned and staffed by Chinese people, the same about souvenirs shops. All the money stays in the same hands. It's very clever from Chinese business (wo)men but local business owners are quite pissed off.

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

#63

Post by jpatokal »

syphon7 wrote: post #55
toomanybeersies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to cite a source on that? Somewhere between 5-10% of NZ farmland and forestry is owned by foreign interests. That's not just China, but all other countries, of which Australia is a large investor in NZ. A large amount of this land is owned by super funds. Fonterra has an 84% market share in the dairy sector, Fonterra is a collective, owned by the individual farms. Now, the Chinese are building milk powder fa…

Well you could just pay them illegally under the table. I'm ignorant about NZs economy, and you have good points/questions but I felt that it needed to be said. In the US we have huge migrant groups that are responsible for a large amount of the harvesting in this country, and most are paid well under minimum wage. Not saying it's right... just how it is.

Illegal migrants are easy to pay under minimum wage, because they're under the radar. However, illegal immigration to NZ is (comparatively) minuscule and you don't really hear about payments under the table, except in small businesses like restaurants, massage etc.

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

#64

Post by jpatokal »

Animats wrote: post #59
vijayp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mirabel airport [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montr%C3%A9al%E2%80%93Mirabel_... ] probably was a contender. The passenger terminals were eventually torn down recently, but cargo flights continue to use it. EDIT: "By surface area, it was the largest airport in the world that had ever been envisioned, with a planned area of 39,660 hectares (396.6 km2; 98,000 acres)"

Gaza International.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat_International_Ai...

That was a completely sensible thing to build (and I even flew in once!), it was just destroyed by Israeli bombing.

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

#65

Post by adventured »

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 influence in one city - Seattle (Amazon by itself has several times the real-estate influence that China does on Seattle). Much like Vancouver's real-estate market didn't collapse once the Chinese money stopped flowing in so easily, nor would Seattle's market. Further, most of China's real-estate influence is on a small segment of the higher end part of the market, from the capital flight of wealthier Chinese.

All of that Chinese capital flight has already slowed dramatically due to capital controls. And yet, US real-estate isn't having a problem at all (quite the opposite).

Japan had a dramatically greater position in US real-estate in the late 1980s. Guess what didn't happen when Japan started pulling its capital out of US real-estate? You guessed it, US real-estate didn't collapse at all. In fact, it did just fine from 1992 to 2000. The huge problems Japan's economy had, resulted in a small twitch in the US real-estate market, which is exactly what would happen with China.

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

#66

Post by kiproping »

hyperdunc wrote: post #28
princeb wrote: post #10

A number of Chinese businesses are setting up 100%-Chinese factory compounds overseas. These compounds are located in a foreign country, but they are fully financed by Chinese, built by Chinese, employ only Chinese, have accommodation for the Chinese employees, have a completely sustaining internal economy where employees can buy food and entertainment and send mail, posts, banking, remittance, insurance, through Chi…

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.

This happens in Africa, not Australia.

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

#67

Post by adventured »

nl wrote: post #43
airbookie2 wrote: post #2

It says nothing about China's influence. It just means China likes to throw good money after the bad. Just look at the loans it made to Cambodia, Nigeria, Iran, etc http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/21P46wlPXj00K8VUKMu9oN/China...

It's not good money after bad if China isn't in it for making a monetary profit.

Sure it is. If you keep subsidizing a nation perpetually in a money-losing approach to buying favor like that, your favor loses value as they take your largesse for granted (guaranteed to happen across all of human nature), yet you keep bleeding large sums of capital forever for no further gain.

Buying favor that way for China will cost trillions of dollars over time and gain them little. China will realize that if they don't already and will switch to the US system of military partnerships and distribution (it's cheaper, it builds up your nation's global military capabilities, you turn around and sell military hardware to the nations you're dealing with, and your partners become over-dependent on you for their security which completes the lock-in). You can already see some early efforts in that direction from China. Going forward, most of their foreign capital adventurism will likely redirect back toward practical investments, eg in natural resources.

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

#68

Post by puranjay »

tuna-piano wrote: post #9

I assume another close contender is the Nay Pyi Taw airport in Myanmar. https://www.instagram.com/p/BXvqis0htxH/?taken-at=277450644 https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/277450644/naypyi... The city was built as a showcase capital for Myanmar's military government, and has crazy sights like a 20 lane highway (with almost no cars): https://www.go-myanmar.com/sites/go-myanmar.com/files/upload... More pictures: ht…

I remember the Top Gear episode in Myanmar where Jeremy and gang played soccer on the highway. It was that empty, and that huge.

As an Indian, China's influence scares me a bit. They've got us surrounded

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

#69

Post by erikb »

fludlight wrote: post #45
princeb wrote: post #10

A number of Chinese businesses are setting up 100%-Chinese factory compounds overseas. These compounds are located in a foreign country, but they are fully financed by Chinese, built by Chinese, employ only Chinese, have accommodation for the Chinese employees, have a completely sustaining internal economy where employees can buy food and entertainment and send mail, posts, banking, remittance, insurance, through Chi…

This strategy is just as transparent as it sounds. Eventually US/EU regulators will find out and shut it down. A similar thing recently played out when a Chinese company owned by the son of a major Chinese aluminum smelting magnate tried to cross ship about a ridiculous quantity of aluminum through Mexico. In this case, certain rules may need to be amended, but that is not outside the realm of possibility. > But conc…

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

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

#70

Post by roel_v »

syphon7 wrote: post #55
toomanybeersies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to cite a source on that? Somewhere between 5-10% of NZ farmland and forestry is owned by foreign interests. That's not just China, but all other countries, of which Australia is a large investor in NZ. A large amount of this land is owned by super funds. Fonterra has an 84% market share in the dairy sector, Fonterra is a collective, owned by the individual farms. Now, the Chinese are building milk powder fa…

Well you could just pay them illegally under the table. I'm ignorant about NZs economy, and you have good points/questions but I felt that it needed to be said. In the US we have huge migrant groups that are responsible for a large amount of the harvesting in this country, and most are paid well under minimum wage. Not saying it's right... just how it is.

How would you get sizeable groups of illegal farm helps into NZ? How would they live/send money back home/travel back home etc? NZ is a remote island, this is not a Mexico/Arizona situation. NZ native farmers are very in control of their farms and NZ's agriculture industry in general.
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