Posted on 08/20/2019 8:14:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Widespread waste and fraud associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been unearthed after the country’s state railway group was forced to admit this month that a significant amount of cargo containers shuttling between Chinese factories and European cities were empty.
The admission by the state-run China Railway – the sole operator of the lines – followed an investigation by the Chinese Business Journal, a newspaper supervised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which found that in one extreme case only one of 41 containers on a particular train actually carried goods.
The belt and road plan, masterminded by President Xi Jinping, is the central government’s initiative to link economies into a China-centred trading network to grow global trade.
This led to many local governments rushing to open train services through the vast central Asian territory between China and Europe to show their support for Beijing’s geopolitical strategy, but many exporters actually transported empty containers in order to receive government subsidies.
China Railway admitted the existence of the problem in an interview with the state-run Global Times last week, but insisted that it had largely been eradicated in 2018 after new rules were introduced limiting the number of empty containers allowed to just 10 per cent per train.
The company said that of all containers heading to Europe in 2018, only 6% were empty, compared to 29 per cent for eastbound trains. In the first half of 2019, they said, the ratios had fallen to 2 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively.
Jonathan Hillman, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, said the problem of empty containers “is consistent with the belt and road’s emphasis on short term political gains at the expense of longer-term economic fundamentals”.
(Excerpt) Read more at scmp.com ...
State run companies and crony-capitalists gaming the omni-present Chinese central government and central-planning policy to get subsidies and benefits for insiders.
This is the entire nature of China’s economy.
As a side note, Its where the USA is heading also if we continue down the road of progressive, centralized central planning.
What is this, a Chinese fire drill?!
Keep up the pressure! No Intellectual protections, no deal!
[State run companies and crony-capitalists gaming the omni-present Chinese central government and central-planning policy to get subsidies and benefits for insiders.
This is the entire nature of China’s economy.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_La
Fang La mustered up some fairly impressive gains before he was beaten back. His mistake may have been his lack of ambition - if he had gone for the whole enchilada instead of sitting back and counting his gains, he might have founded a new dynasty. Speaking of throwbacks, references to Yuan Shikai, the general who would be emperor, have allegedly been banned on China’s chat forums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Shikai
https://qz.com/1215546/how-china-reacted-to-the-idea-of-indefinite-rule-by-xi-jinping-in-memes-on-wechat-and-weibo/
Good market for Air ?
Ghost trains along with ghost cities. The modern chinese economy!
Just returning the empty containers, just like bottle and cans.
They checked the bank account, and that was empty too!
Fortunately, the Chinese accounting board has ruled you can count debits as credits if you run out of money....
“State run companies and crony-capitalists gaming the omni-present Chinese central government and central-planning policy to get subsidies and benefits for insiders.”
A lot of these international projects involve the host country taking on huge Chinese loans, with the end result being either massive debt payments or the Chicoms taking control of the new assets after default. And there’s plenty of room for huge bribes and kickbacks in those projects.
Sounds like the ole NAFTA Highway. Straight up through New Mexico to the Great Plains. We wasted a boatload of money on that one, but New Mexico got some new highways in the middle of no where and Denver got a beautiful new airport.
How do ya translate- POTEMKIN -to Chinese??
the new Bilk Road
A Potemkin economy...
RE: The Middle East/Constantinople is your best bet for centralized trade,
I see you still refuse to use the current name for Constantinople :)
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