I read in dismay. He never ceases to disappoint me. Having had the audacity to criticise Joseph Muscat when he was still Leader of the Opposition and talking about his road map for our island, now, eight months down the line, Simon Busuttil has still not learnt anything from the heavy electoral defeat his party suffered in March.
Think, look into the substance of stuff and then react.
Nowadays, in the golden era of technology, people are not as gullible as they once were. Through a little simple research, people will uncover the truth and get down to the nitty-gritty of each and every line politicians try to force down their throats. This was why I was so surprised to see Busuttil, a former member of the European Parliament, criticise the agreement for cooperation signed with the Chinese government.
All he had to do was look into the numbers and figures. I will also be so kind as to suggest a website where there are tons of material at his disposal to make an informed decision – Google. It works wonders and may help him access so much statistical data that will, hopefully, show him the light of day and help him make the right decision – for once.
Busuttil and his cronies at the Nationalist Party headquarters almost ridiculed the fact that the present Administration is so determined in securing and opting for more China-Malta cooperation and business relations. The argument they made was that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was taking us back to the 1970s. Most of us disagree and call for stronger Malta-China relations.
In contrast with what the PN seems to want us to believe, business relationships across the EU and China are not something new. If anything, we are lagging behind because of the incompetence of the previous (Nationalist) Administration that failed miserably to establish any form of good business relations with China and exploit its booming economy.
In the following paragraphs, I will put forward my arguments and substantiate (substantiate – a word which, as we have recently seen in Parliament, is missing from Busuttil’s dictionary) them with statistical data from Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.
Integration with China may be instrumental to the EU. China is a very important investor in the EU and a push for more integration could be vital to secure job creation, provide EU firms with more capital and boost competition, pushing prices down.
However, political and security matters still hamper this economically-viable relationship that has so much potential. Furthermore, this has led to the current situation where the barriers to access Chinese markets have partly led to the EU recording significant trade losses with China.
China-EU relations are the future
With China being one of the EU’s most important strategic economic partners – trade between the two is worth more than €1 billion a day – China-EU relations are increasingly becoming more significant.
Moreover, China is the EU’s biggest source of imports; something the EU has now realised and is the reason behind the importance being given to ongoing negotiations on an investment agreement Brussels is trying to secure with China. This would help create an opportunity for investors and companies to attract billions of euros worth of investment towards Europe.
A look at some statistical indicators shows that, over the years, the EU, through its member states, has invested €25.5 billion in China. This injection of foreign capital into the Chinese economy, which was and is booming, helped the EU access a new market that is so big that many consider it to be a gold mine with infinite potential.
This outward investment by the EU also means that the Chinese economy is able to reinvest and, thus, inject capital into the EU economy. In fact, €8.7 billion have so far been injected in the EU economy by China in the form of foreign direct investment.
A Eurostat document published in April shows that:
China is the second largest economy in the world and the largest exporter – it is also predicted that it will become the largest economy in the world in the next five to 10 years;
the value of China-EU trade rose from almost nil 20 years ago to over €1 billion a day – with trade in goods being almost 10 times the amount of trade in services (an area that will gain the most through more integration with China); and
China has become one of the fastest growing markets for EU exports – just in 2012, exports to China increased by 5.6 per cent.
The above indicators show that while the EU is discussing ways to tap into the huge potential investment flows from China, the Maltese Opposition Leader is still trying to scaremonger and push myths down our throat as if China is some devil in disguise.
I sincerely urge Busuttil and his colleagues to wake up and smell the coffee. China-EU relations are the future. Scaremongering will not win them any political points and their cheap tactics will only drive the PN right into a brick wall.
joseph@josephcuschieri.com
Joseph Cuschieri is a Labour MEP.