What Is It That We Need China For. Anyway?

Is our industry, our decency, sovereignty and standard of living worth all of this?:

Australia has already taken action to protect domestic companies from foreign takeovers, in the short term, mandating a review of each foreign takeover for any telecom, tech, energy and defence business. The United Kingdom has imminent plans to tighten their rules, and the European Union urged member states to protect critical domestic assets.

Canada must do the same to prevent the fire-sale of Canadian national strategic assets which are distressed due to COVID-19

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Unclear rules in Canada around intellectual property have given aggressive actors like China backdoor access to sensitive national security assets, two technology experts warned, as concerns run high over the threat of foreign takeovers.

(Sidebar: oh, they don't have to use a backdoor to get it. This government will hand it to them freely.)

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Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is raising a new argument in a Canadian court in a bid to fight extradition to the United States on bank fraud charges, court documents released on Monday showed.

Meng's lawyers claim the case that the United States submitted to Canada is "so replete with intentional and reckless error" that it violates her rights.

Meng, 48, was detained in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018, at the request of the United States, where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading HSBC Holdings Plc about Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's business in Iran.

Meng, the daughter of billionaire Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition.

(Sidebar: yes, about that ...)

The arrest has strained China's relations with both the United States and Canada.

Trouble in the paper Middle Kingdom:

During a recent inspection tour of villages in the region of Ningxia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping emphasized his goal for China to become “a moderately prosperous society.” This catchphrase was coined soon after he took power in 2012, and is his flagship economic policy.

Xi also penned a May 31 article in Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s official magazine, that China is advancing toward achieving that goal, with “400 million people in the middle class.”
His standard for middle class was: an annual household income of 100,000 to 500,000 yuan ($14,160-$70,810). But in China, multi-generational households living under one roof are not uncommon.

Meanwhile, Chinese premier Li Keqiang has recently highlighted the unemployment and poverty crisis in the country, which have been exacerbated by the CCP virus pandemic.

Li said during a meeting of China’s rubber-stamp legislature on May 28 that 600 million Chinese only earn 1,000 yuan ($140) per month, which is not enough to pay for monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment in a mid-sized Chinese city.

Li then promoted the idea of setting up a “street vendor economy” to alleviate the rising unemployment as a result of the pandemic.

On June 1, Li again said at an economic seminar in Qingdao city: “The challenges that [China] is facing is unprecedentedly difficult.” Li emphasized that hundreds of millions of Chinese people need financial support.

After Li’s speeches, state-run media first promoted the street vendor economy, but began running articles criticizing the idea on June 5.

Since then, each provincial and city government delivered conflicting information on whether or not street vendors would be allowed to sell their wares.

Observers have interpreted the openly contradictory messaging of late as an indication of the power struggle between Xi’s political faction and Li’s.

“Xi and Li fighting with each other in public certainly made it difficult for lower-ranking officials to position themselves,” said U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan.