Australia and New Zealand are different. There’s a treaty between the Maori and the British. Rejecting the legitimacy of that treaty leads to questions over Tibet. Australia on the other hand is under illegal European occupation.
Chinese Economics Thread
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Australia and New Zealand are different. There’s a treaty between the Maori and the British. Rejecting the legitimacy of that treaty leads to questions over Tibet. Australia on the other hand is under illegal European occupation.
It may surprise you but I actually completely agree with your assessment... however, from my understand which admittedly is limited in certain areas, is that Ireland was already starting to take the UK’s place with many industries prior to Brexit in the first place... in fact many tech companies including start ups were setting up or had set up shop in Ireland long before the whole Brexit discussion, other industries were also slowly following. The real advantage that the UK always had was the sleazy BS financial services, in this way I agree with your comparison between HK and China to UK and EU but I would say the situation is overall a little different... since China had, at the time, not really many options as opposed to the EU where the UK was just the easier option.
I think you got me a bit wrong on what I meant about being able to play multiple side against the middle and relevance. With what Brexit turned into, your scenario is completely what we got, a no-deal Brexit and an absolute disaster. The holier than thou, no compromise, sausage measuring competition attitude with which the UK ‘TRIED’ to get a deal was ridiculous... frankly the UK needed the BS financial services sector just to survive and is also the reason why I said they can be a central hub not as the leader but basically everyone’s b*tch, allowing them to effectively become the latrine cleaners for all the big boys and have their little slice of pie, be a good boy, get a pat on the head and live happily ever after... that’s what I meant
And UK US trade deal is not a sure thing if Biden win. Biden's not in a hurry to have deals atm not to mention jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement doesn't bode well with Democrats.
Well I don’t think it really matters the US still needs a base of operations in Europe and the UK still needs someone to help them, with their current situation whatever US ask for, the UK will have to cave, they already played themselves into a corner...
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Good points that I broadly agree with. The only difference I have is that I don’t think there was ever a scenario where the UK could have ‘played’ anyone to get a better deal than what they already had with the EU. There was never any leverage for the UK to apply on the EU other than to threaten to behave like a suicide bomber whereby they self destruct and cause a bit of collateral damage to the EU.
But I think that threat was always limited to start with, and has been drastically diminishing ever since the vote because the EU, unlike the UK, have been making actual, substantive moves to mitigate any damage a no deal Brexit would cause them. So that was never a realistic leverage unless the UK actually have a co-ordinated plan and pressed ahead with the threat of an instant no-deal, hard Brexit shortly after the vote, before the EU could take any measures to mitigate the damage of such a move. That boat has long sailed, but the idiots in Westminster seem still blissly oblivious to the massive moves the EU has been making ever since.
Right now I think the EU is actually secretly hoping for a hard Brexit to set an example for others who might be thinking of trying similar brinksmanship to try to press the EU for goodies. They are just playing along with the UK as they don’t want to give the British any excuse to blame them for a hard Brexit, which is the only reason they are still carrying on with the sham of an excuse for ongoing negotiations.
As for Ireland, well no, it wasn’t really making any inroad into replacing London before Brexit. The tech companies that established HQs there were doing so mainly as a paper exercise to evade EU tax (there is currently a massive fight between the EU and Ireland on precisely this issue, where Ireland is offering companies illegal (in the view of the EU) tax breaks in exchange for them setting up their EU HQs in Ireland).
There was never any appetite or realistic protect for Ireland to make the massive and sustained investment needed to pose any challenge to London as an integrated financial and professional services centre.
However, ironically, now it is a lot of the London banks and firms that are actually spearheading the move to Ireland, as I think it will be significantly less disruptive for their mainly English-speaking-only London based staff to move to Ireland compared to somewhere on the continent, where languages would become a significant deterrent to many of them wanting to move (not to mention the sky high costs in places like Zurich).
But that was all before Covid, so it will be interesting to see if maybe the Pandemic has helped to save London’s bacon, or at least significantly slowed down the exodus that would otherwise have occurred. But I think we have drifted far enough off topic on this.
Since we both agree on the HK analogy, I think we can just leave it at that and move on.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Unfortunately given how deeply rooted racism is in Australia, I do not see them seeing sense even if America dissolved into civil war tomorrow (which is actually a real possibility, which is quite something).
Australia does not see itself as the attack dog of America, but rather as the tail that is wagging the American dog into committing massive military forces to help Australia defend against a Red Dawn Chinese invasion that China never really ever considered in the first place. Which still doesn’t matter because as far as Australians are concerned, intent is mainly irrelevant and it is merely having the capabilities that is too much for them to stomach.
The only changes I see if America wavers on its commitment to Asia Pacific would be that Australia would spend more on defence themselves to try to make up the shortfall.
That is why I think Chinese economic de-coupling from Australia is long overdue.
Hmmm. That will interesting to watch but these lands are due for new leadership is the current ones have been stagnating for years. Still australia isn’t capable of decoupling since well they don’t have the capabilities to do so. Also to note is that the media is becoming a big turn off for the locals for many years so there is hope that sooner or later people will see reason give that Scot Morison is a complete failure that just recently had a lot of vitriol thrown at him for his treatment of Daniel Andrews along with help for the shitty media so if the USA really goes under then at least if Daniel Andrews considers leadership, he may gain a lot of support so there is hope in that area
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bajingan
Senior Member
Geoff Raby, the australian ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, said australia needed China more than the other way around.
so much for "lets find other markets, lets not sell anything to these communists" or worse "lets sell to india" lol
I really hope China will go after their education sector next, Chinese international students has been a cashcow for australian universities and overpriced property sector for far too long