The Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership starts to get serious!

Blackstone said:

Wolf- let's put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say there's a huge piece of Chinese land with very few people living there, something like... TIBET. Let's then say there's a country with huge population living next door that previously didn't move into Tibet for a host of reasons. Furthermore, let's say with improvements in Sino-Big Country relations, cross border travels are now common. Finally, Big Country leases land in Tibet for mining, water, and farm/ranch projects. How would the average Han Chinese feel about it? Beijing elites may say all is well, and business is good for both countries, but the common people would be suspicious and maybe even xenophobic.

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The average Chinese person on the streets wouldn't be all that bothered by such a development.

What they might question is why the Chinese themselves are not doing all of that, but as Solarz already touched upon, the Chinese are very secure and confident about their national identity, which actively embraces ethnic minorities and have a host of very generous affirmative action style benefits for ethnic minorities not available to Han Chinese.

Something the western media is almost religious in its avoidance of mentioning.

All the so-call discrimination and cultural bias examples the western media delight in hyping up involve people unwilling to learn and use manderan Chinese and/or modern skills and technology. When China builds schools and tries to teach manderan and other key skills to ethnic minority groups to allow them to better take advantage of the opportunities on offer to all Chinese citizens, the same western media screams 'cultural genocide'

To claim discrimination and a lack of good job prospects because you refuse to learn the official government and business language is like a someone claiming discrimation in the UK or US when they can't find a good job because they can't speak or read English.

Anyways, the point is, the average Chinese citizen is far from xenophobic, and are usually very warm and welcoming of foreigners.

So long as this big-country-who-shall-not-be-named and its citizens behave reasonably and within the framework of the original agreement, then there will not be any problems.

There will only be issues if this other country tries a Crimera style take-over or if its citizens start acting badly and establish a bad reputation for themselves inside China.

Because of historical reasons, the average Chinese have a very low tolerance of foreigners trying to throw their weight around inside China and acting like they are better than the Chinese or own the place.

Anyone who behaves like that can expect a frosty reception in China, although that is hardly a uniquely Chinese reaction.

t2contra said:

It is not unusual some quarters will be upset whenever a foreigner buys or lease a big chink of land in theirs. There were rumblings when a Chinese company bought a sizeable farmland in New Zealand, but have since been silent.

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New Zealand? Or do you mean Australia?

Ultra said:

As I suspected - Chinese do have very small farms - due to communist doctrine and distribution.

I lived in New Zealand for a long while so I know the farms there are like, and they are huge compare to most of the farms in asia. And over here in Australia we absolutely have the biggest farm ever!

Cubbie Station (96,000 hectares / 240,000 acres)

It has its own airstrip........

....and a dam for irrigation......

(500,000 megalitres of water storage for its cotton crops)

........and it was all sold to the chinese for $232 million australian dollars.

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240,000 Acres = 971 square kilometers
This is 34 times larger than Macau, 1.4 times larger than Singapore, just slightly smaller than Hong Kong!

Ultra said:

New Zealand? Or do you mean Australia?

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New Zealand. Shanghai Pengxin bought a few large parcels of land and also a big dairy farm. Locals were up in arms in the beginning. They were suspicious because the company had no dairy experience, but it had since engaged a local manager to run the business.

t2contra said:

New Zealand. Shanghai Pengxin bought a few large parcels of land and also a big dairy farm. Locals were up in arms in the beginning. They were suspicious because the company had no dairy experience, but it had since engaged a local manager to run the business.

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I checked, looks like some hubub about foreign ownership, but nothing like the scale of Cubbie Station sale Australia went through. The locales and some politicians (particularly Clive Palmer's PAP party who is locked in a serious multi-billion dollar courtroom fight with Chinese government backed CITIC corp) are still yapping about this from time to time.

Ultra said

As I suspected - Chinese do have very small farms - due to communist doctrine and distribution.

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Sorry Ultra, but that association is utter nonsense. Chinese farms being small is an historical legacy from Imperial days when most of the population were subsistence farmers.
The entire point of the last thirty five years has been the process of taking the vast majority off the land and converting into Urban Industrial workers. China is now entering the final phase of this generational process, in which the grandfather generation is giving up the land and moving to the cities to live with their children and grand children, who started moving out decades ago.

As the small family holdings are liquidated, large modern and intensive farms are appearing and consolidating the plots. This phase will probably continue a pace for the next twenty years.

Pre Industrial Europe was just the same, when the rural landscape was a patch work of strip farms in massive open fields, which were subsequently enclosed as the populace were moved off (often by force).

The traditional farm size is nothing to do with any CCP doctrine.

SampanViking said:

Ultra said


Sorry Ultra, but that association is utter nonsense. Chinese farms being small is an historical legacy from Imperial days when most of the population were subsistence farmers.
The entire point of the last thirty five years has been the process of taking the vast majority off the land and converting into Urban Industrial workers. China is now entering the final phase of this generational process, in which the grandfather generation is giving up the land and moving to the cities to live with their children and grand children, who started moving out decades ago.

As the small family holdings are liquidated, large modern and intensive farms are appearing and consolidating the plots. This phase will probably continue a pace for the next twenty years.

Pre Industrial Europe was just the same, when the rural landscape was a patch work of strip farms in massive open fields, which were subsequently enclosed as the populace were moved off (often by force).

The traditional farm size is nothing to do with any CCP doctrine.

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Okay, didn't realize that, I always thought its the communist doctrine (or from somewhere I read).




BTW, this news is just coming in!


Australia is selling a ranch the size of New Jersey



A piece of land the size of New Jersey is up for sale in Australia.

At a sprawling 23,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles), the Anna Creek Station in South Australia is the world's biggest cattle ranch.

It's being offered as part of a portfolio of Australian properties which includes 11 cattle stations and a bull breeding stud farm.

But it doesn't score many points for location. The collection of farming assets stretch across more than 100,000 square kilometers of vast interior. To inspect the full sweep of properties on the block by air would take about a week.

Buyers around the world have expressed interest in the sale which should fetch around $300 million Australian dollars ($232 million U.S. dollars). It's expected to wrap up by the end of the year.

Ernst & Young's Adelaide managing partner Don Manifold is handling the deal, and has more than 30 serious buyers on his books, including parties from North America, Europe and Asia.

Foreign ownership, particularly Chinese, of agricultural land is a contentious topic in Australia.

To combat rising unease with the level of foreign investment in farm land, the country raised the threshold on purchases subject to government review earlier this year.

Australia is world's third largest beef exporter behind India and Brazil, and ahead of the U.S. Its export strength is helped by a number of free trade agreements with beef-eating countries and the reputation of its meat as safe.

Manifold said the Anna Creek ranch offers a chance to become "one of the world's foremost beef producers" as Asia's growing middle class spurs demand for red meat.




Let's guess who's going to buy up this piece?

Bigger than Israel, if you are wondering.

no_name said:

Bigger than Israel, if you are wondering.

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True and its 33x the size of Singapore.

Wondering if this could solve Israel-Palestine problems? ... just kidding

It is really huge, Wellington region in NZ (~province) is about 8,100 km2 and I know for sure Wellington region is huge and you will never finish exploring it. And this land is almost 3x the size of Wellington region and "only" US$230M ...... gooosh

I'd bet China would get it

antiterror13 said:

True and its 33x the size of Singapore.

Wondering if this could solve Israel-Palestine problems? ... just kidding

It is really huge, Wellington region in NZ (~province) is about 8,100 km2 and I know for sure Wellington region is huge and you will never finish exploring it. And this land is almost 3x the size of Wellington region and "only" US$230M ...... gooosh

I'd bet China would get it

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all that delicious Australian beef would be perfect for hotpot! sounds like a good investment for China.

What is the expectation for the climate in the area in a warming World? Perhaps it will become desert.