Yanis Varoufakis sheds more
light on how and why the German leadership under Angela Merkel,
sabotaged investment deals by China in Greece that would benefit both
countries.
As the former Greek Minister of Finance describes briefly and
clearly:
In 2015 when I was conducting
negotiations with the Chinese side, in parallel to the negotiations
we were having with the European Union and the International Monetary
Fund, I was very pleasantly surprised by the way in which the Chinese
authorities managed to combine their sense of self-interest with a
patient investment attitude and a genuine commitment to renegotiate
and negotiate and discuss again and again with us, with a view to
achieving a mutually advantageous agreement.
The discussions began
regarding the Port of Piraeus, where COSCO, a state-owned Chinese
company, already had their foot in the door. And there was a
discussion about how to extent its operations. They were very
surprised when I proposed to them that this should be part of a
broader investment exercise in Greece by China, involving railways,
technology parks, involving all sorts of activities where our economy
needed patient capital, like shipbuilding and shipyards and tourism.
We came to a magnificent
agreement. They showed broad-mindedness, they were prepared to accept
collective bargaining agreements with trade unions. They were
prepared to take it step by step in a way that would, of course,
benefit them, but would also benefit us in a non-colonial manner.
What stopped it, was an
intervention by Berlin, insisting that no deal should go through
until and unless the eurozone had finished with the Greek government.
So, briefly, Germany sabotaged
Greece's approach with China for the following main reasons:
- Germany wouldn't risk to
lose its debt colony and the opportunity to grab Greek public
property on behalf of the German companies.
- It wouldn't let Greece to
breathe economically through Chinese investments because it would put
the Greek experiment in danger.
- It wouldn't let Greece to
co-operate with China as equal partners with mutual interests because
this would open the road to Chinese economic "invasion" in
other eurozone countries that would seek to escape from the German
cruel austerity and sado-monetarism, as well as the tight scrutiny by
the Brussels-Berlin axis.
- It wouldn't let Chinese
state capitalism to appear superior against the collapsing neoliberal
model being dictated by the bankers and the corporate lobbyists.
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