For years, Australians have watched with helpless fury as more and more Australian businesses and real estate were taken over by Chinese-owned firms.
This is not reciprocal trade or foreign investment: it’s a rapacious grab by the communist giant (even “private” Chinese companies are, by law, overseen by the Chinese Communist Party), enabled by greedy businesses and spineless Australian governments. Public sentiment has consistently opposed allowing Chinese ownership, especially of agricultural land and strategic assets like ports.
This has nothing to do with racism. Surveys find consistent opposition to Chinese investment only. Australians are generally okay with investment from, say, Japan or India.
In the wake of the Wuhan pandemic, public sentiment has only hardened – yet, even conservative governments have seemed to dither while China just keeps buying up more of the farm.
At last, though, the Morrison government is stepping in.
The $600 million takeover of Australian drinks company Lion by a Chinese firm has been blocked by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on national security grounds.
Mengniu Dairy, which is 25 per cent owned by the Chinese government, had agreed to buy Lion from Japanese parent company Kirin last year.
As usual, the faceless bureaucrats at the Foreign Investment Review Board went on rubber-stamping as they always do. It took direct intervention by the minister to put the brakes on.
Australia’s [FIRB] cleared the deal in February but Mr Frydenberg has now stepped in to prevent it, as the political and trade war between the two nations stepped up.
Lion is behind several beer brands including James Squire and Tooheys, and milk brands including Farmers Union and Dairy Farmers.
The Treasurer told Daily Mail Australia that he decided not to approve the deal because he believed it would be ‘contrary to the national interest’.
It’s bad enough when the communists are buying our farms and ports, but beer is the last straw.
Naturally, China is responding with their standard bullying tactics.
Chinese news site The Global Times, a mouthpiece for the Communist Party government, wrote: ‘Banning a Chinese company from buying an Australian dairy brand doesn’t make much economic sense.
‘It would show that bilateral relations will continue on a downward spiral, with the Australian side willing to risk its global reputation in order to maintain a tough line against China in all aspects.’
Liu Qing of the China Institute of International Studies told the newspaper the move is a ‘provocation’ by Australia which will bring retaliation from China.
Bring it on, commies. So, China won’t scarf up Australia’s premium beef and wine? Good. A win for Australian consumers who often struggle to find their own produce at reasonable prices because all the good stuff’s been shipped off to China.
Let’s see how long Chinese consumers put up with their locally-made crud.
Maybe some of our China-dependent universities will go broke, but, frankly, who will cry if the biggest Marxist-indoctrination centres in the country vanish? Win-win.
If the government finally grows a pair and starts standing up more to this “silent invasion”, they’ll be big winners in the public eye, too.
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