China's move into oil sands irks the U.S.

[CHIMO]

Source: Globe and Mail

PetroChina Co. Ltd.'s (PTR-N109.15-0.60-0.55%) $1.9-billion investment in the oil sands is raising alarms in Washington, with thehead of a congressionally-appointed China watchdog saying the company is clearly a vehicle of Beijing's Communist government.

Carolyn Bartholomew, chairwoman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said Tuesday that Ottawa should subject the proposed investment to a thorough review that would include sensitive national security issues.

And she rejected the contention by PetroChina and its supporters that the state-owned enterprise acts like any other commercial oil company in its international operations, professing concern about a growing Chinese presence in America's “backyard.”

“I think that an acquisition like this should raise national security questions both for the government of Canada and for the government of the United States,” Ms. Bartholomew said in an interview from Washington.



Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/chinas-move-into-oil-sands-irks-the-us/article1272498/

[Tempest]

1. Unlike the U.S., who invades countries for their resources

China purchases the resources for fair value.

[Deja Q]

7. They purchase labor at fair value too, I suppose. The products they make are reasonable priced too.

:sarcasm:

[Tempest]

10. A whole different subject

Apparently U.S. corporation's sweatshops don't calculate into your equation.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Huh?

China invests in Canadian resources, which not only pumps money into Canada and, by virtue of being the next door neighbors, the US but ALSO relieves the pressure on middle-eastern oil resources (China buying IRANIAN OIL!!! Oh NO!!!).

How is this a bad thing?

[Deja Q]

9. I like your mindset. It's a good reminder cynicism isn't a synonym for truth.

+1

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Canada is OUR colony!

How dare the Chinese trespass.

[Javaman]

4. Meh. with a 1 1/2 return on a 1 invested. let the chinese go for it.

that whole mess is a colossal cluster fuck to start with.

Look up EROEI regarding the oil sands, after you read that, then decide if this is something to worry about.

the oil sands will be the setting for the mad max type of society around 2060.

[Vidar]

5. I hope Canada & China appreciate the humor of this supidity,

[David__77]

6. Why is the US interfering in Sino-Canada economic cooperation?

I'm sure that China doesn't object to similar things? The double standards and appearance of economic imperialism are astounding.

[Deja Q]

8. Washington enacted policies that helped other countries get this far, right Tricky-D Nixon?

If the tinfoil fluff is true that Nixon was in bed with the same people Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush and everyone else was, then America or its corporations shouldn't be crying.

Dunno what to say on any of this, except for the obvious Gen-X-worthy sarcasm...

[polly7]

11. What a dumb tool.

We're not 'America's' or anyone else's backyard, and China has been investing in our oil for years, including refineries. She needs to STFU and mind her own business. It's fine for the U.S. to borrow billions / trillions? to finance lying resource wars but she has the nerve to question legitimate trading? There's something really ironic there.

[jannx]

12. Busybody !!

Ms Bartholomew should be more concerned about US - China trade than the small change that’s happening in Canada’s oil patch where there has been a significant US presence for over 50 years. As usual “busybodies” are always looking over the fence and telling their neighbour how to live in what they mistakenly call ‘their backyard’.
_______________________________
Wal-Mart is China’s Eighth Largest Trading Partner. One company, ahead of Russia and Germany! Figures vary about how much Wal-Mart purchases from China, and Wal-Mart President and CEO Lee Scott has evaded fully answering that question, but is it widely estimated by scholars and journalists that Wal-Mart is China’s eighth largest trading partner.

$20 billion saved, billions more lost Wal-Mart's relentless drive to deliver low prices now directly saves American consumers $20 billion a year by one estimate -- and probably several times that sum once the indirect effect on competitors is factored in. To win Wal-Mart's business, suppliers have been forced to close U.S. factories and source overseas, with millions of American jobs lost in the process. Wal-Mart alone accounts for 10 percent of all imports from China.

[Grinchie]

13. Gosh, the Chinese are actually buying up Assets with our worthless paper money.

Who'd a thunk it?

Honestly, if I woke up one morning to find out that the value of the U.S. Dollar was mostly fictional, and based soley on marketing slogans, Collaterallized Debt Obligations, Home Equity Loans, and Interest Rates that barely pay for the paper used to create the money out of thin air, I'd be spending it like a drunken sailor too.

It's pretty clear that the Chinese are not buying the so called "Green Chutes" meme, nor are they ignorant of all the Commercial Real Estate Assets sitting Idle all over America, which have been sitting idle for the last 3 years or so, and the number of these derelict, unproductive properties is increasing.

When the predominant industry in many business parks is the baling up of used cardboard, and storing it on site, something is terribly wrong.

When 1600 acres of the former Naval Air Station in Alameda California, lies rotting in the marine air, while being situated on some of the most valuable land in the San Francisco Bay Area, something is terribly wrong.

The United States has only the Federal Reserve to blame for it's woes. The Build New, then Abandon policy of the Military Industrial complex has bankrupted us, and the sign are everywhere.

Was a disastrous, yet fun ride while it lasted, but the Government now realizes that it's finished, and nobody is going to come to it's rescue. Not even the citizens of it's own homeland, because they've woken up to the Fraud, and no longer wish to keep enabling it with the sweat and labor from their own backs..

[Prometheus Bound]

14. I find China investing in Canadian oil sands so ironic.

Back in the 80s when China just started opening up I had a meeting with one of the early trading companies that got things made cheaply in China for Western companies. I was looking for gearboxes. Their argument to me was something like this:

"Don't do your foundry work in Canada. It's dirty and just pollutes your country. Let the Chinese do it. The government doesn't care about pollution. You can do whatever you want."

I was aghast that they would use this as their selling point.

Now I see headlines like this in China, while Canadian headlines talk about the massive pollution from the Alberta oilsands covering neighbouring provinces as well.:

10,000 fight riot police over Fujian pollution
Villagers blame tannery and oil refinery for rise in cancers
Fiona Tam
Updated on Sep 02, 2009

Thousands of villagers in Fujian clashed with riot police, smashed police vehicles and took government officials hostage in the latest peaceful mainland protest over industrial pollution to turn violent.

Villagers and the authorities in the city of Quanzhou yesterday confirmed that more than 10,000 people had clashed with some 2,000 riot police on Monday night in the town of Fengwei. Police fired two warning shots and used tear gas to break up the crowd, witnesses said. The protesters pelted them with stones. The kidnapped officials were only rescued yesterday afternoon.

.....They began a peaceful protest two weeks ago. It swelled when the authorities ignored their complaints. Five days ago, protesters tried to sabotage the sewage plant and took two police officers hostage, the government said. They were later freed. On Monday, government officials accompanied by police tried to enter the plant, triggering the violent clashes, which lasted several hours.

.....Pollution has become a prime cause of social unrest and public discontent on the mainland, where years of breakneck economic growth, at the expense of the environment and public health, have left many areas heavily contaminated. The number of "cancer villages", where the rate of cancers is much higher than the average, is growing rapidly. Yesterday villagers in Chengping, from where many of the protesters came, said many in their family, and neighbours, had died of stomach and oesophagal cancer in recent years, and blamed the discharge of untreated sewage.

"A foul smell from the sewage plant has permeated our village for years," one villager said..."In Fujian, one in three cancer patients comes from Quanzhou." The villager would not give his name for fear of reprisals.

Another villager whose mother has stomach cancer said: "There are just too many cancer patients here."
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=691d6f6584673210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=&s=Home