From the billion dollar acquisition of one of the world's largest salmon companies to the purchase of copper and lithium mines to wineries and fruit fields, china has set its sights on Chile it may be a small country but it has a very long and strategic pacific coastline and lots of resources that the Asian giant needs. While Chile's economic growth owes a great deal to china, members of congress are warning of an aggressive investment offensive not from private capital but from the Chinese state.
The congressman has co-drafted a proposal that seeks to regulate foreign state ownership in strategic and geopolitical sectors of the economy, on the top of his list is the Chinese state's majority control of electricity distribution in Chile. Cherry orchards may not seem to fit that description but Chinese companies are increasingly buying more and more agricultural land to produce one of Chile's prime exports fruit especially cherries and that's raising concerns that china may be moving towards producing packing and exporting its own fruit eventually eliminating the Chilean entrepreneur altogether.
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Photo by Марта Вольская on Unsplash |
Six weeks ago at the height of peak season billion dollar cherry exports to china ground to an abrupt halt, it's very suspicious exactly when they started debating this bill in congress the social networks in china who we all know are controlled by the state began denouncing that Chile's cherries had traces of COVID19. Chile's foreign ministry refuses to entertain the notion of foul play at least publicly, but Navarro is not alone in suspecting that china was sending a veiled message that there's a high price to pay if Chile decides to limit china's economic influence.
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