Well argued piece.

As long as benefit is clearly demonstrated for Australia, and gains are also made in terms of access to china and its companies/land, then why not allow more Chinese investment.

Nevertheless, i am not so optimistic about China's rise or its ability to make appropriate political reforms.

Time will tell.

Quite so - if Chinese investors want to buy run-down cotton producing stations out in the Queensland bush - notably Cubbie Station which has been getting a lot of press in the past two days or so - particularly when no one else will, then let them.

Why anyone should bother to object is as much a mystery to me as it is to the author. The station will still produce cotton which will still be sold to China, and both the land and the water will still be subject to Australian law. But I suspect that logic is not the point of the objections.

The cotton won't be sold? just simply sent to china? This means Cubbie station, will probably run at a technical loss and or, any income produced not subject to the usual tax regime?
If the Chinese want to acquire our most productive land, why can't they simply lease it, on very favourable to us, reciprocal terms?
If we continue to allow our best most arable farmland to go, in harmful fire sales, to offshore investors? Just to further boost/maximise bank profits/bottom lines?
It will only become a matter of time, before we become tenants in our own land.
If we actually really do need foreign capital?
Then why not allow ourselves access to, the possibly mind boggling mineral wealth, that lies to our immediate north.
If we the people opened up and operated these possible projects, in a completely environmentally safeguarded sensitive way, [world's best practise;] and they lived up in part, to the predicted size, we could seize, particularly at this time, as much as say, 25% of the international market.
25% of the international market, would earn we the people, in excess of a trillion dollars a year!
Now that's what I call foreign capital, which by the way, would come in as earnings or income, rather than more foreign debt, which by the way, we mugs service in premium prices; or, more lost tax receipts or both!
Given the current state of the world and an increasingly volatile Middle East; I believe, only a fool would advocate locking up our most valuable resource assets, all while simultaneously advocating we sell off our own future food security, or the export incomes and tax receipts our land will produce for us!
But only if it remains in Australian rather than foreign hands. Currently, anyone can come here as a completely cashed up migrant completely free to bid for or buy anything at all.
Rhrosty.

Rhosty - no I meant sold to China.. as for the bit about the tax regime, there are already strong transfer pricing laws in place which prevent companies pricing products in a way that effectively transfer profits between tax regimes.

The real problem in this regard are companies like Apple and Google, who take their revenue in tax havens because their business is transacted online. If you're worried about tax forget farm land, think internet.

The Cubbie station sale was not bargain basement. The receivers had to wait years to get a sale.. Probably this Chinese group were the only buyers fool enough to take it...

Yeah,
Let the Chinese buy up all of Australia. They can afford it.

With the $Gazillions they give us we can sit back and rent our homes from the Chinese while they provide cheap food, clothes, cars, holidays and social services for all of us.

And because Chines hate foreigners (Gui Low) there would be no more boat people and no more idiotic multi culturalism that eats up so much of Australian's tax dollars.

We could even have a one child policy to stop women going off there nuts trying to be MEN-With-KIDS.

With China in charge, we won't have stupid people like Wayne Swan telling us how good a treasurer he is while in the background shot the economy is collapsing like the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

In for a penny in for a pound I say.

The only thing worse than selling out to the Chinese is doing the same old Anglo-COLONIAL BS we are doing now.

Knee Hqa!

KAEP,
Impossible to argue with that assertion.