Didn’t our government tell us that what they are signing is a bilateral agreement on foreign direct investment for Malta? That’s how they sweetened the media pill. Now it turns out that it’s an up-in-the-air memorandum of understanding in which the Chinese communists promise much, will probably deliver nothing beyond the cash for snapping up key bits of Malta’s economy, yet expect Malta to be their goon in Europe.
Ultimately, the only thing Malta has that China wants to use is its EU membership. Without that EU membership, Malta is worth diddly-squat to China. What I see here is China behaving exactly like those awful men who hook up with a useful, desperate woman, keep her sweet with lots of promises, flattery and the occasional gift, then when the moment is right talk her into hauling a packet of cocaine across a border in what euphemism knows as her ‘body cavity’.
If I might be less than subtle, this agreement – which is just a few pages long and very non-specific, according to the newspaper reports – is just a merkin for Malta being China’s ‘comfort woman’ in the European Union. What our prime minister has trumpeted as an unprecedented and momentous agreement along the lines of the Bush-Gorbachov concordat in 1989 has been reported very differently in the Chinese press. This was a closely scripted event reported in the tightly controlled China Daily – nothing spontaneous about it. And China Daily reports:
Li said Malta, in central Mediterranean, has the geographical advantage of easy access to markets. China will expand cooperation with Malta in such areas as trade, energy, infrastructure construction, ocean and tourism.
The premier added he hoped Malta, as a good friend and partner of China within the European Union, would continue to play a positive role for the development of China-EU relations.
Muscat said Malta-China relations, based on mutual understanding and mutual respect, have seen great development in recent years. He said Malta would take the signing of the MOU as an opportunity to further expand bilateral cooperation in various areas, and that Malta will utilize its geographical advantage to purse greater achievements in EU-China cooperation.
It’s all about what China needs in the European Union and what Malta can get in return for servicing those demands. And there we have the crux of the problem immediately. The Labour Party and its people in government do not have any sense of belonging to the European Union, no sense of possession, loyalty or being part of a bloc that pulls together in mutual interest against the real ‘barranin’ like China who threaten Europe’s interests. Instead, Joseph Muscat and his men see the European Union as something Malta can use and take advantage of, to the point of siding with an outsider and working to further that outsider’s interests even if this might go against the interests of the European bloc.
The full memorandum of understanding has been published and it is so basic and so unprofessionally written that one wishes to weep that it has come to this. What is most offensive is the final paragraph, which specifies that the MOU expires on 31 December 2019, but “the parties agree to open discussions on a new medium-term cooperation plan covering a subsequent five-year period at an appropriate date in 2019”. The government is the government is the government, whichever parts sits in it. This agreement will also bind the Nationalists in the unlikely event that they will win the 2018 general election. But beyond that, it is obvious what is going on here: so as to be sure that its hegemony over the Maltese government will continue beyond 2019, the Chinese communist dictatorship has a direct and very real incentive to keep the Labour Party in power. There are no prizes for guessing the many ways in which that sort of thing is done most effectively.
China is not a democracy. It is not accountable to the electorate because there is no electorate. It has no institutions which make for checks and balances. There is no rule of law. It is a corrupt dictatorship, and there are no legal, civic or public constraints on filling the war chest of a political party in another country to further its own pecuniary interests.
The feeling now grows that we are left undefended against the onslaught of cupidity-driven foreign and economic policy and snout-in-the-trough crazy greed.