The world and its dog has now commented to its heart’s content about the Memorandum of Understanding signed last week between Malta and China for a strategic investment (by China) in the (Maltese) energy sector.

Many of the comments have been partisan or follow partisan leads and/or rebuttals. There are still angles to consider.

Before asking whether this investment is good for Malta or not, maybe one should look at its precedents.

In the 1970s and 1980s, in a different political environment, there was a lot of Chinese effort and investment in Malta but it all came to a sorry end. There is no doubt that the Chinese counterpart tried their best to help the Maltese economy in the throes of British Services’ rundown in the way they, the Chinese, understood things. Coming from a centralized economy where everything had to be centralized and at a stage where technology was of the most basic, the initiative, well-meaning as it may have been, foundered because it was just not accepted by the Maltese population, by many of its own workers and by a different cultural world.

There is no doubt today that China has changed to a modern economic superpower handling the latest in scientific and technological tools, and, while its hinterland remains lagging in this general improvement, its rate of growth and the verve of a liberated population has propelled China to become the top economic giant it is today.

For it to invest in Malta and specifically in Enemalta is the equivalent of spending peanuts.

The problem is: can the patient (Enemalta) take the cure? The past days as the Public Accounts Committee continued to debate the Auditor General’s report on fuel procurement have shown how ramshackle and crisis-ridden the corporation is almost without a proper management structure and the barest coverage of the essential functions of a corporation that handles €1 billion a year.

Although the following was not made clear in the PAC meetings, there could also be in-built resistance to change from the depleted management structures to any overhaul and changes they cannot understand.

The Chinese this time will not be coming in with machines that make rattan, or any of the low tech products they used to do in the previous time. They will come in with management structures and expect to find the same kind of professionalism they have at home. Add to that the cultural and language differences and you can worry till the cows come home.

The previous administration, for better or for worse, had its own template for the much needed revamp and upgrading of the corporation. Based on gradualism but buffeted by the 2008 world crisis, the template involved solving the most immediate problem of assurance of electricity provision though the immediate building of an extension to the power station, medium-term through the interconnector from Sicily and long-term through basing energy provision from gas. The present government is committed to plunge in immediately for gas turbines.

It is in this context that one has to see the Chinese investment in Enemalta. China Power Investment Corporation, Shanghai Power Electric, are giants in their fields and have an enviable track record.

There will have to be, no doubt, regulatory issues to be tackled especially with the European Commission but one hopes the Government of Malta did, as it says it did, its homework well.

While a minority share in the power corporation of the smallest country in the EU hardly looks threatening in the context of continental economical reality, seen from the point of view of this small country the investment and consequent role of China in the Maltese economy will be nothing short of huge.