Doing Business with China

Some of my family lived in China in the later part of the 19th century.
However since 1949 I have regarded mainland China as the red peril -- though Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book was rather fun to pass around at school.
China’s economic advancement is proving an ideological challenge. I’ll pay a little extra for goods of equivalent quality from anywhere but China. But if Chinese stuff is cheaper, then it’s costly to boycott it.
So what about investing there? Corruption is rife, and the penalties severe, though as four employees of Rio Tinto will find out this week, those imprisoned for economic crimes are treated far less harshly.
I’m putting this year’s tax-exempt savings into a new investment trust that will buy into companies that do business in China. Domestic consumer spending is set to take off, creating huge economic expansion.
Investing in China is not for the faint-hearted.

Akmal Shaikh

Fresh from hosting the complete failure of the Copenhagen climate change summit, the European Union again finds itself utterly impotent on the world stage.
Tomorrow morning China is set to execute the first European citizen in half a century, after choosing to ignore pleas from most civilized peoples. This is too big an issue for them to be worried about “saving face”.
Opposition to the death penalty is something I agree with the EU about, and whilst I also oppose drug trafficking, it is hardly a capital crime of which Akmal Shaikh is accused. To say nothing of the man’s poor mental state, further grounds for acquittal. Oh, and I might mention the barbaric method by which the Chinese Communists dispatch their victims -- a bullet to the head.
I somehow doubt that China will kow-tow.

Update 9am, 29 December 2009: Akmal Shaikh R.I.P. -- In China, life is cheap.