It is time for China to pick up the G-String left by naked Greece!
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trackwhack
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well, two years on and chinese help has saved greece!
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Wasn't Greece a member of NATO before EU?
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I don't know if the statement is accurate, but it is picturesque!
Keep dreaming, China wont save Greece or any other debt-ridden crappy hellholes althrough we dont mind pay some lip services
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Will China alone be able to nurse Greece back to health?
THE KEYWORD IS CRISIS
Will China alone be able to nurse Greece back to health?
If Crete of the legendary monster isn't Greece's new Chinatown, the volcanic cauldron of Santorini is. This is the bright new China with the world's widest gap between rich and poor. It prefers Greek folk-dancing to Labour Day rallies, punishes workers who dare to mention trade union rights, sells tinny Indian manufactures under the Chinese banner and woos Greece as the gateway to Europe and the world.
It's a different Greece, too, from my recollections of 46 years ago. The denuded Parthenon suggests that Lord Elgin has been on another rampage — but, no, most of its treasures are now housed in a glittering glass museum. Instead of stomping in solidarity marches, 11 Chinese couples flew to Santorini on May 1 to celebrate their nuptials with traditional Greek dances. Sixteen brides and grooms from China exchanged vows of eternal love and devotion in Crete's idyllic Aptera Fortress. But Greece isn't only fun and games. It's China's beachhead for the world. Du Qiwen, China's former ambassador, stressed in a eulogy titled "I believe in the future of Greece", Athens commands the "crossroads connecting Europe, Asia and Africa".
China fits easily into this land of contradictions. Greece's communist party is one of Europe's strongest, but grey-bearded black-robed priests are everywhere murmuring the traditional greeting, "Chronoia pollia"¦ Many years!" Gone are the days when suspicious looks and whispers of "Spy!" forced Kythera's solitary Chinese shopkeeper to pull down shutters and flee the island. Now, China and Greece have discovered they represent glorious ancient civilizations. Both face troubles in the contemporary world. After the storm, they will dazzle the world again with their vigour and vitality marching hand in hand into a rosy capitalist dawn. A Chinese was the first beneficiary of Greece's scheme to bestow residency rights on foreigners who invest 250,000 euros (Rs 20,825,000) in real estate in this crisis-ridden country.
The keyword is crisis. Five years ago, Greece faced bankruptcy and feared ejection from the Eurozone. The European Union's bailout packages worth 240 billion euros only aggravated public wrath. For one thing, the loans carried interest. For another, the stringent conditions compounded distress. Nor did the money help Greece's stricken economy: it went to repay German and French banks that had earned higher interest from Greece than they would have done by lending at home.
Angela Merkel is seen as the villain of the piece. Demonstrators in Nazi uniform brandishing swastika-daubed banners chanted "Get out Merkel" when she visited in 2012. Critics of Antonis Samaras' conservative New Democracy government accused her of visiting Athens "to praise the government's destructive work and make sure that austerity continues". If her last visit in April, which lasted only a few hours, passed off without ructions, it was only because thousands of armed policemen and water cannons cordoned off her route while a helicopter hovered overhead. Greeks hope a 2.5 billion euro primary budget surplus (meaning before counting debt-servicing costs) will improve their negotiating power for the next deal with the EU.
Anguish generates anger. The depression has wiped out more than 25 per cent of Greece's output. The public debt is 175 per cent of gross product. With a record 26.7 per cent unemployment, poverty levels are rising inexorably. When pay and pensions were slashed, only the court's intervention forced the government not to cut police and military wages too. You need only wander away from the main squares of Athens, Sparta or any other town to see crumbling plaster, padlocked doors, boarded-up shop fronts and deserted cafés. Taxi drivers sit around by their idle cars. The price of the best Valencia oranges in Lakonia, which survives on cultivating oranges and olives, has plummeted to six cents a kilo. Olives fare slightly better only because Italians mix the locally made olive oil with their own. It was supposed to be one of the thrice-weekly late-night shopping days in Piraeus (Greece's biggest port and adjoining Athens), where I am writing this, but the street below my balcony and the still-open shops were deserted. "A lot of money is poured in," people say, "but it leaks away!" Leak has become a popular word.
China is the saviour, ready to buy into Greece's future when no other country will. Apparently, it's not for the first time. "They invested in Greece during Costas Karamanlis's premiership, bought 6 billion euros' worth of bonds during George Papandreou's government and finally put pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she flirted with the idea of throwing us out of the eurozone," wrote Alexis Papachelas, a respected columnist in the Athens daily, Ekathimerini. This time round, China's maritime and port operations giant COSCO has undertaken a long-term 700-million euro project to turn Piraeus into the leading container terminal in the Mediterranean region. China is proud that Hewlett-Packard chose Piraeus as the base to distribute its products in Europe, North Africa and West Asia.
The connection extends beyond Piraeus. A factory just outside Athens producing a carbonated drink called Frutop tripled exports last year by selling to China. Simplified visas for the Chinese and a direct Athens-Beijing flight meant a 202 per cent rise in Chinese tourists — boosting Greece's biggest industry — though the number is still relatively small. Chinese stores sell cheap readymades and household goods at almost every streetcorner. Stopping at one such establishment, I noticed their steel utensils were Indian! Their quiet confidence is unlike the cheerful scruffiness of the Pakistani selling smuggled cigarettes or a sad Bangladeshi lurking in the empty wharf with a clutch of showy sunglasses. They escaped the net when most illegal foreigners were rounded up.
"We are global shipping powers and we can cooperate in many areas," Li Keqiang announced when Samaras took 87 Greek businessmen to Beijing exactly a year ago. Acknowledging "heightened cooperation since 2010", Li proposed investing in Greek railways, roads, airports and other seaports. Agreements already cover cooperation in asset development, banking, tourism, real estate, energy, telecommunications, transport and investment financing. The Chinese company ZTE (among the world's five leading manufacturers of telecommunications equipment in over 140 countries) is expected to turn Piraeus port into a transit and logistics hub for ZTE products in Europe. Huawei is creating a centre for research and innovation and cooperating with Greek universities to train young people.
Not all Greeks are enamoured of China. Although exports to China have grown substantially and were worth more than 420 million euros last year, it's a familiar refrain that these sales amount to only one-twentieth of what China sells Greece. Giorgos Gogos, general secretary of the Piraeus dockworkers' union, accuses China of preying on a "vulnerable Greek economy" for its own benefit: "Nobody gives money for nothing, especially Chinese companies and the Chinese government." The Piraeus project "didn't create the jobs it said it would." It reportedly employs about 1,000 Greeks. Greece's shipping minister says another agreement to further expand port facilities will create 700 direct and 1,500 indirect jobs. But the complaint that COSCO ill-treats employees remains. In practice, it doesn't allow trade union activity. Dmitris Batsoulis, a sacked COSCO dockworker, presents a grim picture of oppressive management, violated safety regulations, bulk temporary recruitment through subcontractors and a flat refusal to entertain collective decision-making on any matter.
The bigger questions are whether China alone will be able to nurse Greece back to health and if so, what price it might extract. A scholarly Greek friend says that despite traditional cultural exclusivity, underlined by the Greek Orthodox Church's dominant role, a nation that has been ruled by Turkey, Venice, Genoa, the Knights of St John, Russia, France and Britain can come to terms with the reality of Chinese power. Greeks will get off lightly if all China demands is Li Keqiang's stated hope that Athens will help to improve Beijing's relations with the EU.
The keyword is crisis
*******************************************************************
China is doing a great job reviving economies in Europe.
However, but by not allowing democratic trade union and labour practices, they are mere harming their image.
THE KEYWORD IS CRISIS
Will China alone be able to nurse Greece back to health?
If Crete of the legendary monster isn't Greece's new Chinatown, the volcanic cauldron of Santorini is. This is the bright new China with the world's widest gap between rich and poor. It prefers Greek folk-dancing to Labour Day rallies, punishes workers who dare to mention trade union rights, sells tinny Indian manufactures under the Chinese banner and woos Greece as the gateway to Europe and the world.
It's a different Greece, too, from my recollections of 46 years ago. The denuded Parthenon suggests that Lord Elgin has been on another rampage — but, no, most of its treasures are now housed in a glittering glass museum. Instead of stomping in solidarity marches, 11 Chinese couples flew to Santorini on May 1 to celebrate their nuptials with traditional Greek dances. Sixteen brides and grooms from China exchanged vows of eternal love and devotion in Crete's idyllic Aptera Fortress. But Greece isn't only fun and games. It's China's beachhead for the world. Du Qiwen, China's former ambassador, stressed in a eulogy titled "I believe in the future of Greece", Athens commands the "crossroads connecting Europe, Asia and Africa".
China fits easily into this land of contradictions. Greece's communist party is one of Europe's strongest, but grey-bearded black-robed priests are everywhere murmuring the traditional greeting, "Chronoia pollia"¦ Many years!" Gone are the days when suspicious looks and whispers of "Spy!" forced Kythera's solitary Chinese shopkeeper to pull down shutters and flee the island. Now, China and Greece have discovered they represent glorious ancient civilizations. Both face troubles in the contemporary world. After the storm, they will dazzle the world again with their vigour and vitality marching hand in hand into a rosy capitalist dawn. A Chinese was the first beneficiary of Greece's scheme to bestow residency rights on foreigners who invest 250,000 euros (Rs 20,825,000) in real estate in this crisis-ridden country.
The keyword is crisis. Five years ago, Greece faced bankruptcy and feared ejection from the Eurozone. The European Union's bailout packages worth 240 billion euros only aggravated public wrath. For one thing, the loans carried interest. For another, the stringent conditions compounded distress. Nor did the money help Greece's stricken economy: it went to repay German and French banks that had earned higher interest from Greece than they would have done by lending at home.
Angela Merkel is seen as the villain of the piece. Demonstrators in Nazi uniform brandishing swastika-daubed banners chanted "Get out Merkel" when she visited in 2012. Critics of Antonis Samaras' conservative New Democracy government accused her of visiting Athens "to praise the government's destructive work and make sure that austerity continues". If her last visit in April, which lasted only a few hours, passed off without ructions, it was only because thousands of armed policemen and water cannons cordoned off her route while a helicopter hovered overhead. Greeks hope a 2.5 billion euro primary budget surplus (meaning before counting debt-servicing costs) will improve their negotiating power for the next deal with the EU.
Anguish generates anger. The depression has wiped out more than 25 per cent of Greece's output. The public debt is 175 per cent of gross product. With a record 26.7 per cent unemployment, poverty levels are rising inexorably. When pay and pensions were slashed, only the court's intervention forced the government not to cut police and military wages too. You need only wander away from the main squares of Athens, Sparta or any other town to see crumbling plaster, padlocked doors, boarded-up shop fronts and deserted cafés. Taxi drivers sit around by their idle cars. The price of the best Valencia oranges in Lakonia, which survives on cultivating oranges and olives, has plummeted to six cents a kilo. Olives fare slightly better only because Italians mix the locally made olive oil with their own. It was supposed to be one of the thrice-weekly late-night shopping days in Piraeus (Greece's biggest port and adjoining Athens), where I am writing this, but the street below my balcony and the still-open shops were deserted. "A lot of money is poured in," people say, "but it leaks away!" Leak has become a popular word.
China is the saviour, ready to buy into Greece's future when no other country will. Apparently, it's not for the first time. "They invested in Greece during Costas Karamanlis's premiership, bought 6 billion euros' worth of bonds during George Papandreou's government and finally put pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she flirted with the idea of throwing us out of the eurozone," wrote Alexis Papachelas, a respected columnist in the Athens daily, Ekathimerini. This time round, China's maritime and port operations giant COSCO has undertaken a long-term 700-million euro project to turn Piraeus into the leading container terminal in the Mediterranean region. China is proud that Hewlett-Packard chose Piraeus as the base to distribute its products in Europe, North Africa and West Asia.
The connection extends beyond Piraeus. A factory just outside Athens producing a carbonated drink called Frutop tripled exports last year by selling to China. Simplified visas for the Chinese and a direct Athens-Beijing flight meant a 202 per cent rise in Chinese tourists — boosting Greece's biggest industry — though the number is still relatively small. Chinese stores sell cheap readymades and household goods at almost every streetcorner. Stopping at one such establishment, I noticed their steel utensils were Indian! Their quiet confidence is unlike the cheerful scruffiness of the Pakistani selling smuggled cigarettes or a sad Bangladeshi lurking in the empty wharf with a clutch of showy sunglasses. They escaped the net when most illegal foreigners were rounded up.
"We are global shipping powers and we can cooperate in many areas," Li Keqiang announced when Samaras took 87 Greek businessmen to Beijing exactly a year ago. Acknowledging "heightened cooperation since 2010", Li proposed investing in Greek railways, roads, airports and other seaports. Agreements already cover cooperation in asset development, banking, tourism, real estate, energy, telecommunications, transport and investment financing. The Chinese company ZTE (among the world's five leading manufacturers of telecommunications equipment in over 140 countries) is expected to turn Piraeus port into a transit and logistics hub for ZTE products in Europe. Huawei is creating a centre for research and innovation and cooperating with Greek universities to train young people.
Not all Greeks are enamoured of China. Although exports to China have grown substantially and were worth more than 420 million euros last year, it's a familiar refrain that these sales amount to only one-twentieth of what China sells Greece. Giorgos Gogos, general secretary of the Piraeus dockworkers' union, accuses China of preying on a "vulnerable Greek economy" for its own benefit: "Nobody gives money for nothing, especially Chinese companies and the Chinese government." The Piraeus project "didn't create the jobs it said it would." It reportedly employs about 1,000 Greeks. Greece's shipping minister says another agreement to further expand port facilities will create 700 direct and 1,500 indirect jobs. But the complaint that COSCO ill-treats employees remains. In practice, it doesn't allow trade union activity. Dmitris Batsoulis, a sacked COSCO dockworker, presents a grim picture of oppressive management, violated safety regulations, bulk temporary recruitment through subcontractors and a flat refusal to entertain collective decision-making on any matter.
The bigger questions are whether China alone will be able to nurse Greece back to health and if so, what price it might extract. A scholarly Greek friend says that despite traditional cultural exclusivity, underlined by the Greek Orthodox Church's dominant role, a nation that has been ruled by Turkey, Venice, Genoa, the Knights of St John, Russia, France and Britain can come to terms with the reality of Chinese power. Greeks will get off lightly if all China demands is Li Keqiang's stated hope that Athens will help to improve Beijing's relations with the EU.
The keyword is crisis
*******************************************************************
China is doing a great job reviving economies in Europe.
However, but by not allowing democratic trade union and labour practices, they are mere harming their image.
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2009
- Messages
- 43,132
- Likes
- 23,835
It is like the proverbial case of 'Here Today. Gone Tomorrow.'Greece's port in a storm: anger as Syriza stops China extending hold on Piraeus
Beijing-run side of harbour is thriving but new government has pulled plug on plans for more foreign buyouts
Piraeus port, just outside Athens, which is partly run by Cosco, a Chinese state-owned company.
Day and night, the Chinese-run piers of the Piraeus container terminal are a hive of activity. Lorries come and go while forklift trucks zoom around and colossal cranes heave giant containers from ship to shore.
Five years after its arrival in the Mediterranean, China's global shipping carrier, Cosco, takes immense pride in the efficiency with which affairs are conducted on these piers. Business activity has tripled since the state-owned conglomerate acquired the port for €500m (£373m), the biggest foreign investment in Greece in modern times.
But any plans by Beijing to extend its commercial reach have been rudely interrupted by the ascent to power of Syriza, the radical leftists upending conventional orthodoxies in Greece.
On its maiden day in office, the new government announced that a privatisation programme launched to trim the country's staggering €320bn debt load was in effect null and void. Plans to sell off further port assets – repair docks as well as car, passenger and cruise ship terminals that Cosco had been bidding for – have been scrapped.
"It's a pity," sighed Tassos Vamvakidis, the terminal's commercial manager, rolling a red anti-stress ball across his spotlessly tidy desk. "I think Piraeus deserves a better future. Cosco had big plans to invest in dry docks and other infrastructure. A lot of people were very upset. Foreign investors definitely did not see this with a good eye."
He was right. Within hours of the news filtering back to Beijing, Chinese officials were voicing concern and the local media were blasting Alexis Tsipras. Greece's new leader, they cried, was like the mythological figure Phaeton who, when given the reins of the sun chariot for a day, lost control and, almost destroyed the earth. Subsequent attempts at smoothing ruffled feathers – with assurances that Cosco's concession would be "respected" – have done little to placate the Chinese.
The activity at the Chinese part of the terminal in Perama is a world away from the slow motion on the other side of the port. There state employees protected by labour rules and given higher wages – the result of years of unbending trade unionism – have seen work decline precipitously.
If China had its way, it would have bought a majority stake in this side of the harbour, snapped up the nation's state-run railway network and purchased the port of Thessaloniki. No other country, it says, represents a better foothold into Europe than Greece.
Powerful unions have long been blamed for Greece's lack of competitiveness. For critics, the tempest now blowing off Piraeus's shores offers a snapshot into the inability of Athens to slay the monster that has obstructed economic growth. Syriza has been widely accused of pandering to unions deeply opposed to enforcing changes that would roll back workers' rights.
Many believe Cosco's high-energy regime is what is needed nationwide if Greeks are to emerge from their worst recession on record and break free of the demands of international creditors keeping the country afloat.
But that is not how workers see it in the shipyards out of Cosco's control.
"We'd have had no rights," said Vassilis Savvas. "And Greece would have had no rights. We are not going to do what the previous government wanted. Sell off our land, like that, for nothing."
From his fibreglass cabin opposite a rickety hut that is the local meeting place for communist unionists, Savvas controls the traffic in and out of the publicly owned shipyards at Perama. Here visitors are greeted not by a fountain – the centrepiece of the Cosco-run port – but a pack of snarling dogs, ripped flags and buildings daubed with slogans such as "they won't oppress us" and "hang all fascists".
Savvas, who has handled security at the port for 36 years, accepted the landscape was bleak. "At the most we get about 10 ships in these days, when before there would be over 80 at any given time," he said, taking in the scrawl in his handwritten logbook. "Right now most are in for small repairs, propellers that sort of thing. Anything bigger and they go to Turkey where it's cheaper."
A large man with blue-framed spectacles, a nicotine-stained moustache and a round pleasant face, the 54-year-old remained animated until talk turned to Cosco. All his life he had voted for the left. Syriza's victory in elections 10 days ago was, he said, the jolt Greece and Europe needed.
"I haven't laboured all these years to be hired for hunger wages," he said. "At Cosco they bring people in on subcontracts, make them work for a pittance and then send them packing. As it is, I can hardly make ends meet on a salary of €940 [£705] a month. And I'm lucky. Go! Go into Perama to see the truth, to see for yourself."
Two roads cut through Perama: Irinis (peace) and Demokratias (democracy). The former, covered with graffiti in praise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, lies at the bottom of the hills around which Perama ascends. The latter, splattered with hammers and sickles, runs close to the shores of the Saronic Gulf.
No place has mirrored Greece's great economic crisis more than this. More than 70% of people in the suburb are unemployed, the victims of lost jobs at the shipyards; one in three families survive on food handouts and nearly all are uninsured, with no access to hospital care.
The wreckage wrought by five years of austerity is everywhere, but is most apparent on Perama's upper slopes, overlooking the docks, where locals live in hastily built breeze-block dwellings, often without heat or electricity.
"I have seen a lot of things in my life," said Vangelio Makris, 80, poking her head out of her sitting room window. "And I can say, honestly, that politics destroyed us. The love of power, the love of money, destroyed us."
Down the hill, Rebecca Tzanetea and Amalia Polatou are medical specialists who volunteer at the polyclinic set up by Doctors of the World in Perama. Both drive in from central Athens, a journey from "one world to another". At 50, Tzanetea, who has spent several stints working in Africa, has been shocked by what she has seen. "We're offering relief," she said, "but we're not offering a solution. These are people who were never well-off. Perama was always poor. But before the crisis they could at least cope. Now they have lost everything."
At least 60 patients – migrants and Greeks – come to the clinic every day. Some drop by to get hand-me-downs and other donations. But with poverty have come escalating levels of physical illness along with anxiety and depression. "Their needs are enormous," said Polatou, a child psychologist. "A lot of the children are suffering from anxiety – but that they, and their parents, are even able to survive in such horrible conditions says a lot about the love of life."
For a long time patients would discuss the shipyards. But what has struck the volunteers of late is that they no longer want to talk about them, or anything much that defined their lives before. "I've been struck by it," said Katerina Kantziki, a midwife who has helped run the clinic since it opened at the beginning of the crisis in 2010. "Nobody wants to express an opinion. They just want to survive."
That is not the case lower down the hill where black-clad followers of Golden Dawn do nothing but discuss policy when they meet at the party's local branch. Barely five years ago the neo-fascist group picked up 83 votes; now it is going strong with polling rates of above 9%, the second biggest party after Syriza in the area. Increasingly, Perama is being seen as a bellwether of what could ensue if Syriza fails.
"If Greeks are disappointed again there will be only one place for them to turn," said Alekos Papathanasiou, a long-time Perama resident who makes ends meet driving a taxi. "I hear it all the time," he smiled. "Golden Dawn has not gone away. It is waiting to win the hearts of Greeks and there are a lot of people out there who, next time round, would be willing to embrace them."
Greece's port in a storm: anger as Syriza stops China extending hold on Piraeus | World news | The Guardian
The Chinese are getting a taste of Communism that they had savoured and celebrated as the true way of life. But this time, their shoe pinches.
These statements sums it all -
1. "We'd have had no rights," said Vassilis Savvas. "And Greece would have had no rights. We are not going to do what the previous government wanted. Sell off our land, like that, for nothing."
2."I haven't laboured all these years to be hired for hunger wages," he said. "At Cosco they bring people in on subcontracts, make them work for a pittance and then send them packing. As it is, I can hardly make ends meet on a salary of €940 [£705] a month. And I'm lucky. Go! Go into Perama to see the truth, to see for yourself."
