Miragedriver
Brigadier
Oops! Sorry Amigo.
Bad syntax on my part. I meant to say “I use the term, democracy” loosely since can one really call Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia a “democracy”
China and Argentina re Falklands/Malvinas
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Oops! Sorry Amigo.
Bad syntax on my part. I meant to say “I use the term, democracy” loosely since can one really call Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia a “democracy”
Miragedriver
Brigadier
Argentina turns to China for arms supply
April 9, 2015
KAMILIA LAHRICHI, Contributing writer
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina, under siege by Western creditors and short on foreign currency, has turned to China for help modernizing its decrepit defense systems, as part of its strengthening ties with the Asian power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Argentine counterpart, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, signed numerous investment and trade agreements during her three-day visit to Beijing in February -- a trip made notorious by her quip on Twitter about Chinese accents.
Among the deals was a $1 billion order for Chinese military supplies, such as armored personnel carriers, fighter jets and navy vessels. Agustin Rossi, Argentina's minister of defense, said in March that the FC-1/JF-17 fighter jet made by China's Chengdu Aircraft Corporation suited the needs of the country's air force.
The two nations also agreed to exchange military officers. In addition, China will build field hospitals in Argentina.
In March, the Argentine Congress approved China's first overseas satellite tracking station. The $300 million base is to be built in Argentina's southern Neuquen province and will begin operations in 2016.
For China, these deals mark a major step in growing its defense industry's market share and influence in Latin America. The fact that Argentina has primarily relied on American military systems in the past makes it an even bigger coup.
Modernizing defense industry
Argentina, which defaulted on its debts in 2001 and became a pariah in global financial markets, has been strengthening its ties with China, which came to its rescue last July with an $11 billion currency swap.
It makes financial sense for the cash-strapped military to buy from China. Chinese suppliers offered very attractive financing options, said Roberto De Luise, undersecretary of international affairs at Argentina's defense ministry, in an interview in July 2014.
This is not the first time Argentina's military has bought Chinese military products. In 2011, it ordered Z-11 light helicopters from China's Avicopter.
Back to bottling my Grenache
April 9, 2015
KAMILIA LAHRICHI, Contributing writer
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina, under siege by Western creditors and short on foreign currency, has turned to China for help modernizing its decrepit defense systems, as part of its strengthening ties with the Asian power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Argentine counterpart, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, signed numerous investment and trade agreements during her three-day visit to Beijing in February -- a trip made notorious by her quip on Twitter about Chinese accents.
Among the deals was a $1 billion order for Chinese military supplies, such as armored personnel carriers, fighter jets and navy vessels. Agustin Rossi, Argentina's minister of defense, said in March that the FC-1/JF-17 fighter jet made by China's Chengdu Aircraft Corporation suited the needs of the country's air force.
The two nations also agreed to exchange military officers. In addition, China will build field hospitals in Argentina.
In March, the Argentine Congress approved China's first overseas satellite tracking station. The $300 million base is to be built in Argentina's southern Neuquen province and will begin operations in 2016.
For China, these deals mark a major step in growing its defense industry's market share and influence in Latin America. The fact that Argentina has primarily relied on American military systems in the past makes it an even bigger coup.
Modernizing defense industry
Argentina, which defaulted on its debts in 2001 and became a pariah in global financial markets, has been strengthening its ties with China, which came to its rescue last July with an $11 billion currency swap.
It makes financial sense for the cash-strapped military to buy from China. Chinese suppliers offered very attractive financing options, said Roberto De Luise, undersecretary of international affairs at Argentina's defense ministry, in an interview in July 2014.
This is not the first time Argentina's military has bought Chinese military products. In 2011, it ordered Z-11 light helicopters from China's Avicopter.
Back to bottling my Grenache
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Luckily for Argentina President Xi didn't take the social faux pas by Kircher to heart LOL. and that she said it in spanish instead of English which I presume would've sounded even more 'racist'.
— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina)
Más de 1.000 asistentes al evento… ¿Serán todos de “La Cámpola” y vinieron sólo por el aloz y el petlóleo? …
— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina)
Más de 1.000 asistentes al evento… ¿Serán todos de “La Cámpola” y vinieron sólo por el aloz y el petlóleo? …
Miragedriver
Brigadier
Yes very lucky indeed. As I mentioned several times before. “She is a disgrace to the office of the Presidency” and a bi-polar simpleton. She arrived at her position because of the political machine created by her deiced husband.
Back to bottling my Grenache
b787
Captain
I understand what are you saying but i will give you the other side of the coin, can you call Mexico a democracy? If i am very honest, the answer is not; Enrique Peña Nieto is ruling for the rich, there is no democracy when the president is found in corruption deals by an independent news reporter, he appoints his own judge and he is found innocent.
However we can not call Argentina, Mexico or Venezuela dictatorships.
Our nations are indeed democracies in paper, but are dysfunctional democracies, where corruption is rampant, and the democratic institutions are not really respected.
Mexico is not called a dictatorship in the western press simply because Enrique Peña Nieto if giving away Mexico`s oil to foreign companies, Nicolás Maduro is not doing that then he is called a Dictator because Venezuela is doing what Mexico did in 1938.
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Miragedriver
Brigadier
Ok, I see your point. Then I guess we could say they are a (non-democratic since the elections are bought) Elected, Republic Presidential Dictatorship
A dictatorship consists of rule by one person or a group of people. Very few dictators admit they are dictators; they almost always claim to be leaders of democracies. The dictator may be one person, such as Castro in Cuba or a group of people, such as the Communist Party in a certain large Asian nation that will remain nameless.
For more information of on different types of government see:
For now let us get back to the original topic
Back to bottling my Grenache
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Blackstone
Brigadier
How will Argentina pay for the arms? Even if China offer loans on generous terms, it's questionable if the money would or could be repaid.
Miragedriver
Brigadier
Good question. The reality is that the current government spends around $600 million US each year to provide televised soccer games for poor people who cannot afford cable. Plus a myriad of other useless social programs that assist politicians to get re-elected. So there is some money, at least $600 million to $1,000 million each year.
Of course they will not touch that third rail, so they will most likely issue grants to mine, fish, or have bases ().
Back to bottling my Grenache
Miragedriver
Brigadier
I know that I am going Off Topic here, but below are two interesting articles that explaine my previous statement:
Argentinian congress approves deal with China on satellite space station
Approval for base was related to controversial economic and trade accord
Installation would be first outside of China’s borders
Amid the barren and windswept Andes foothills of Argentina’s southern Neuquén province, a large billboard signals in English the entrance to the Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC) – China’s first space installation outside its own borders.
After two years’ work, some 300 Argentinian workers led by nine Chinese managers have completed the cement casing for a 35-metre-diameter antenna – and on Wednesday night the base was finally approved by Argentina’s congress, amid a fierce debate about its true purpose.
Designed to track unmanned Chinese missions to Mars and the moon, the installation is due to go into operation next year. But opposition politicians have raised fears that it could eventually be used for military purposes, drawing into unwanted confrontation with third countries, such as the US.
“It’s dual civilian-military technology,” said opposition senator and presidential hopeful Fernando Solanas. “It can be used for both aerospace and missile tracking.”
Congressional approval for the base was tacked on to a broad and equally controversial economic and trade agreement finalised during President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s official visit to China earlier this month.
As in the case of other vital laws pushed through by Fernández, the China agreement was approved in a rushed rubber-stamp vote by what Argentina’s press calls the president’s “automatic majority” in Congress, where the president’s FPV Victory Front party holds the majority in both houses.
This has not stopped opposition legislators from speaking out loudly against both the space base and the economic deal with Beijing.
Fiery opposition legislator Elisa Carrió compared the agreement with China with the £1m ($1.5m) borrowed from Barings Brothers in London in 1824 - a loan that it took Argentina 81 years to repay. “In a moment of temporary crisis we handed the country over to the British, now we’re doing the same with China,” Carrió said during the congressional debate.
“This agreement will mortgage our future,” echoed opposition legislator
Margarita Stolbizer. Critics of the economic package say it is so
wide-ranging that it could compromise the country’s next president, to be
chosen in elections this October. The deal will “restrict the capacity for
governance of whoever takes office on 10 December,” Stolbitzer added.
Argentinian international analyst Felipe de la Balze said the base could
compromise Argentina’s international relations. “It could have military uses
of tremendous importance that could implicate our country in a future
military conflict between the US and China,” De la Balze told the TN news
channel.
The agreement is seen by some as the counterpart to an $11bn-loan
accorded by China last year that has helped to offset the dwindling
reserves of Argentina’s Central Bank.
“We are surrendering the future of Argentina’s development,” said opposition
legislator José Ignacio de Mendiguren, head of the UIA industrial union, the main association of Argentina’s business leaders. Mendiguren claims the agreement reduces Argentina to providing unprocessed commodities to China while Argentina will be buying value-added goods from the Asian giant.
China has also extended loans for two hydroelectric dams it will build in
Patagonia, among other projects. Argentina is the world’s third-largest
exporter of soy and China is it’s main buyer.
Critics have also pointed to a generous 50-year tax exemption for the base
and a 50-year lease to China of the 200 hectares (nearly 500 acres)
surrounding the antenna.
But Argentina’s space agency CONAE has dismissed the criticism saying that
Argentina has signed a similar agreement with the ESA European Agency
for a similar base in the Malargüe region of the western province of
Mendoza.
“This is part of the policies being instrumented by President Fernández to
insert Argentina into great projects of scientific and technological
development,” said Conae Secretary-General Felix Menicocci. In return for
the tax and land concession, Argentina will be allowed to use the antenna
for 10% of its online time.
For the people in the southern region of Patagonia, China’s space base
is nothing but good news. As the giant antenna, visible from long distances,
rises in the barren and wind-swept locality of Bajada del Agrio, 1380
kilometres (857 miles) south of the capital city of Buenos Aires, the 300
workers required for its construction have brought badly-needed economic
activity to the town of Las Lajas, some 50 kilometres from the project,
where the workers are located.
Link:
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Miragedriver
Brigadier
China's exploitation of Latin American natural resources raises concern
Economic benefits countered by environmental damage and fears over lopsided nature of trade relations with Beijing
Amazonian , a mountain , the Cerrado savannah converted to soy fields in Brazil and oil fields under development in Venezuela's Orinoco belt.
These recent reports of environmental degradation in Latin America may be thousands of miles apart in different countries and for different products, but they have a common cause: growing Chinese demand for regional commodities.
The world's most populous nation has joined the ranks of wealthy countries in Europe, North America and east Asia that have long consumed and polluted unsustainably. This has led to what author Michael T Klare calls "a race for what's left" and its impact is particularly evident in the continent with much of the untapped, unspoiled natural resources.
Even more than Africa, Latin America has become a major focus of Beijing's drive for commodities. A last year by Enrique Dussel Peters, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, found that the region has been the leading destination for Chinese foreign direct investment – mostly for raw materials and by big government-run companies such as Chinalco and CNOOC.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, China has also become the main lender to the region. In 2010, it provided $37bn (£24bn) in loans – more than the World Bank, Inter-American Bank and the US Import-Export Bank combined. Most of this has gone to four primary exporters – Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and – for mining or transport infrastructure.
The economic benefits have been enormous. Trade between and Latin America was just $10bn in 2000. In 2011, it had surged to $241bn. While the distribution has varied enormously from country to country, this helped Latin America avoid the worst of the financial and economic crises that gripped much of the developed world and provided extra revenue for poverty alleviation programmes that have eased the region's notorious inequality. It also played a major part in bolstering left-leaning governments that are seeking an alternative to neo-liberal prescriptions from Washington and Wall Street.
Venezuela and Ecuador, which have been unable to access international capital markets since defaulting, have received hefty loans from China. Argentina is seeking similar treatment.
But giving up one kind of dependency can lead to another. Repayments to China are guaranteed by long-term commodity sales, which means a commitment to push ahead with resource exploitation – often with dire consequences for the environment and indigenous communities.
"China is shopping worldwide for natural resources. We're in the midst of a process of commodity accumulation by them. In that context, they lend money to Ecuador and the government pays with oil through anticipated sales. We have committed sales to them up until 2019," said Alberto Acosta, who served as energy minister but has since challenged the government of President Rafael Correa. He estimates his country's debts to China at $17bn.
The lopsided nature of China-Latin America trade is also questioned because while it is good in terms of GDP quantity, it has not been so beneficial in developmental quality. Commodity suppliers are delighted at the Chinese demand for their exports, but manufacturers complain of a flood of cheap Chinese imports that undermine their competitiveness.
The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, wants to change the nature of her country's relationship with China by putting more emphasis on science, technological and educational co-operation as well as soy, iron and oil. This follows signs that Brazil's recent economic growth masks a de-industrialising trend as primary producers account for a rising share of GDP.
Mexico, which has fewer commodities to sell but a big domestic market, has made some of the sharpest criticisms of the trend, albeit in private.
"We do not want to be China's next Africa," Neil Dávila, head of ProMéxico, a foreign trade and investment promotion agency, was quoted as saying in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. "We need to be owners of our own development."
Pollution and heavy resource extraction are not new to Latin America, which has been carved up and exploited since the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama. Nor are the Chinese state firms necessarily any worse than private western companies (Chevron faces a $19bn lawsuit for its pollution of the Ecuadorean Amazon), but they are an additional source of pressure on a region that already looks strained by the environmental weight of the world.
Link:
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**Back on Topic**
Economic benefits countered by environmental damage and fears over lopsided nature of trade relations with Beijing
Amazonian , a mountain , the Cerrado savannah converted to soy fields in Brazil and oil fields under development in Venezuela's Orinoco belt.
These recent reports of environmental degradation in Latin America may be thousands of miles apart in different countries and for different products, but they have a common cause: growing Chinese demand for regional commodities.
The world's most populous nation has joined the ranks of wealthy countries in Europe, North America and east Asia that have long consumed and polluted unsustainably. This has led to what author Michael T Klare calls "a race for what's left" and its impact is particularly evident in the continent with much of the untapped, unspoiled natural resources.
Even more than Africa, Latin America has become a major focus of Beijing's drive for commodities. A last year by Enrique Dussel Peters, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, found that the region has been the leading destination for Chinese foreign direct investment – mostly for raw materials and by big government-run companies such as Chinalco and CNOOC.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, China has also become the main lender to the region. In 2010, it provided $37bn (£24bn) in loans – more than the World Bank, Inter-American Bank and the US Import-Export Bank combined. Most of this has gone to four primary exporters – Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and – for mining or transport infrastructure.
The economic benefits have been enormous. Trade between and Latin America was just $10bn in 2000. In 2011, it had surged to $241bn. While the distribution has varied enormously from country to country, this helped Latin America avoid the worst of the financial and economic crises that gripped much of the developed world and provided extra revenue for poverty alleviation programmes that have eased the region's notorious inequality. It also played a major part in bolstering left-leaning governments that are seeking an alternative to neo-liberal prescriptions from Washington and Wall Street.
Venezuela and Ecuador, which have been unable to access international capital markets since defaulting, have received hefty loans from China. Argentina is seeking similar treatment.
But giving up one kind of dependency can lead to another. Repayments to China are guaranteed by long-term commodity sales, which means a commitment to push ahead with resource exploitation – often with dire consequences for the environment and indigenous communities.
"China is shopping worldwide for natural resources. We're in the midst of a process of commodity accumulation by them. In that context, they lend money to Ecuador and the government pays with oil through anticipated sales. We have committed sales to them up until 2019," said Alberto Acosta, who served as energy minister but has since challenged the government of President Rafael Correa. He estimates his country's debts to China at $17bn.
The lopsided nature of China-Latin America trade is also questioned because while it is good in terms of GDP quantity, it has not been so beneficial in developmental quality. Commodity suppliers are delighted at the Chinese demand for their exports, but manufacturers complain of a flood of cheap Chinese imports that undermine their competitiveness.
The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, wants to change the nature of her country's relationship with China by putting more emphasis on science, technological and educational co-operation as well as soy, iron and oil. This follows signs that Brazil's recent economic growth masks a de-industrialising trend as primary producers account for a rising share of GDP.
Mexico, which has fewer commodities to sell but a big domestic market, has made some of the sharpest criticisms of the trend, albeit in private.
"We do not want to be China's next Africa," Neil Dávila, head of ProMéxico, a foreign trade and investment promotion agency, was quoted as saying in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. "We need to be owners of our own development."
Pollution and heavy resource extraction are not new to Latin America, which has been carved up and exploited since the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama. Nor are the Chinese state firms necessarily any worse than private western companies (Chevron faces a $19bn lawsuit for its pollution of the Ecuadorean Amazon), but they are an additional source of pressure on a region that already looks strained by the environmental weight of the world.
Link:
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