From Rowan Callick:
Charles Liu, one of China’s “rainmakers” who played a significant role in putting together the $371 million S. Kidman & Co rural property bid vetoed by Treasurer Scott Morrison, says he is fed up with Australia, despite 20 years of doing business there.
He believes Australia is heading down the same populist de-globalisation, protectionist route as other Western countries.
…He is the founder and chairman of HAO Capital, a private equity firm that manages almost $1 billion of assets in growth companies within China. He told The Australian that he had “given up on a couple of my Australian deals, including a LNG project, due to both political and commercial complications”, with the gas price having tumbled.
…“I am in a position where I don’t want hassle, including over politics. I have lots of fun getting involved where I feel welcomed, so I can just say ‘Drop it, forget it’.”
…He said the previous, Tony Abbott-led government, “was quite supportive, and then came the change of administration”.
“This is an unfortunate trend developing in Western countries today — with deglobalisation and xenophobia, populism and protectionism on the march.
“Domestic politics in the West, including in Australia, are increasingly heading in that direction despite — or maybe because of — the massive change under way in countries’ ethnic composition. “It’s unfortunate that entrepreneurial and hardworking Chinese people get caught up in this negativity, everyone being lumped together.”
There is no doubt that the Australian response to Chinese investment in increasingly chaotic. That’s one reason why MB proposes the dual investment framework of welcoming raw materials investment while prohibiting it in household and strategic assets, and doing so through a transparent framework of white papers.
But this stuff about poor old millionaire Chinese getting caught up in our xenophobia is a bit rich. Australia is the most successful mutli-cultural liberal democracy on earth. The problem right now is that it is not protected appropriately from globetrotting Chinese capital and as such the anxiety that that triggers is squeezed into the “lunatic fringe”.
I might add that despite these flaws, Australia’s business and social conscience remains astronomically more liberal than that of China which is no doubt why Mr Lui is so very busy trying to get his money out.
A little perspective Mr Lui.
