I posit the following :
- Food security
- Increased trade inbound.
China has a rapidly growing rich population and despite the one child policy, China has close to 17% of the worlds population.
Feeding over 1.2Billion people in one country is not an easy feat and with rapid development, both in terms of hydro electricity,large scale manufacturing and housing, less and less space becomes available for large scale farming.
The above is a recipe for disaster, but the Chinese are no fools, they are smart, highly educated and business like and will go after what they want.
Just a few quick insight for my readers.
The world’s largest dam called the three gorges dam is located in China and started operations in 2012. Just do a quick research on the net and look how many hectares of farm land and villages were submerged to achieve this massive feat.
The issue of food security in China is therefore very real and thus one can expect to see more and more Chinese companies coming to the Caribbean to do large scale farming, which in turn will be sent back to China to feed the growing population.
Now if you are going to do large scale farming outside of China, you will need a good and reliable road network and of course transshipment port, to take manufactured goods in and agricultural products out.
There goes my Ah ah moment, investment in road and transshipment ports via unsolicited proposals are not accidentally , stroke of luck or some deft moves by our politicians, hell no. These my readers are very strategic moves by the Chinese who knows exactly what they want and theyfit perfectly into their master plan.
Water is next and the Jamaican Politician did not even see it coming. Water has become a growing issue and China and guess what we have plenty, but we cannot seem to get it from where it is to where it needs to be, so wala opportunity beckons for the Chinese.
We welcome the development, but I am saying is we need to keep out eyes open in the process.
Stay tune folks, commosenseja is at it once again, offering a perspective that often differs from the following majority.
Bless
Filed under: Agriculture, Commerce, Public Information |
Warren's Blog 
A much more logical and plausible explanation for the whole project could be that the Chinese want space closer to the United States in which to manufacture or assemble some of their items (plastics, household goods, electronics, etc) with which they have already flooded America.
In this scenario, the plants would have highly automated production lines operated by Chinese technicians with Chinese supervision and overall management. These personnel would be housed in dormitory accommodation on site and token participation of the Jamaican workforce would be limited to some maintenance and garbage collection to placate the unions
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/than-answers-on-logistics-hub_15056182#ixzz2eyjwIkGr
Interesting perspective.
It seems commonsenseja is on the ball.
This proposed investment is, by no means, insignificant. It is large and could be an important addition to our economic landscape. But we must not be deluded into believing that it is the key to Jamaica’s economic development or growth and should not hang our hopes on it.
To satisfy its own global strategic trading interest, China needs a piece of real estate on this side of the Panama Canal in order to reroute and reconsolidate cargo from mega liners coming and going through the canal. Its choice of Jamaica may be the result of geographical suitability, or it may be that our Government offered more advantageous terms than other countries in the region.
What the Government has not grasped is that it is investments in the productive capacity of the people that is key to development; not investment in our real estate. A logistics hub, which merely serves the strategic interest of China’s global trade, offers far less value to Jamaica’s economic interest than using the strategic position of our ports to allow Jamaican producers to directly access multiple markets around the world, efficiently and conveniently.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130915/cleisure/cleisure2.html
Come, lets you and me take a nice stroll , to a place I like to call “the Real World.” In the Real World, the port at Colon, Panama handles 3.5 million TEUs. The Chinese owned port in the Bahamas handles another 3.4 million TEUs. Both by themselves are enough to make a Jamaican port redundant.
The Chinese do not need Jamaica.
So why are the Chinese on a building spree? Because if they stop building, the various financial bubbles in their country, driven by low interest rates will implode. Lets take shipping. The Cuinese government recently had re-inflate their shipping industry after the shipbuilding bubble burst.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-05/china-bails-out-its-shipping-industry-blows-latest-capital-misallocation-bubble
http://www.therecord.com/news-story/2611465-chinese-shipbuilders-languish-after-bubble-bursts/
To re-inflate their shipping industry, they are having their civil engineering firms spend massive amounts of government money on useless projects. So, when this bubble deflates again, what will we be left with ? A ghost port? Just as how the Chinese have have enough cities to house 200 million people – even though evry sigle building in those cities are empty?
Interesting read