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9 Oct, 2013 10:45

Time for China to buy out industries overseas, like US did

Time for China to buy out industries overseas, like US did

China is far more capitalist than Europe or America, and it wants to do business, so it’s not surprising that Chinese are coming and buying all the interesting companies overseas in the same way Americans did, journalist Clem Chambers told RT.

RT: Given the shape Europe's economy is in right now - does it matter where the money comes from?

Clem Chambers: Generally speaking as long as it’s kosher, it doesn’t matter where the money come from. But what you see here is really a currency trade. You don’t want to be in the dollar at the moment and probably in the long term.

So you’ve got to buy businesses in a different currency. So you’re going to buy them in the euro, you’re going to buy them in sterling, maybe even in the yen, but particularly in the euro. And that’s why the euro is strong, because China is moving on to the euro away from the dollar. So if you want to take your cash and save it from the falling dollar you’ve got to store it in another currency. And a good currency right now is euro. And a good way of doing that is buying businesses in Europe.

RT: China's economy is outperforming the West by a healthy margin, and there are plenty of opportunities to invest at home.  Why risk it and pour money into the West? What's the end goal?

CC: You always want to be diversified in your investment. If you got a thousand pounds you’ve not got a problem. If you got a million pounds you start to have a problem where to put your money, where your money is safe. When you stacked a hundred of millions then you’ve got to look globally for way to put your money for it to be safe and for it to be working for you, so you have to put it around the world. But you don’t want to put it into a currency that is going to fall. You don’t want to put it into a currency of a government whose bonds might default any minute. You want to put it somewhere where you can look out three, four, five, ten years and see there is not going to be any great disasters.

Well Europe nearly had its disaster a couple of years ago and now it’s out of those woods, so now it’s going to be a stable environment. You look at the dollar.. What’s the point of buying something in dollars if the dollar is going to fall 30 percent? What you buy then has to go up 30 percent for you to break even. So you really want to have a strong currency because if you buy an asset and the currency is going up you make money right there. And then whatever you get from that business is extra.

Reuters / Johannes Eisele

RT: There are fears that the Chinese will come to dominate certain industrial and business sectors. Are you at all concerned?

CC: Well, I’m a capitalist and I believe that business should go to people with the capital. If you look at China, it is far more capitalist than Europe. It is far more capitalist than America. China is a capitalist country. It is vast and it is wealthy now as an overall unit. If you look at the UK, there is 1 percent of world population there and it is not surprising that Chinese are coming and buying all the interesting companies in a way as Americans did the same thing. Ford is a big car producer in England and they came in and basically took out the car industry, the Americans. And now it is time for Chinese to do the same thing – that is the way the global finance works.

RT: Would you say the way the things are going right now in terms of China diversifying itself is another attempt of gaining influence around the world? Getting itself stronger?

CC: I do not think that China is so much into the influence game. They don’t go to countries far away from China and start dropping bombs on them. In a spectrum of countries that are into influencing other people, China is pretty low. They just want to do business and they just want to make money. They have made trillions of dollars from the West and they’ve got to reinvest it and it is sensible for them to reinvest it around the world and therefore they’ve got to look at places where there’s value, where the currency is going to be strong, where the catchphrase is ‘the least dirty shirt’ and Europe is the ‘least dirty shirt’ right now and that is why they are wearing it.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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