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Selling off half of Toulouse Airport to the Chinese to make a short-term profit shows that the Chinese economy is getting stronger, and European economies are becoming weaker, Pierre Guerlain, of the Paris West University Nanterre La Defense told RT.

RT:
The French government decided to sell a 49.99 percent stake
in Toulouse Airport to a Chinese syndicate last week. What do you
make of that? Is that a right decision?

Pierre Guerlain: The two ways to look at it.
There is the newly brought view which is- we live in a globalized
world so the French buy stuff in foreign countries, other people
buy stuff in France and it is natural, it is globalization. And
then there is view which is: the airport is a national asset that
should not be sold to a foreign company. But the key issue is
also that something that was in the public sector is now moving
to the private sector. The fact that China with Canada is buying
half of the airport is important but it is not the whole story.
The story is -a national asset is privatized. And that I think is
problematic.

China Outlook magazine author Brendan O’Reilly on China-France
deal: “It’s a good deal for the Chinese consortium that is
buying a stake in the airport. Right now China has a lot of
foreign reserves that it wants to spend abroad, and it seems
like a good investment. On the French side of things, the
French government is being pressured in this deal from
Brussels, from the EU. There is a big push right now in Europe
for austerity measures. Economically it’s hard to say but
politically it seems like it’s having a lot of costs right now
in France.”

RT: French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron
argues that “the airport is not being privatized.” What is your
opinion about this statement?

PG: This is debatable. I read a few articles
arguing that 50.1 percent control is problematic because the
clause in the contract arguing that it is a form of privatization
and there is no state control any longer. There was an article in
a journal called Mediapart which argued that the minister of the
economy lied about the contract… There is a debate about
whether France still controls the airport. If it doesn’t control
the airport the fact that it was bought by the Chinese and the
Canadians is rather secondary. It is just selling off companies
that work well and of course that can produce profits, or that
are vital for a sector of the economy in order to get few hundred
million dollars or euro which are peanuts when you think about
the size of the economy.

RT: Does this case show that the Chinese
economy is growing and China is becoming more and more
powerful?

PG: I think it does in some cases like for
example when Chinese bought the container port at Piraeus close
to Athens in order to have a point of enter into Europe for their
goods. Politically it is very significant because it shows [that]
the Chinese economy is growing and getting stronger, that
European economies sometimes are very weak, as in a case of
Greece, and that some people are willing to sell to anyone in
order to make a short-term profit with long-term political
implications. The Chinese are no better and no worse than any
other capitalist group. The Chinese claim to be communist. Still
their system is basically a state capitalist system based on
mercantilism. They push their advantage wherever they can and in
some countries in Africa it is politically problematic. Europe
has started doing something similar. But it is in the name of
free markets, free exchanges. So the key thing here is more
selling your soul to so-called free markets, then selling your
soul to a particular country or regime.

RT: Who benefits the most in this
situation?

PG: In capitalist countries when a company takes
assets in a foreign country neither country really benefits. It
is the leaders of the company [who] are ready to shift the
capital from one country to the other. In the case of China you
could think that the state is interested, but recently the
Chinese authorities went after the millionaires who were not
respecting tax laws in China. So there is something which is
becoming more and more similar. Some individuals are about to
benefit and China as a country will have more economic power,
more clout in negotiations with Europe. That is for sure.

The CEO of GEO Securities Limited Francis Lun on China-France
deal: “France will benefit more because it needs money, its
economy has been running downhill for a number of years and it
really needs cash so that it can improve infrastructure and do
things that it wants.”

RT: We’ve seen China snapping up European
assets before. How is that going to pay off for China in the
future?

PG: One has to reject this xenophobic attitude
because the Chinese are buying that is problematic. On the other
hand, it is very strange to see one of the few companies doing
very well, which is not purely a French company but it is a
European company, …benefitting from the public ownership with
the airport selling off the public ownership of the airport is
detrimental for this European company because we don’t know what
the Chinese will want to do with the airport, how they want to
transform it, and so on. So you had a perfect symbiosis between a
company that makes profits, it is quite a good company in Europe
where France is a large part of its capital and also in its
operations. Depending on a public utility, and then you sell off
half the public utility. From this point of view it doesn’t make
sense. It is going to give more power to China. When you earn
more stuff abroad you have more power. And it is handicapping a
European company not by spying but a handicapping European
company that does well.

RT: Is China going to continue buying up
foreign assets? What is its long-term strategy here?

PG: Right now…Chinese investment in France is
minimal compared to US investment in France. But if you look at
the situation in Africa the Chinese have a lot of problems and
more problems for them because they are so present. If
investments in key sectors develop then they might be more
complex in the future.

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