Kirsty does Temasek purchase of Bank Of China
interviewed by chewingleafman
First of all, from a business point of view I would like to say that I think it’s a very good move for Singapore Government to go into a undeveloped market to invest. And then reap the harvest once the investment has matured.
There’re a few factors that will assure us of the profitability of that venture. First of all the growth prediction of undervalued yuan. And second of all the maturity of the China financial market.
Restructuring of Bank of China
I feel sorry for the Singaporean executives who will have to go down there to straighten up the branches. Corruption and abuse of power is rampant in china. The financial services is not spared from the scourge. Recently I came to know about tragic jailing of Ma Ping, a Australian business woman who had factories in china. In the year 1999, She deposited some 60 million USD into a branch of Bank of China in Tianjin . A year later when she tried to make withdrawals of her matured fixed deposits, she was told the money was missing. After making a few appeals to the Tianjin and Beijing court. She was detained by the police under the orders of the perpetrators to silence her. She was detained for 7 months before being sentenced for 6 years for a trumped up fabricated charges. She spent 2 years and 3 months in jail before the Australian government manages to secure her release.
This is not the first and only incident where an investor or business man was conned and then silenced by the organized crime in china. If you’re a Taiwanese, you will be able to share with us all the stories of what your friends or you have seen first hand. Like some of this poor Taiwanese chaps. Or some of this US citizens like David Ji long fen.
The truth about doing business in china is it’s a dangerous affair. The local provincial governments are corrupt and they control the court and police. And the police frequently extract “confessions” through torture and are given the power to detain suspects for 2 and half months incommunicado on suspicion alone. What happened to Ma Ping was due to the fact she rub off the powerful people in the wrong way.
Anyway back to my point. I’m worried about our fellow Singaporean who will be sent to china to chair the boardroom meetings and perhaps restructure the bank. He or she needs to be careful not to stir up the hornets nest. Or else he / she could end up in jail on some trumped up charges. What can happened to a millionaire Australian woman, can very well happened to a Singaporean executive.
Tags: sg, singapore, december, china, Asia, business, east asia, china business, taiwan, Taipei, Current Affairs, News, project chicos, projectchicos
