My golden rule: Never blog/tweet
while intoxicated. But you know what, rules are made to be broken. So here it
is.
My
Australian friend has further informed me that Chinese purchases of Australian
real estate are down. Abbott effect? Perhaps. But the question is, as ever:
What is the next hedge for the Chinese nouveau riche (technically speaking
everybody in China remotely riche)? Poaching red corals from Ogasawara waters?
Russian oil-and-gas equity?
…Meh…
I
nominate New Zealand real estate. After all, NZ is to Australia what Canada is
to the United States, and you know how popular Canada has been with Asian
immigrants. There are, gorgeous post-glacial landscape (Exhibit A AWESOMELY CUTESY-POO
PROMOTION VIDEO*, exhibit B AWESOMELY CUTESY-POO MAKING OF-PROMOTION
VIDEO*)…, no persistent African-American underclass—and a serious
aborigine problem swept under the rug with the help of a smattering of
aborigine world-class athletes.
1 comment:
I think you are too late - especially if one were to visit Auckland, you would not get the sense of some sort of idyllic pre-globalisation West. As for the race relations jibe, actually it is far more like the African-American issue except without the slavery- Maori make up 15% of NZ's population and you could argue that there ARE problems with them being what you term an "under-class." In that sense, it would be impossible to "sweep it under the rug" and controversies over treatment of Maori are common in the media. Still a lot of racist attitudes around and lots of problems to be solved, so I am not contesting that point, but I think your comparison is off in empirical terms.
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