Should Australia Be Selling the Farm??

Not according to a leading American resources analyst, anyway. And many Australians probably agree.

Leading American investment analyst James Dines has criticised Australia for allowing China to buy large swathes of its natural resources in what he calls "resource imperialism".

Australia was in danger of squandering its "irreplaceable inheritance ... traded for easily printed paper", Mr Dines said.

Mr Dines, the keynote speaker this week at the RIU Victorian Resources Roundup conference, told an audience of mining executives, brokers and investors that the end of capitalism as we knew it had arrived and that we were in the second great economic depression.

His entertaining, if alarming, speech would have prompted mixed feelings among a crowd that included executives with a strong Chinese presence on their share registries.

State-owned Chinese companies are also becoming a major foreign investor in Australia.

Mr Dines, editor of the Dines Letter and author of numerous books, described natural resources, including farmland, as a source of real wealth that should be kept for "your descendants".

By pursuing resource imperialism, China was building stockpiles of commodities well above its immediate needs, such as rare earths - it already produces 97 per cent of the world total - and copper.

The Australian Foreign Investment Review Board blocked a $252 million bid by state-owned China Nonferrous Metal Mining to acquire Australian rare earth miner Lynas in 2009.

So, what is motivating China?

The world's most populous country wants to secure its resource needs for centuries to come.

More in the article here -
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/10369499/australia-shouldnt-sell-farm-analyst/

And it is not only Australia.......China [mostly through state owned enterprises - and that is the nub of concerns] is much more active in many less developed countries, especially in Africa and South America, even Afghanistan which seems to have some large mineral deposits that are largely unexplored, and which the Chinese are eyeing off.

Some say they have stuffed their own land for agriculture and horticulture with poor farming practices and pollution and they need to find other soils........to do the same???

Definitely resources imperialism!