Germany’s Chinese investment problem
When the Czech republic and other ex-soviet states dropped communism and started &quot;moving west&quot;, the west greeted these countries with open arms and a chorus of &quot;opening your countries up to foreign investments will spur growth and make your economies flower!&quot; The Czech Republic responded, by allowing foreign investments essentially without reservations. This lead to a highly corrupt fire sale, called the &quot;privatization process&quot; in which state assets were sold off for far bellow market price to foriegn investors. Czech people, just comming out of communism, of course, could not afford to invest in their own country. Now, most of the valulable assets have been sold off, and the Czechs, to a large extent, live in a country which they do not own.<p>Now, when the Chineese do the same thing, but in much fairer circumstances (Germany is hardly recovering from a repressive communist regeim), we&#x27;re crying foul? I do not like foreign investment, but a part of me is satisfied, that the West is finally getting a taste of it&#x27;s own medicine. Not that it will reverse the damage done, and not that two wrongs make a right.