Chinese puzzle

It's a bit worrying when the Business Editor of a newspaper as well respected as The Times comes up with such an extraordinary load of drivel as this.

Carl Mortished appears to grasp none of the realities of what he is saying. On one hand he seems to be suggesting that Britain future lies as a tourist resort while on the other he seems to think that we could become the producer nation feeding the Chinese consumer!

Even so, America and Europe are hoping for an invasion because [the Chinese] have something that speaks louder than manners: cash.

Well, some of them do, but the vast majority of Chinese remain pretty poor while the affluent classes prefer to spend their cash elsewhere. Even if you are a wealthy Chinaman you are unlikely to go jetting off halfway around the world to sit in a dreary English cafe on some rain soaked promenade when there are a myriad of delights awaiting you on your doorstep.

If Mortished really believes that our future depends on Britain attracting Chinese tourists then he's going to be disappointed - and coming from the Business Editor of The Times that is a chillingly poor outlook for this country and, indeed, Europe and America.

But it gets worse.

We must begin once again to make things Chinese people might be tempted to buy.

Like what? MG Rover? Notwithstanding the fact that the Chinese are quite capable of making everything they want to buy themselves and a darn sight cheaper than we can, what could we possibly produce that they want? The only thing I can think of is coal - but that isn't going to happen unless some Chinese company comes here and starts mining the bloody stuff for us!

What we need to do is start producing the things we want to buy and buying the things that we produce. Only that way can we become less dependent on - and addicted to - cheap foreign imports. That isn't going to happen either as that would involve the dreaded "protectionism" that the globalists so despise.

The Chinese economy continues to expand because they have a ready made consumer market for their goods and increasing numbers of their own people who want to buy them. We do not. So we better get used to earning a lot less and considerably lower living standards.

And I guess we'd all better learn how to say "would you like cream in your coffee, sir?" in Cantonese.