



Yanis Varoufakis sheds more light on how and why the German leadership under Angela Merkel, sabotaged investment deals by China in Greece that would benefit both countries.





As the former Greek Minister of Finance describes briefly and clearly:





In 2015 when I was conducting negotiations with the Chinese side, in parallel to the negotiations we were having with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, I was very pleasantly surprised by the way in which the Chinese authorities managed to combine their sense of self-interest with a patient investment attitude and a genuine commitment to renegotiate and negotiate and discuss again and again with us, with a view to achieving a mutually advantageous agreement.





The discussions began regarding the Port of Piraeus, where COSCO, a state-owned Chinese company, already had their foot in the door. And there was a discussion about how to extent its operations. They were very surprised when I proposed to them that this should be part of a broader investment exercise in Greece by China, involving railways, technology parks, involving all sorts of activities where our economy needed patient capital, like shipbuilding and shipyards and tourism.





We came to a magnificent agreement. They showed broad-mindedness, they were prepared to accept collective bargaining agreements with trade unions. They were prepared to take it step by step in a way that would, of course, benefit them, but would also benefit us in a non-colonial manner.





What stopped it, was an intervention by Berlin, insisting that no deal should go through until and unless the eurozone had finished with the Greek government.









So, briefly, Germany sabotaged Greece's approach with China for the following main reasons:





- Germany wouldn't risk to lose its debt colony and the opportunity to grab Greek public property on behalf of the German companies.





- It wouldn't let Greece to breathe economically through Chinese investments because it would put the Greek experiment in danger.





- It wouldn't let Greece to co-operate with China as equal partners with mutual interests because this would open the road to Chinese economic "invasion" in other eurozone countries that would seek to escape from the German cruel austerity and sado-monetarism, as well as the tight scrutiny by the Brussels-Berlin axis.



