China issues warning over government’s plan to nationalise British Steel
https://news.sky.com/story/china-issues-warning-over-governments-plan-to-nationalise-british-steel-13543877
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
China issues warning over government’s plan to nationalise British Steel
https://news.sky.com/story/china-issues-warning-over-governments-plan-to-nationalise-british-steel-13543877
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
29 Comments
Well if that isn’t a glowing endorsement I dunno what is.
It’s just diplomatic signalling from the CCP.
CCP cares about how western companies operate in China (the whole 51% rule) and generally look at the whole board when it comes to diplomacy/trade.
They’ll claim all sorts of frankly hypocritical positions but nothing much will actually change.
> “respect the wishes of firms and market principles and avoid the abuse of administrative coercive measures”.
I mean trying saying that with a straight face as a Chinese/CCP diplomat.
We aren’t really much of a concern to China and they’d prefer on balance we just keep buying things from them and stay out of their way, they are much more focussed on their actual long term goals.
They especially aren’t going to rock the boat when the US is off doing US things and they win by looking like the stable trading partner, upside is too small.
China can go f themselves.
We tried to do it through a commercial purchase for most of a year. The company that bought it for 70 million in 2020 was demanding more than a billion to sell.
If you don’t negotiate in good faith, you cannot be surprised when the other party eventually stops negotiating.
>On Thursday, the Chinese commerce ministry called on the British government to “respect the wishes of firms and market principles and avoid the abuse of administrative coercive measures”.
Communist China telling neoliberal Labour to respect the free market wasn’t on my bingo card for for 2026.
Wonder if Trump is whispering in peoples ears to get us back for not supporting his illegal war
Of course they’re pissed off, controlling the plant is strong leverage against the UK.
If they turn the furnaces off then you lose most of the UK’s steel manufacturing capacity, very useful in times of war especially.
The China who nationalised almost all their biggest companies?
and on this day I found out British Steel has been owned by the Chinese firm Jingye Group since 2020.
This is simple government creat a company called “BaowuAnsteel UK”. Give it massive interest free loan hand pick board from labour party members, and ignore the remonstrations of China and China Baowu Group
Lmao.
Ignore the Chinese. Talk about having double standards
If it’s operating at a loss then wouldn’t the company be glad to sell it to the uk gov for a pound?
Hopefully we can all be united, left or right, greens to reform with a collective raspberry and two fingers salute.
This rhetoric is such a power play from China. It is embarassing.
I mean, I am sure they respect the fair market when they’ve been subsidising and dumping cheap steel on the global markets for decades. Of course, with not only the largest steel company, but the largest nationalised steel company in the world.
If only the UK wasn’t so internationally isolated and could rely on the heft of a much larger union to help shield us from any coercive trade practices. Y’know, maybe a trade regulatory superpower.
It’s funny how it’s only “abuse of administrative coercive measures” when someone else does it
They couldn’t be more hypocritical. If jimmy saville came back from the dead and dedicated his life to speeches over the next ten thousand years for childcare methods he would be less a hypocrite.
The Chinese have broken every single rule of capitalism. Cartel pricing, collusion, irregular state financing in an opaque system, no clear audit.
The state has subsidised below cost steel production for decades to prop up the employment market.
I work in steel. I really cannot explain how fucking mental it is for the Chinese to say this.
umm. didn’t China nationalize literally every single British business there when they became a communist country?
China being upset about other countries nationalising things is pretty fucking rich
Worth noting that when the UK government took over one of the plants last year, some of the former owners (Chinese company) tried to shut down the blast furnaces, which are basically impossible to restart once shut down. A literal attempt at sabotage
Owning our own steel industry at a time where relations around the world are increasingly tenuous and stressed makes a ton of sense. China can do one.
>If the furnaces had shut, the UK would’ve become the only country in the G7 without the capacity to make steel from scratch.
I support the nationalisation of British Steel, but I’m concerned about how this incorrect information keeps getting published. You can make virgin steel in an electric arc furnace.
But _are mate Nige_ told me to hate (Reddit appropriate term for non-whites) so labour must be bad despite all of this putting our country first nonsense
the important question about that statement is : would china allow a foreign countries company to operate in China in the manner the chinese company operated in the UK? almost certainly no, it’s state capitalism, not free market capitalism
China: “nationalising British strategic industry is our job”
Don’t ask about the amount of state-owned steel companies in China
>Chinese commerce ministry called on the British government to “respect the wishes of firms and market principles and avoid the abuse of administrative coercive measures”.
Hahaha get fucked.
China can jog on trying to dictate key sectors and utilities in our country when they operate total protectionism at home.
Sadly we left the trade power of the EU to just tell China to go away and behave.
China are unfortunately everywhere, and they haven’t changed, consider that the CCP sponsored BYD to be part of MIC2025, “sponsored” meaning unfettered funding in exchange for majority share holding, and somehow BYD vehicles now appear everywhere whilst all other Chinese brands are dying even though it’s all the same technology.
The Chinese government needs to be put in it’s place.
Rules for thee, not for me… China protects its core industries, it just doesn’t want to see others do so. Fuck’em.
When other countries nationalise their resources, western countries up in arms.
But when west nationalised foreign companies to prevent being out competed, that’s okay?
Just admit to be being western chauvinists already 🙄
We need to copy the chinese model here, and require all companies with assets in the UK act in British interests via some board positions or a 51% rule or something.
Along with a law preventing companies from self-sabotaging. Like these guys purposely trying to destroy the factory so we can’t have it again. Or Cadbury’s getting bought and immediately shutting down their factory.
Maybe it should be a rule that if you are to close down a factory/sell it, then you must give the state first dibs on buying it – WITH all the IP that it produces – either that, or you keep the factory. So e.g. when Cadbury sold the factory, the state would buy it and be able to continue producing cadbury’s chocolate (except now the state gets all the profit from it) or here, if they try to turn off the furnace which would be classed as abandoning the factory – the state gets the option of taking over the ‘abandoned’ factory with all equipment inside. Fine companies that turn off/destroy equipment without telling the government the amount it would take to replace said equipment.
This would make it so they either: close the factory themselves and get a massive fine, sell the factory to the government and make the more money than you would have by selling it to someone else, or keep the factory open.
Obviously in this case the most profitable action would always be to give the government the factory you want to close.
It seems like this would be a good way to prevent the constant offshoring of industrial capacity.