It's a very steady an slow paced business. Planning is a matter of decades. Customers will never flock to a competition for any reason.
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If it were that profitable they wouldn’t have sold to Chinese companies, would they.
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In Portugal's case it was both the desire to privatise everything as possible, for ideological reasons, and to get some cash, as we were still under the Troika intervention.
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The final purchase has been finalized just a few months ago. I get Portugal selling. I don't get China buying.
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For Portugal, I'll guess the Chinese figured they could make it turn a profit by cutting out all the featherbedding. For Zambia, like others have said, it's about making sure their other investments actually get utility service.
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Because it's war. Why can't you lot get it through your head? Riddle me this, smarty pants: What are the focal points during military invasions? It's water, food, and manufacturing. If you control or destroy those, you will effectively be unopposed.
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Portugal and Zambia. Dude. Portugal and Zambia. They can destroy those all they want.
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You didn't answer the question. Try again...
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I'm not gonna waste more time with someone who thinks China is gonna invade Europe.
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Just answer the question.
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Sometimes an investment decision is just an investment decision. Not everyone who allocates capital is a 4D chessmaster. Note that owning a country's infrastructure doesn't necessarily give you power over them. In some ways, it gives them power over you; they can nationalize it.
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My point exactly.
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The locals cannot run it competently, so the Chinese buy it up so that their people get something to drink and the lights running. At somepoint the Zambians are going to try to renationalize, whereupon the Chinese have grounds to foreclose on Zambia.
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They don't have the troops for that. Britain did.
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You cannot jack up prices directly, but you can include a lot of hidden costs to siphon the money from the consumer.
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Could easily observe infrastructure development, probably gain access to government systems and military intel as well... OTOH how hard is it to hack Zambia?
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Or, less complex: insure energy suppliers run well enough for your planned resource extraction operations. Can't expect Zambians to meet market demands in a timely manner.
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occam's razor for weird business decisions: some kind of scam is going on
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Control of strategic resources? Making them dependent? Putting chemicals in the water to make the Africans gay?
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If you foreclose on Zambia for non payment of debt, everyone thinks you are a usurer. If you foreclose on Zambia for attempting to renationalize water and power, everyone thinks that if you do not foreclose, they will be in the dark with nothing to drink.
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