China's land grabs: A case study

As the autumn harvest draws ever nearer, villagers in Liuxiazhuang have found themselves, quite suddenly, landless. Documents provided to Al Jazeera by township-level officials showed contracts the government entered into on September 10 - less than two weeks ago. Four days later, villagers at Liuxiazhuang received notices of the confiscation of parts of their farmland and the bulldozers promptly rolled in. This took place just weeks ahead of the autumn harvest, and the farmers could hardly believe they had not only lost their land, but their last season of crops.

China's Land Grabs: A case Study

First I noticed this article, then started doing a bit more searching. Turns out that china is doing land grabs all over the world.

China Wants To Construct A 50 Square Mile Self-Sustaining City South Of Boise, Idaho

Land grab in Africa

Austrailian Land Grab

That is just in three different parts of the world. I am just wondering, why they are doing this everywhere, and what other places are there? I will continue to search and add more that I find as I do, but for now this is just four places in the world.

(if this is in the wrong place, mods please move it)

Found an article claiming this here, however, not sure how to look at it when a country starts to purchase a lot of land all over the world.

Contrary to the conspiracy theories, China is not looking for world domination. It has seen economic growth averaging a massive 10 per cent for the best part of three decades, and although it is expected to drop into the high single-digits in the coming years – in response to a dip in export demand – the natural resources required to support even slightly moderated growth are an overwhelming priority. China is already the second-largest oil consumer in the world and far outstrips its domestic supplies. Neptune estimates that it will need to buy two companies the size of BP each year for the next 12 years to meet its growing domestic energy demand. Demand for electricity alone is growing each year equivalent to Britain's entire output.

Fears of Chinese land grab

Of course, then I find things like the next couple articles that just make me wonder some more.

Srilanka

Dragon Awakes

Now I am not certain how to search what Chinese companies own land in different countries, nor do I know how exactly to search for the percentage of employees in that company in the countries outside China are native Chinese. When I was in the Navy, I had access to records that I no longer have access to and could have put this all together rather easily. Perhaps others can find some of that data for me. I would also like to know how many oil rigs and large tankers that they generally have off the coast of most countries. But again not sure how to get that data in the civilian world. My courses in college don't go along that data, and I won't get access to most data on oil rigs till I am in the Ranger service and work in a national park near an oil rig. Unless there is a site that tells who owns what oil rig.

From what I've heard, its agricultural land they're after. In Australia, this quite worrying as the amount they already own is increasing at an alarming rate. I suppose that they are trying to famine proof their future generations by gaining access to prime, fertile and unpolluted land. I just hope our government pulls its head out of its backside and passes food seciruty legislation to protect our own population, before its too late.

They tried a mass buy up here in New Zealand as well. There was a public backlash and our Government put a stop to it

www.guardian.co.uk...

www.fxnonstop.com...

They're buying up alot of farm land in Africa aswell, has the folks at Oxfam screaming there heads off. This is China securing land to feed it's people you see the way food prices have been rising the last two years.

reply to post by bjorn


The New zealand food security legislation seems to be very well thought out we need do come up with something similar... Pity our government doesn't have the balls.