Members of Kibbutz Hanita near Israel’s northern border are demanding $11 million from Ballet Vision, the Chinese fund that controls 80% of the Hanita Lenses plant, accusing it of refusing to exercise an option to purchase the kibbutz’s remaining shares, according to a lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv District Court.
In a response letter attached to the lawsuit, the Chinese fund said that since the outbreak of the war in Israel, Beijing has classified Israel as a “high-risk area” and imposed a ban on any new Chinese investments in the country, making it impossible to carry out the option.
According to the lawsuit, in 2021 the kibbutz sold 74% of Hanita Lenses, which manufactures intraocular lenses for medical use, to Ballet Vision for $35 million. Of that sum, $25 million was paid to kibbutz members, with an additional $10 million injected into the company.
Nothing says socialism like international investors owning 99 year leases on factories producing every piece of electronic junk sold in the west! /s Wait a minute, that’s called capitalism.
Are you saying the PRC isn’t socialist because it allows foreign investment in secondary and small-medium industries? These international investment deals are done for knowledge and technology transfer, as well as to expedite development of underdeveloped industry. The basis of socialized production is in large-scale, mass industry, so socializing production through market mechanisms is done in a controlled manner, where the CPC gradually folds these industries into the public sector as they grow.
Public ownership usually works better with higher levels of development, private at lower levels. Keeping the large firms and key industries in the public sector while allowing private capital in a controlled manner to help develop the productive forces is the secret to the PRC’s skyrocketing development. This development is why they have far surpassed the west in production of solar, high speed rail, infrastructural development, poverty alleviation, etc, without this form of economy they would not be as developed as they are today.
The chinese are doing what they can to get the west’s technology, and get their factories built for free, and in doing so getting a veritable veto on western leaders as they could nationalize any or all of those factories at any moment, a drastic move that would upend financial markets but still a powerful bargaining chip, no matter what western leaders say, they aren’t crossing China for real because of that, and the US president is Wall Street’s Bitch make no mistake. Also Israel’s and Russia’s Bitch. Israel first obviously, the Saudis, American oligarchs’ bitch, it’s a long list and idk the pecking order after Israel First that is undisputable, the guy and his party are compromized 7 ways from sunday. (7 ways from saudis too.)
So they are using the greed of the ruling class in the west against it. You can see where they are coming from, they are smart, and play the long game. Not a very good game for the workers of those factories, or people living next to the pollution however. But that is the cost they figure. The problems from all of that are as much, or more, of the fault of the industrialists and wall street that sold out their own countries to make an extra dollar on labor and environmental protections, undercutting unions and liberal democracies that since the great war had taken actual control over much of their governments and achieved a higher standard of living than any working people in the history of the world.
Now eroded, by cheatery. By this so called free trade, eroded most by cheating at the numbers however, changing the consumer price index calculations several times since the 1970s to understate it, 5-8% by the old standard, 2-3 by the new, just by 2008. Compound pay cuts. 1 minimum wage job used to support a family, buy a house, a used car, go out for a burger. Now you can’t do that with 4 minimum wage jobs, you would have shitty to non existant health insurance while doing it, no dentist. Certainly not buying a house. One missed check or two from homelessness. But I digress.
Whatever China is doing now, it’s part of a long game, what the US and west is doing, is short term chiseling of working people, and extracting borrowed money from the government.