The rather striking image below is from this morning’s China Daily report on the visit of Micheál Martin to China.
John McGuirk wrote about this on Tuesday and the moral amnesia that afflicts almost the entire range of opinion here regarding relations with what is indeed a monstrous regime.
For those whose measure of anything is its value in “turning a bob” China is immune from criticism because it is a great place to make money. For the liberal left – with some honourable exceptions – China is still bizarrely regarded as socialist.
This despite the fact that rapacious Capital has a license to do as it pleases unchecked by trade unions, a free press, elected representatives, or even a Chinese Charles Dickens or Cardinal Manning who might, as they did in Industrial Revolution England, ensure that the bottom line was not allowed become or to remain the making of wealth no matter what the consequences.
It is clear from this morning’s piece that China not only regards trade as key to the relationship but that “Chinese investment in Ireland has increased steadily.” Indeed, yesterday I looked at how some of that investment is now being targeted at the thriving asylum accommodation sector.
Much of that recent investment came through the Immigrant Investor Programme which the EU basically told the Irish state to close down over issues of transparency. It would seem that at least part of the investment secured in return for citizenship and residency was channeled through people like Colm Wu into hospitality facilities that were contracted to IPAS.
I have also documented the connections between a major player in the asylum sector, Vesada Private, and its former role as a facilitator of investment that came into the state via the IIP. There is no way of knowing where exactly that money ended up as Freedom of Information requests that I sent were not answered.
A more official note was sounded in the China Daily editorial published on Monday. The visit by the Taoiseach was seen not just as a token of the Irish state’s cordial attitude – to put it mildly – but also because Ireland will assume Presidency of the EU in June and is regarded as an exemplar for the sort of relationship that China would wish to have with the EU as a whole.
China Daily approvingly notes that Martin had urged that “Europeans should do more to understand the Chinese psyche and approach, as well as its longer term perspective and strategic thinking.” They also referred to the fact that An Taoiseach assured General Secretary Xi that “Ireland adheres to the one-China policy.”
Which in effect means that the Irish State does not recognise Taiwan which is a democratic open society in which 23 million people live under constant threat of annexation by the Chinese Communist Party. It also means that the Irish state tacitly accepts the appalling things that China has done in the occupied territory of Tibet and to the Uyghur people of Xianjiang.
Xi cited this as an example of how “all countries should respect the development paths chosen by the peoples of other nations,” and “never politicizing trade and economic issues.” So, the fact that trade with China was valued at $23.4 billion in 2024 and that China is Ireland’s fourth largest trading partner trumps all.
Which it certainly does, although how many other trading partners have police stations in their “friends” capital city? Or hold their chums’ citizens as virtual hostages as the Chinese did Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran?
All of which is omerta in the cause of making lots of money as Bartra and other Irish companies have done in China – and as others do through connections here which have the imprimatur of two former Taoisigh, Brian Cowan and Enda Kenny, and one former Tánaiste Ruairí Quinn, who are directors of the Ireland China Institute. Former Progressive Democrat TD Pat Cox was also a board member.
A fellow director is Professor Liming Wang who worked for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce before coming to Ireland. He founded the Confucius Institute at University College Dublin. Liming is a former director of Mainstream energy, established by the late Eddie O’Connor the former CEO of Bord na Móna and Airtricity who once shared his admiration for the “great achievement of General Secretary Xi.”
The Confucius Institutes were created by the Chinese Communist Party in 2004 by then General Secretary of the CCP Hu Jintao. There are around 500 Confucius Institutes based mostly in universities in the west where they have been described by David Shambaugh one of the foremost experts on the Chinese Communist Party as coming directly under the control of the Party’s propaganda department.
According to Hamilton and Ohlberg who wrote Hidden Hand, a book which provides forensic detail on the overseas operation of Chinese intelligence and Party propaganda, the Confucius Institutes are regarded as “an innocuous way to spread the Party narrative while simultaneously gaining entry to foreign universities. They are a product of the CCP’s fascination with ‘cultural soft power.’”
Soft power requires a soft touch, and if there was ever a soft touch when it came to trading investment dollars or pounds or Yuan or whatever other currency is on offer the Irish ‘elite’ was never shy about fumbling in the “greasy till.”
While states like Sweden closed all Confucius Institutes over intelligence concerns; India has encouraged universities to shut them down for similar reasons; the Americans have restricted federal funding to host universities; and others including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and others have restricted or closed them down, former Irish Taoisigh are happy to sit on the same board as their founder here.
I, for one, do not welcome close relations with a vile regime under which “souls were devoured without measure” to ensure the permanent and unchallengeable rule of the most perfect murderous totalitarian party in history.
A regime which ironically embodies the very definition of fascism according to old time Marxists: which was that the totalitarian state through its terroristic control of the population allowed Capital to do as it pleases.