If anybody thinks China’s infrastructure and development story is something to be envied and copied, think again.
In a very scathing report from Oxford University’s Said Business School slammed China’s huge infrastructure drives of the past decades labeling them as ‘choreographed’ mismanagement that only returns disincentives for its people than benefits.
The report took issue with the way contracts for development projects are given and the massive cost overruns that have resulted in the way those projects were handled. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not let loose. The global body lambasted the exponential growth of corporate credit in the Middle Kingdom.
As it now stands, cost overruns in China stand at US$28 trillion, a figure so staggering that it even dwarfs the GDP of Japan by many clips.
The usual way things are covered up in China – a significant example being the unlawful usurpation of Singapore’s Terrex vehicles – in China’s media leaves plenty of questions than answers.
For example China does not adhere to an ISO-55000-type, an international compliance standard that could oversee and monitor infrastructure developments in its economy.
Nor has the press in the country come out swinging at the ancient and perhaps time-honoured practice of guanxi which awards contracts based not on merit, but on familial and network connections.
As a result what has happened are massive cost overruns that the nation may need to finance somehow.
Is that therefore any wonder that China just needed to launch the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank? In that way, it could artfully get the funds it wants whilst at the same time concealing its tracks.