To think it's a bit ironic that our "free market capitalist" government is so keen to court investment from communist China?

[wasonthelist]

If free market economics is so wonderful why do we need a Communist State to build power stations for us?

Because it isn't really a communist state any more and hasn't been for decades.

Only major public utility enterprises are government owned (and some of the largest power generating eg facilities in the world, hence we are interested in their expertise).Well over 70% of business is private enterprise. Its essentially a capitalist economy.

China is communist in name only, and if we are going to base our assessment on that then North Korea is democratic.

Sorry, but silly question, it's not communist, put down the 1960s textbooks and read up.

To correct that before the inevitable (and valid) corrections come.

Obviously in many ways it remains communist, human rights, freedom of movement (although more relaxed than they have been) are still more communist than they are democratic.

But, in terms of financial markets, their ability to build infrastructure, they are far from communist.

We have to build relationships over this sort of thing to benefit from other areas. Medical research here has benefitted from work originating in China and vice versa, isn't it to our benefit that we share developments like that and knowledge on power generation globally than every country does their own thing?

They operate what is called state capitalism.

And we don't do pure, market forces. laissez faire capitalism. Thank fuck.

A lot of things were privatised, weren't they, because privatisation was said to best according to various British governments. Railways etc. However these are now are owned and run by other states. And Osborne is soliciting the Chinese state with regards to the power plant, not a private company.

Maybe state run is bad and privatisation is good is only their mantra for the British state. Irrespective of the state being communist or capitalist, why privatise infrastructure owned and run by the British state in order for it to be owner and run by another state?

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/18/foreign-state-owned-railway-british-train-companies-revenue_n_8003970.html