How touchy people are sometimes. Our woman in Asia, and a Labour minister’s wife to boot, must be one hell of a tough negotiator to have been handpicked to take on single-handedly the whole Asian tiger to lure business to little Malta. But she has her soft side too, we’ve found out. She’s sensitive.

Sai Mizzi Liang was holding back tears when asked exactly how much taxpayer money she was receiving for her long sojourn on her home turf. It’s a mere €3,000 a month, she said, a government salary. She even volunteered to show us her payslip, but didn’t.

Sources have told this newspaper that if global emoluments were added, the total monthly income would round up to just over €8,000 a month. The Nationalist Party has stuck to its guns and insisted her package adds up to €13,000 a month.

So Mizzi Liang may have left out some little details from the pay package but that is understandable. She was nervous and upset when questioned on the matter and we all know how emotion can sometimes blur your thinking.

She was also speaking in China where the government is very sensitive too (don’t mention Tiananmen or Tibet, for instance, or they’d burst into tears). China is quite economical with the truth too, especially the sort you’re allowed to read on the internet, so it may be just a contagion and that Mizzi Liang never really wanted to take us for idiots.

Ignoring the fact that a request for details of her contract filed under the Freedom of Information Act has been refused, Mizzi Liang candidly told us that her salary package is no secret.

“Nobody was asking me anything… Nobody asked me to provide an FS3. I wanted to speak out but I’m mostly in China and didn’t know what to do.”

The poor thing, left to her lonesome self to face an aggressive press continents away. And now, to make things worse, her husband, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi has said he is keeping three steps away from the controversy surrounding his wife’s salary.

Moves you to tears doesn’t it but for all the wrong reasons.

That she thinks she’s got the best qualities for the job, and she may well have, is irrelevant. The issue is accountability and transparency, a rare commodity in the country she comes from.

Mizzi Liang, who assures us her father was no communist leader, must have lived long enough in Malta to know that before the last election her husband’s party promised transparency and accountability to the country she now represents.

Pulling out the pity card at this stage does not work and her claim that the “attacks” on her were “only inspired by her nationality” is offensive and totally off-message with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s mission to China.

Sino-Maltese historical friendship and closeness were the key buzzwords to Muscat’s visit and they have been ever since his predecessor, Dom Mintoff, went trailblazing there in the 1970s.

Muscat has signed with China amemorandum of understanding that practically covers all aspects of our economy and if just half of it is ever implemented, it would effectively turn Malta into a vassal State of China.

It is useless for Muscat to claim that the UK, Germany and practically all the world are trying to cuddle up with the growing economic power of China. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in China just before Muscat, she was accompanied by big shots from international German companies like Siemens, Airbus, Lufthansa and Deutsche Bank, which have huge vested interests in that country. She went there on business. Muscat didn’t take any businessmen along, just his wife and kids and a Tibetan monk’s begging bowl.

It will take a while before we can unravel the meaning behind the many statements made by Muscat during his China visit.

References in the memorandum to issues like cultural cooperation are just hogwash, unless Muscat intends to ask national parties organiser Lou Bondì to invite Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to come hold an exhibition of his works in Malta. That may be a bit tricky because China’s most famous dissident artist can’t leave the country and is busy fighting off government harassment over tax evasion and infringements of building rules by his art studio.

The slow stranglehold of Malta by China will inevitably translate into diplomatic paybacks from Malta

It has nothing to do with Weiwei’s campaign for human rights, of course. They’re all legitimate government investigations.

Avoiding thorny issues like human rights, Muscat spoke instead of possible Chinese investment in a Marsamxett breakwater. Now everyone knows there is no money to be made out of building a breakwater for another country and that this is not an investment, at least not in the traditional sense. This is exactly the kind of soft diplomacy that China applies in Third World countries so it may exploit their natural resources in return. Malta has no such resources, so what do the Chinese expect instead?

Neither Muscat nor his speechwriter appear to be very diplomatic because they spelt out quite clearly what the game is all about in a speech at a conference in Guiyang; that’s somewhere in southwest China.

He spoke of a joint venture between bankrupt Enemalta and communist-owned Shanghai Electric that has already identified more than 30 potential opportunities for renewable energy projects in Europe. Then he shamelessly admitted: “This joint venture will create a win-win situation for both China and Malta. Through Malta, China will be expanding its horizons in geographical markets that are highly competitive and have high barriers to entry.”

China has bought a gatekeeper to the EU to get around its barriers.

To make this agreement palatable locally, there was a bit more eyewash from Muscat when he met the China Communications Construction Company, blacklisted by the World Bank and, likewise, communist-owned. Instead of calling off their feasibility study on a Malta-Gozo link on grounds of principle, Muscat told them to extend it to cover the environmental aspects as well. They will oblige, no doubt.

This slow stranglehold of Malta by China will inevitably translate into diplomatic paybacks from Malta, even if Muscat insists that China’s interest is “commercial, not political”.

Muscat is trying to pull the same trick as Mintoff did when he went to China while most of the western world shunned that country. Muscat is insisting that the memorandum is the first of its kind to be signed by an EU country with China.

Maybe he sold the idea to the Chinese that other EU countries will now follow suit but that is highly unlikely. Those communist “decision-makers”, as Muscat calls them, are much craftier than the average Maltese voter who fell for his empty promises for two successive elections.

What payback the Chinese will expect for their generosity, of which there is probably more to come, is not possible to tell but one can look back at history for examples.

Writing in this paper in 2012, former Labour minister and China-lover Reno Calleja said that Mintoff had shocked the world when he became the first prime minister from Western Europe to visit China in 1972.

He recalled how thousands of children had given Mintoff a rousing welcome. They hadn’t been dragged out of school, of course. Those kids were all volunteers and had turned up spontaneously to cheer Mintoff, the man they must have heard so much about and deeply admired.

Calleja says that Mintoff had made the first moves towards China by sending his private secretary, Joe Camilleri, to meet the Chinese ambassador in Rome to tell him that Malta wanted to establish democratic relations with his country.

“The Chinese ambassador was frank,” wrote Calleja. “Malta should first break the diplomatic relations that the Nationalist government had established with Taiwan. When Mr Camilleri reported this to Mr Mintoff, he immediately sent for the Taiwanese ambassador and, thanking him for his services, asked him to pack his bags and leave.”

And that’s China’s soft diplomacy for you and how Muscat’s much-vaulted predecessor, Mintoff, is-Salvatur, sheepishly complied.

With Mintoff sadly gone, maybe Weiwei could find some time and explain Chinese diplomacy a bit better to Muscat, if he were allowed to leave his country, that is.

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