Athlone hub part of a larger European strategy

IT’S BEEN A busy week for China in Ireland, with the news that the “Shanghai on the Shannon” project has been given planning permission. Attention now turns to how this ambitious project unfurls.

The Euro Chinese Trading Hub has been in and out of the headlines over the years. Its profile was high in the Irish community here a couple of years ago, with the hub’s backers sponsoring Irish community events, but it has fallen off the radar since then pending the planning permission. The identity of the Chinese backers is hard to establish.

Last week, An Bord Pleanála ruled that the first phase of the vast Chinese trading hub on the edge of Athlone met planning rules. The project certainly makes Ireland a more attractive place to Chinese investors, who are growing increasingly aware of Ireland’s existence since the visits of supreme leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping to Ireland, and the return trip by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

There is giddiness at what the hub might bring to the area. It is expected to include three major exhibition halls and nine minor ones on a 102,348sq m site. There is even talk of an international airport.

Chinese interest in the euro hub fits with the policy here of looking at European outposts as a way of accessing the EU and its markets. China has looked at parts of Greece, including the port of Piraeus.

Ireland has attracted Chinese attention because it is in the euro zone, and has an educated workforce. Ireland also has cheap assets on offer and a wobbly economy, factors it shares with Iceland, another country in which China is keenly interested.

Iceland is still reeling from the bursting of a financial bubble in 2008 and, last month, premier Wen Jiabao stopped off there and signed deals on energy co-operation and the Arctic.

Much of China’s interest is about natural resources, but it’s also about access to Europe, and China looks set to make a major cash injection into the remote island. Plans are afoot to bring Chinese people to Iceland to take advantage of its clean air, and its remoteness – two commodities in short supply in China.

Last year, Iceland’s government rejected a plan by multi-millionaire Chinese developer Huang Nubo to build a sprawling tourist resort in the northeast corner of the island. Huang is still trying, and is negotiating a new plan with Icelandic municipalities to lease a property. He is not expected to be told “no” twice.