Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2011, Blaðsíða 14

14
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2011
Iceland | Analysis
A Chinese gentleman
wants to buy a big tract
of land in the Northeast,
and a central weakness of
Icelandic politics is revealed. It is all
about opinion. A government min-
ister comes on television and starts
talking about the Chinese who are
buying up all the land in the world.
The President enters the stage—he
is extremely anti-EU and he says that
all good people should be welcome
in Iceland, not only Europeans. And
so it goes back and forth—with ev-
erybody arguing.
A SERIOUS LACK OF OBJECTIVITY
But the aforementioned, China-fearing
minister is incidentally the one who
has to determine whether the Chinese
gentleman should be allowed to buy this
land. He should be looking at laws, rules
and regulations, not fantasising about
Chinese world domination. And the
President fails to mention that Iceland is
a part of the European Economic Area,
and thus has adopted a large chunk of
EU legislation. This stipulates that Euro-
peans can buy land in Iceland and that
Icelanders can buy land in Europe. There
is no such agreement with China, no
reciprocity—basically Icelanders are not
allowed to buy land in China.
But this is the way politics work in Ice-
land. There are a lot of opinions, a lot of
moulding facts to one's purpose, a fertile
ground for conspiracy theories, a frus-
trated nation that can easily be played
upon by demagogues, propagandists
and political adventurers—but very little
objectivity.
Our Nobel Prize winning novelist,
Halldór Laxness, once wrote that Ice-
landers are almost immune to sensible
arguments, preferring to fight over things
that have little to do with the matter at
hand and dwell on absolute trivialities.
AN AVERSION TO FACTS
There is even a certain aversion to facts.
The last government before the crash
spent enormous efforts to try to disprove
that the tax burden of the lower classes
had actually gotten heavier while the rich
were paying less and less.
Before that, then-Prime Minister
Davíð Oddsson actually closed down the
National Economic Institute, because its
findings differed with his own opinions.
Thus, there was no independent author-
ity to monitor the economy, only people
with different interests—and opinions.
This proved to be rather fateful when the
economic system totally overheated and
then blew up.
In this way everything is politicised
and subjected to political haggling. The
arguments about the Icelandic agricul-
tural system—which is heavily subsidised
and very archaic—have gotten to the
point where the Minister of Agriculture
claims that high tariffs are actually bene-
ficial for the general consumer. An asso-
ciation of young farmers took out ads in
the media claiming that EU membership
would be harmful to Iceland to the extent
that young people from here would have
to serve in a EU-army. A lot of time goes
into debating nonsense like this—in some
ways the media are to blame for not siev-
ing out the more outrageous claims.
NO AGREEMENT ON THE RECOVERY
The latest debate is between the govern-
ment and the opposition. The govern-
ment claims that the country is on the
road to recovery, pointing to statistics
from the IMF—which has just left the
country, less than three years after the
meltdown of October 2008. The opposi-
tion seems to believe that the country is
totally on the skids with no investment
and people fleeing en masse to Norway.
There is also a debate between the gov-
ernment and the president—a sort of a
subtext to the whole thing—about who
saved the country. In a place where poli-
tics are so partisan and the independent
sources of information are so weak, this
makes for a very hard tangle for the gen-
eral public to unravel.
Another instance is a plan recently
put forward on how to utilise the nation’s
natural energy resources, waterfalls and
geothermal areas. This has been long
in the making—many have cited it as a
sort of a settlement that would allow
us to harness our resources, free from
strife. But as soon as the document was
published it was evident this would not
happen. Those who are on the side of
industrialisation claimed it was far too
restrictive, that this would destroy plans
for energy plants that had been many
years in the making. Preservationists on
the other hand claimed that this would
destroy far too many natural wonders.
So the same fight continues, nothing
has been settled, one almost wonders
whether the much-awaited plan is worth
the paper it is written on.
AN OPPRESSIVE POLITICAL ATMO-
SPHERE
So, even if Iceland seems peaceful on
the surface, the political debate is very
quarrelsome and exhausting—some-
times it seems actually degrading to
participate in it. Blogs have not neces-
sarily made things better—they are often
foul tempered and prejudiced. Citizens'
initiatives, which flourished for a while
after the crash, have come to little frui-
tion. Trust in politics is minimal, but ideas
about how to do things differently are not
welcomed. For example, the interest in
proposals by a constitutional committee
suggesting democratisation and open-
ness is strangely muted.
Some politicians actually thrive well
in this atmosphere. It is strangely easy
to manipulate public opinion. This does
not seem to be the time for reason or
level-headedness, so it is the masters of
political gamesmanship who thrive, men
like President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
and former Prime Minister Davíð Odds-
son, who know every political trick in the
book, but who might both be seen as
lacking in sincerity.
A FARM IN THE MIDDLE OF
NOWHERE
But back to the Chinese gentleman, Mr.
Huang Nubo. He is buying what is the
largest or second largest farm in Iceland.
But that does not tell the whole story.
The farm, Grímsstaðir, is far in the moun-
tains of the Northeast, in a desolate area,
desert-ified by the overgrazing of sheep,
an unusually cold place for Iceland—with
temperatures sometimes sinking below
minus 30°C. The place also has no special
natural beauty. But in Grímsstaðir Huang
wants to build a luxury resort, mostly for
Chinese tourists, and even a golf course.
This is surely an interesting plan, but
many have wondered: what is he really
after, beside cold and solitude. These can
actually be found in the deserts north of
Beijing, which might not be so different
from the landscape around Grímsstaðir.
THE YELLOW PERIL
So all sorts of speculation takes off. Even
the respected Financial Times publishes
an article linking this to nascent Chi-
nese imperials, stating that this might
be linked to plans to gain foothold in the
North-Atlantic. Here we enter the realm
of James Bond's ‘Dr. No,’ wrote The In-
dependent. Grímsstaðir is a landlocked
place, as far from any harbour as you can
get in Iceland, so it is a bit hard to link this
to imperialistic intentions, except if the
plan was to turn it into a military instal-
lation at the touch of a button. We can
picture this: Peaceful Chinese tourists
with their cameras, suddenly turning into
agents of world domination.
There we have an old motive all over
again: The Yellow Peril. It is easy to fan-
tasise about it. But China has been send-
ing delegations to Iceland for many years
and inviting lots and lots of Icelandic poli-
ticians and luminaries over. Our president
has been especially active in this regard;
he has gone to China six times in the last
five years, but he almost never goes to
Europe. But really not much has come
out of this—except rather clichéd talk
about the Chinese being very clever and
thinking in the long-term (the way they
manage their economy actually disproves
this, with environmental catastrophes
spreading all over China and a bubble
economy that cannot possibly last).
Iceland does not have very much to
sell to China, and of course the distances
are long. There have been negotiations
on a free trade agreement between the
countries, but due to trade imbalances
and the way the Chinese do business this
is difficult to finalise.
ARE THE CHINESE BETTER FRIENDS
THAN EUROPEANS?
So Huang’s offer to buy this large tract
of land came as a surprise. Instantly the
affair became very politicised, it in fact
caused a minor political explosion in the
beginning of September. Interior Minis-
ter, Ögmundur Jónasson, was very scep-
tical; it was he who said that we must be
wary of Chinese buying up all the land in
the world.
Words
Egill Helgason
Illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
Egill Helgason is a journalist, political commentator, blogger and the host of
Iceland's only literary TV show, as well as Iceland's premiere political talk show.
How he has time to write articles for us, we do not know. But he does.
“We can picture this: Peaceful Chinese tourists with
their cameras, suddenly turning into agents of world
domination”
AGENTS OF WORLD DOMINATION?
Continues on page 34
Dr. Nu comes to Iceland, and the nation once more explodes into quarrel
“Blogs have not necessarily made things better—they are
often foul tempered and prejudiced.”