Chinese New Year

At a time when the EU Commission is pushing for currency controls on the movement into or out of the EU of gold, prepaid payment cards, bearer bonds and bearer shares, an obscure Hong Kong company is buying Mountfield do-it-yourself retailer, no questions asked. The buyer, Eurasia Development Group Ltd., provides no information about itself and doesn't even have a web page. This looks like one of the circular investments we mentioned in Nov., but unless the Dalai Lama, Tibet or Jiří Brady is involved, Czechs can't get worked up about what the Chinese or their Czech business partners do in the CR. A special unit is being set up at the interior ministry to combat Russian propaganda, but TV Barrandov, minority-owned by CEFC of China, broadcasts its news without restrictions every evening. The station's co-owner, Jaromír Soukup, declared in March that the Chinese Communist Party's China Today is his favorite newspaper. Earlier this month he gave the Chinese ambassador 1.5 pages in Týden to explain how Czechs can hop on the Chinese express. Many did this year.