新西兰英语 544 Sale of farms to Chinese

 　　On Friday, the Prime Minister announced that a Chinese company, the Shanghai Pengxin group will be allowed to buy the 16 Crafar dairy farms. The owner of the Shanghai Pengxin group is a billionaire, Jiang Zhaobai. Mr Crafar lost his farms when he was bankrupt. A New Zealand group is planning to go to court to stop the sale. This group offered $171.5m but the Chinese group offered more, possibly $210m.

　　We don’t know why the 16 farms were sold together instead of separately so that New Zealand farmers could buy them.

　　Many people are unhappy about this sale of farm land to a Chinese company. However, this sale is 800 ha and in the last two years, 360,000 ha of land was sold to foreign owners – German, Italian, British and American. All land sales to foreign owners have to be approved by the Overseas Investment Office and the buyer must be of “good character”.

　　The farms will be managed by Landcorp which is a New Zealand government-owned company. Shanghai Pengxin has to invest $14m in the farms to improve them and has to train dairy workers.

　　Shanghai Pengxin now wants to buy more land in New Zealand, this time for real estate, to build houses.

　　Vocabulary

　　announced – he gave the news at a meeting

　　bankrupt – not enough money to pay his debts

　　approved – said “Yes”