have long held that Chinese are more likely to live up to the spirit of a contract, than to the actual language in the agreement. Usually I prefer this, but there are times when they don’t live up to either the spirit or the word. The world has just had a big demonstration of that.
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| Who is paying the bills now? (photo: Jurgen Lehle) |
You may not have followed the saga of COSCO, a state-owned Chinese shipping company, and its refusal to pay its bills according to contract. The way the shipping business works is that the big shipping companies usually don’t own most of the vessels in their fleets. The ships are under long-term lease from financial companies that don’t know much about operating ships, but have the money to pay for their construction. It’s the same sort of arrangement that most airlines use to get their aircraft. The logo on the tail or the house flag at the masthead, don’t tell you anything about who actually owns the ship or the airplane.
