Chinese find Italian investment no jewel

Corriere.it:

It’s true that it has received machinery capable of processing dozens of tons of gold every year but has yet to start up production.It’s true that after twenty-two years, it has yet to turn out a single necklace and that inquiries into past management teams have led to charges of fraud ...

A cautionary tale of what can happen, and all too often does, when the government tries to make good things happen. In this case it was the Italian federal government trying to spur economic activity and create jobs in a part of the impoverished south hit by an earthquake in 1980. Beginning around 1985, they poured over 13 million euros into a jewelry factory that underwent numerous changes of ownership but never managed to produce anything. But, this is not a peculiarly Italian story, when I worked in the Nixon administration I saw the records of similar debacles here in the US.

Meanwhile, the years slipped by but the factory’s gates remained shut. The young workers stipulated by the government were never hired and the machinery remained silent.And the Chinese, led by the Beijing Art & Craft consortium initially set up by fifty-eight companies, failed to make what the documents proclaimed as “Beijing’s most important investment in Europe”.

And after all this, the Chinese can't figure out why the Italians are not more grateful. Go figure!