Tehran Pitches $300 Billion Fire Sale to Beijing's Boardrooms

Around 300 businesspeople, chamber of commerce delegates and Chinese officials crowded into a Shanghai forum this week to hear Iran's pitch: about 150 projects across 11 strategic sectors, worth an estimated $300 billion. The sales team was a deputy economy minister, a provincial governor, an ambassador and a handful of state agency heads. The shoppers were Chinese capital. Nobody who actually works the barberry fields or the petrochemical plants had a seat on the stage.

The Iran-China Investment and Trade Forum was held on the sidelines of the ninth China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai. Deputy economy minister Mehdi Heydari laid out the numbers. Modernizing the energy and infrastructure sectors over the next five years would need roughly $250 billion, he said. About 30 of the listed projects sit in petrochemicals alone, requiring more than $45 billion.

The State as Salesman

Iranian Ambassador to China Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli opened with ceremony, noting the 55th anniversary of modern diplomatic relations and the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership. Then came the catalogue. Medical diagnostic equipment, nanomedicine, biopharmaceuticals and medicinal plants were on display. Joint research, emerging industries, clean production, technical standards, infrastructure, renewable energy, smart transportation and the green economy made the list of promising areas for cooperation.

Note who decides what gets listed, financed and built. Ministries, state petrochemical companies and a trade promotion bureaucracy. Mehrdad Rahimi, deputy for international affairs at the National Petrochemical Company, asked for expanded cooperation in investment, financing and transportation. Hossein Roozbeh, head of the Organization for International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Development, called for technological and industrial partnerships. Abdol-Sadeh Nisi, adviser to the head of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, pointed to higher-value-added exports and trade corridors. Every title in this story belongs to an office. Every office belongs to a state.

The Land Gets a Brochure

South Khorasan Governor Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi offered the province like a menu: more than 58 active mineral types, over 300 sunny days a year, about 98 percent of the world's seedless barberries, first place in Iran in jujube, second in saffron, and about 80 medicinal plant species. Sunlight, minerals, saffron fields and herbs, itemized for outside buyers. The base article records no word from the farmers, miners or herb gatherers who would live with whatever deal gets signed.

Corridors, Not Communities

The forum's vocabulary tells its own story: portfolios, corridors, strategic sectors, partnerships. It's the language of two governments arranging the movement of capital and goods, with ordinary people appearing only as the ground the pipelines run through. A comprehensive strategic partnership, as these officials describe it, is a deal between ministries.

The article contains no figures on how many of the 150 projects have signed financing, no Chinese investor on the record, and no commitment of any kind. What it has is a price tag, a list of titles and a promise of cooperation. The investors, if they come, will deal with the apparatus. The people in South Khorasan will deal with whatever the apparatus agrees to.