Chinese company buys Europe's backdoor

Schwerin-Parchim airport

The tidbit of news had almost escaped my attention: Linkglobal buys a German airport. I had never hear of the Beijing-based Linkglobal nor its owner Pang Yuliang. Most media did not mention it or in a very small article, but airports you do not buy like a commodity, and certainly not airports in other countries.
The XFN-article mentioned few details. The bankrupt airport in the former DDR was bought for one billion Renminbi or 100 million euro and included all operational rights. The airport is located between Hamburg and Berlin; it was bought at an auction earlier this year.
Fortunately, German media had a few more details. The airport is going to focus on cargo, but might also include weekly fights to Zhenzhou in Henan province, where Pang comes from. So that is no solution for the currently overpriced passenger connections between China and Europe.
Pang Yuliang paid 30 million euro for the airport, but is expected to invest another 70 million euro in the region, notably in production units, who will focus on processing Chinese products meant for Europe. On the agenda are textile, computers and other products.
The investment is tiny compared to the one in Blackstone, There are no big names involved, but for China's stealth globalization this might be as important.