The Modern Shylock: George Soros And The China Angle Behind Adani Hit Job

George Soros is Shylock (c.1600) reborn. The Bard's "The Merchant of Venice" described Shylock as a Venetian Jew loan shark who would lend money by setting the borrowers' ‘pound of flesh’ as a security deposit. The moment the bankrupt borrower defaulted on loan installments, Shylock would call for the deposit... his pound of flesh.

A wily financial market speculator that he is, Soros, a Hungarian Jew, has mastered the art of extracting his ‘pound of flesh’ while hiding behind the mask of a global philanthropist. The NGOs funded by Soros often pick-up fights with states or governments, to expose their weakness or manufacture perceptions that could weaken investor confidence in the economy – the right kind of opportunity for the billionaire philanthropist and his elite cronies like the Rockefeller's and Rothschild's of the world use fully to their advantage by speculating on a given country's misfortune. 

Bigger misfortunes generate large profits. Be it the toppling of a central bank or submerging countries in a deep currency crisis, Soros has notoriously thrived on short-selling operations and gorilla warfare in the financial markets. NGOs he funds are believed by many to be linked to political upheavals and chaos across the globe. 

Many fingers were pointed towards Soros when he rejoiced at the well-timed attack by Hindenburg Research on Indian billionaire Gautam Adani in January this year, ahead of the group's mega (over $3 billion) follow-on public offer. Soros then boldly confessed publicly that "Hindenburg attack on Adani will weaken Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hold on India and lead to the revival of democracy" – referring, probably, to his own version of democracy that he’d like to apply to rapidly emerging countries outside the US. Profits are an assured derivative in the game.

India's stock market regulator,  the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has found massive short selling in Adani shares by 12 entities in the country ahead of the publication of the Hindenburg report. While Hindenburg confessed to short selling of Adani linked non-exchange traded derivative instruments, which is considered illegal trade as per Indian laws, SEBI has not been able to exercise its jurisdiction on overseas selling in structured products that triggered a historic equity rout in India.

Soros-backed entities struck Adani again this week, just before the world’s top leaders will gather in New Delhi for the G20 summit. 

An NGO called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), funded by Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, Rockefeller Fund, and erstwhile CIA backed Ford Foundation, launched the Hindenburg 2.0 attack on the Adani Group. While one of India’s largest conglomerates is under the scrutiny of national investigative agencies, media, government, courts, and regulatory authorities, Soros and his associates are running roughshod with their 'short India' game plan.

In the given circumstances, Adani, India's second richest man, is a soft target for those interested in vitiating public opinion against the Narendra Modi government. There is little surprise that PM Modi's opponents in India will keep the Adani issue burning up till the final day of India’s 2024 general elections. 

The China Angle
India's enemy is China's friend. India's foreign policy experts believe that Soros is backed by China in his game to attack the Adani Group, whose founder Gautam Adani is considered a close ally of PM Modi. Adani's rise as India's richest man, before Hindenburg triggered a severe crash in share price of his group companies, largely coincided with Modi's tenure as the chief minister of India's richest state Gujarat.

Now, Adani has assumed a central role in India's growing might to counter China's tyranny of economic dominance through strategic business deals around the world. Adani's growing muscle to finance and execute critical infrastructure projects such as ports and airports in countries like Sri Lanka, Israel, Myanmar, and potentially Greece, big-ticket coal mining projects in Australia, various infrastructure undertakings in the African region, hurts China's interest.

Adani “stole” a few projects from under the nose of President Xi Jinping, where China was actively bidding for them. In June 2019, Israel had signed a 25-year contract with the Chinese port management company called Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) for the building and operation of the Haifa Port Terminal, which is strategically located in the Mediterranean sea and is important for trade in Europe. In 2022, Israel awarded the tender for the privatization of the original Haifa Port (separate from but located next to the new, Chinese-operated Haifa Bayport Terminal) to Adani group despite competing Chinese bids for the project. It was India's biggest strategic victory against China. In January, when the Hindenburg report was making news in India, Gautam Adani was in Israel meeting PM Benjamin Netanyahu for final touches to his port deal.

Likewise in Sri Lanka, where China had entered as the largest port operator nearly a decade ago, Adani announced a multimillion-dollar investment in Colombo Port's Western Container Terminal in November 2022. The 35 year long rights of Adani to build-operate-transfer the port is the "largest" foreign investment ever in Sri Lanka's port history. Ports are increasingly viewed as strategic assets and Sri Lanka adds to India’s policy of investing in such assets like it has done in Chabahar in Iran and Sohar Port in Oman. In Sri Lanka, India now has the advantage of monitoring China’s activity when its submarine docks in Columbo (Such incident in 2014 had raised security concerns in India).

In Egypt, where China has established a 7.34 sq km industrial estate in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, India may get a dedicated industrial estate in the same zone. It will help Indian companies expand investments in Egypt and use the Arab Republic as a hub to tap the markets, not only in West Asia and North Africa but also in Europe. The list of such strategic moves by India in recent years is long and Adani Group is at the forefront of some.

Against India's growing global footsteps, COVID 19 has altered the balance of power and equations in global politics. Not all countries are now attracted to China like before, as the story of its 'debt trap' stood fully exposed in Sri Lanka and other African countries. China's spy ring in Israel, the US, and Canada and their ability to fuel local riots, upheaval too was laid bare on various occasions in the last couple of years. In this scenario, China and other global powers see PM Modi's vaccine diplomacy and India's growing influence as a threat. Naturally, Adani and other corporate houses in India are on the hit list and Soros is extracting his "pound of flesh."

China's Links to Soro
Soros' role as the primary financier of Left-Wing causes globally is no longer a secret. It only makes him a natural ally of China. Don't go by his criticism of Xi recently, that is just for the gallery, say foreign affairs experts. Soros' links to China's top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) since the 1980s, have been exposed by historians. Before Tiananmen Square happened in 1989, Soros enjoyed the hospitality of MSS as China's state guest. He was funding the MSS through the Economic System Reform Institute (ESRI) and China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), which gave him access to the upper echelons of Chinese bureaucracy.

In 1986, Soros had set up ‘China Fund’ with a million dollars in endowment he partnered with ESRI. The signing ceremony was held at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse during his first trip to China. In February 1988, Soros again traveled there to sign a revised agreement with Yu Enguang, a spy master and high-ranking MSS official. CICEC itself was a front for the MSS.

Tiananmen Square changed everything. The then Chinese establishment believed Soros' China Fund played an active role in fueling demonstrations and the authorities had to massacre thousands of their own local people. It also led to a purge within the Chinese establishment as CCP’s general secretary Zhao Ziyang, Soros' top patronage in China then, was put under house arrest and replaced.

Xi is an enigma, India's foreign affairs experts believe, both he and Soros are just putting up a show of discord. Before Soros changed his tracts and became a sudden detractor of Xi, he was invited to the annual Boao Forum for Asia conference on Hainan Island, on the southern tip of mainland China, in the spring of 2013. This was just a few months after Xi first took over the reins of China that year. The hall where Soros spoke was packed. Also, he is still hugely popular among Chinese business people and investors, with his books piled up at local bookstores, including a state-run bookshop in Wangfujing, central Beijing.

In the current backdrop, Soros and the OCCRP-like organisations funded by him are an important tool to counter India and PM Modi via the Adani Group. As a thumb rule, stock markets investors and debt market lenders are wary of companies and businessmen who carry a stigma. Rating agencies, controlled by powerful lobbies, are quick to downgrade their credit score, leaving businessmen like Adani high and dry for cheap source of funds leaving their strategically important infrastructure projects in a limbo.