Bill English wound up his Japanese jaunt over the weekend with a couple of days in the Asian economic dragon Hong Kong.

The Prime Minister was there waving the New Zealand for sale flag, speaking to influential investors from the region about the benefits of putting their money where our mouth is.

Infrastructure’s the buzz word and it was delivered with all the hype of a Dipton farmer, tyre kicking, serious and as sincere as anyone in a black singlet and gummies could be. They seem to like his understated but likeably forceful way of telling it like it is.

We need roads and bridges built and they’ve got the money to help us in partnership to do it.

On the tricky subject of Chinese investment in the build and their liking for it to be done by their own workers, English didn’t demure. If they fit the immigration criteria then they’d be welcome.

The dragon’s footprint in the Pacific is massive with two-way trade between China and the island nations doubling in just one year. That’s why the Chinese are happy to invest in infrastructure, they see it as the welcome mat for their vast manufacturing interests.

Others see it as a little more sinister, a shift away from a region which has traditionally been allied to the west, filling the strategic vacuum left by the now fuzzy foreign policy coming out of Washington.

Whatever, that wasn’t on English’s mind as he trudged around Hong Kong looking for bidders. But if the best bids do come from China then New Zealand should be wary, not of where the money’s coming from but whether we’ll avoid a bang from their bucks.

China doesn’t have a good record when it comes to sound infrastructure even though they may be able to complete the job more quickly than others.

In the past year a newly built $300 million bridge in the northern Chinese Harbin collapsed sending four trucks into the water below with three dead. There have been other examples of new building collapses and of roads in our region breaking up not long after the tar seal’s dried. It stems from the Chinese Government’s drive of quantity over quality, to secure as many infrastructure projects as they are able and to finish them as quickly as they can.

Take Fiji for example, heavily in debt to China through soft loans to build infrastructure there, using Chinese labour, materials and machinery which effectively means Fiji’s borrowing money to employ Chinese workers.

For good measure the Chinese built an elaborate concrete and steel fence around the Fiji President’s residence only to find that within a few years the concrete was cracking and the steel rusting.

So in our rush to build our roads and bridges, New Zealand should reflect on where the money’s coming from, or more importantly the conditions attached to it, and at the very least ensure we’ll get the right sort of bang for the buck, wherever is comes from.

Barry Soper is in Hong Kong, courtesy of our national carrier Air New Zealand.