CHINESE Carmakers Have Plans To Acquire GM & Chrysler

[kpete]

Playing Chess with the Chinese
By: emptywheel Wednesday November 19, 2008 7:36 am

Chinese carmakers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire GM and Chrysler, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reports today. (A National Enquirer the paper is not. It is one of China's leading business newspapers, with a daily readership over three million.) The paper cites a senior official of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology– the state regulator of China’s auto industry– who dropped the hint that “the auto manufacturing giants in China, such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) and Dongfeng Motor Corporation, have the capability and intention to buy some assets of the two crisis-plagued American automakers.” These hints are very often followed with quick action in the Middle Kingdom. The hints were dropped just a few days after the same Chinese government gave its auto makers the go-ahead to invest abroad. And why would they do that?

A take-over of a large overseas auto maker would fit perfectly into China’s plans. As reported before, China has realized that its export chances are slim without unfettered access to foreign technology. The brand cachet of Chinese cars abroad is, shall we say, challenged. The Chinese could easily export Made-in-China VWs, Toyotas, Buicks. If their joint venture partner would let them. The solution: Buy the joint venture partner. Especially, when he’s in deep trouble.

How's that bridge loan looking now, Richard Shelby? You want your Japanese manufacturers to be competing against cars assembled in China?

http://www.21cbh.com/

How's that bridge loan looking now, Richard Shelby? You want your Japanese manufacturers to be competing against cars assembled in China?

more at:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/11/19/playing-chess-with-the-chinese/

[bdamomma]

1. now the carmakers are being sold to the highest bidder.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

2. Great. Let's give a foreign power an even greater stake in our country.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Give? Foreign? Our? Country? Ha!

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork4.html

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels."

[Fearless]

3. Unfortunately this was seen as a possiblity months ago...

Isn't it just great when people can't see the writing on the wall.

Sigh...

[greguganus]

5. Get ready for the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. n/t

[Kokonoe]

6. Don't worry, I think the US would still be in charge.

:sarcasm:

[HamdenRice]

7. This is actually very, very good news

The basic problem in the world economy is the imbalance between Asian savers and western borrowers/spenders. As a result, China, Japan and certain other Asian countries have amassed staggering reserves of dollars and treasury bills.

The best reporting on this I've heard was "This American Life"'s segment on the 70 trillion in global savings, much of it in Asia and Europe, looking for high returns as debt. That caused us to borrow it and throw an 8 year party -- the wars on borrowed money, the consumer credit card runups and the housing price bubble.

The only way out of this is for those trillions to be invested in real things, rather than paper assets -- factories in America.

Get used to working for a Chinese boss. It's the only way to balance the imbalances. Of course, we become an economic colony, but that happened during the last 8 years, and is only becoming obvious and manifest if they buy our factories.

[Mugweed]

8. Ultimately, they already own them.

Where do we all think this bailout money comes from? The USA has been financed by the Bank of China since Bush took off on his "compassionate conservative" spending spree back in 2003.

[TahitiNut]

9. They have to do SOMETHING with all those dollars we send them.

When we have a balance of trade deficit as huge as the one we have with China, something's gotta give. It's not much different from the Japanese buying Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center way back when. The only value of any currency is ultimately based on what it can buy in the sponsoring country.

[mrJJ]

10. People's Liberation Army

Every major corporation that does business in China today has a rather perculiar Chinese partner. All paper trails of these Chinese partners or corporations always lead back to one entity. The PLA. The Chinese People's Liberation Army...

[lelgt60]

11. They have to do something with all that Melamine n/t