China's buying spree in global fire sale

[babylonsister]

China's buying spree in global fire sale
This month China bought stakes in French, Canadian, and Australian firms.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the February 23, 2009 edition


Beijing - General Motors is doing it. The world's second-largest mining group is doing it. Russia, Brazil, and Venezuela are doing it. And China is loving it.

Squeezed between falling profits and the credit crunch, a growing number of troubled corporations and countries are turning to cash-rich China for a bailout. And with foreign assets cheaper than they have been for years, Beijing is on an international spending spree.

"The international financial crisis ... is equally a challenge and an opportunity," China's energy czar, Zhang Guobao, wrote recently in the official newspaper People's Daily. "The slowdown ... has reduced the price of international energy resources and assets and favors our search for overseas resources."

So far, the government has concentrated on natural-resource deals, securing supplies of oil and minerals in return for large amounts of cash. But private Chinese firms are also taking advantage of the crisis in other sectors: Diesel-engine giant Weichai Power is expected to buy a French plant that US automaker General Motors is selling off in its struggle to survive.

more...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0223/p01s03-wosc.html

[On the Road]

1. This is Helping Slow the Crash a Lot

As Bernanke has been saying, an orderly disposal of failing assets is a key to finding a bottom.

The Chinese are eventually going to own many corporations and a lot of property. Not sure it's much better or worse than American ownership.

[angrycarpenter]

2. The free market fools all thought the US would come out on top

of the globalization game. They all played a real game of risk on the actual map of the world and now they are having to give all of their chips to the winner. Now we are having pawn our future for cab fare home. I guess they will just blame it on the liberals.