Secretive panel could block China's Unocal bid

[Voegelin]

Yahoo News
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If Unocal Corp. accepts an $18.5 billion takeover by China's CNOOC Ltd. the deal's fate may hinge on how a secretive U.S. review panel defines "national security," experts said on Friday . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050624/pl_nm/energy_unocal_cfius_dc_3

 

[billwald]

It's a smart move. What better use of the dollars they get from Walmart?

 

[Voegelin]

Be good for the PRC and everyone else. They want Unocal's South Asian reserves. Offering a premium for them. Better China buys it what needs in the free market than try to project force or create client states to ensure oil shipments.

 

[MaryS]

Be good for the PRC and everyone else. They want Unocal's South Asian reserves. Offering a premium for them. Better China buys it what needs in the free market than try to project force or create client states to ensure oil shipments.

Sounds like a good plan. China is still developing, so their oil needs will continue to rise. In my opinion, if China's suppliers ever cut off the flow of oil, there are some oil-rich countries that better beware of the largest army I can think of.

According to some rather new immigrants from China that live in my neighborhood, China is a very repressive and militaristic country. I don't know much about China, but I would expect those who left for America to be more appreciative of the freedoms we have in comparison. I can't imagine that there are/were countries that would fine you for having more than one child....and the Chinese-American couple that I talked to think it's great that they are allowed to have their four children.

 

[Voegelin]

if China's suppliers ever cut off the flow of oil, there are some oil-rich countries that better beware of the largest army I can think of.

Exactly. India is concerned because China is building ports in Burma and Pakistan to protect shipments from the mideast through the Strait of Malacca. If they can have assured supplies closer to home, the less tension in the Indian Ocean.

A PRC company, Hutchinson-Whampoa, bought one of Canada's largest producers, Husky Energy, several years ago. Far as I know, it has been a good deal for both countries.

As you say, China certainly has problems--human rights abuses being one of them. Encouraging the PRC to assimilate into the world economic community is the best way I can see of lessening them.


Curiously enough, the PRC may force us to reform. Just this year the communist party sponsored the publication of a book touting a low flat tax. There goes the second plank of the communist manifesto! (2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax)

China's destructive "One Child" policy is a result of China's isolation in the past. A PRC scientist was allowed to travel just when academics from MIT were spouting Malthusian theories of catastrophe at the Club of Rome meeting in Italy in the 1970s. He thought that was cutting edge science. As it turned out, it was hype the guys from MIT later retracted. But he sold it to the Communist Party in China and there it sits today.