Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The buying of America

Paul Krugman has an interesting thing to say about China's recent buying of chunks of corporate America, in light of the brazen Chinese all-cash bid to take over the American company UNOCAL. He thinks that while Japan's buying spree of American companies in the 1980's proved ultimately harmless to America's larger geopolitical interests, China's bid for UNOCAL highlights an important qualitative difference between the Japanese investment in America fifteen years ago and the Chinese investment now. According to Krugman, China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America's strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources. And China is pursuing the less costly option of taking over an oil company rather than invading one whole Middle East country. Hmm, kung-fu masters are probably not quite up to the task yet.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Sun Tzu said somewhere in his book...

"The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting."

or something like that...

Ronnel Lim said...

I just saw the film Sanjuro by Akira Kurosawa and there's an apropos quote there: "Good swords are kept on their sheaths."

Ronnel Lim said...

By the way, I highly rcomemnd Sanjuro.