State-owned Yanzhou Coal Mining has agreed to buy Australia’s Felix Resources for about $2.9 billion. And China is trying to buy up quite heavily in South America.
Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said, "The Chinese don’t have enough nickel, don’t have enough oil, and they don’t have enough copper. There’s a crisis coming. They are going around the world buying up what they can. They’re preparing for a rainy day."
Which makes it seem very odd that it insists on proceeding with the Rio Tinto matter which has combined much of Australia into an anti-Chinese investment bloc.
Yes, cash will alway win out in the end. But it will be a lot more cash than would have had to be paid if the Rio Tinto episode had been handled with something approaching intelligent diplomacy.
Now bids for resources by China, whose $2.1 trillion in currency reserves are the world’s largest, have been met with opposition in the US and Australia.
According to a poll of 890 people conducted by Essential Research in April, some 57% of Australians said Chinese mining investments should be resisted because the nation’s interests would be "better served" with local ownership. Now that percentage would be much higher.
Blooomberg however reports that in other parts of the world there will not be that sort of resistance.