Business As Usual Outside

Last October "The Carlyle Group Agrees to Acquire an 85% Stake in Xugong Group Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. for US$375 million (RMB 3 billion); Transaction Will Help China’s Leading Construction Machinery Producer Grow Domestically and Internationally."

"Under the takeover agreement inked by the two parties last October, Xugong Group is to sell 85 per cent of shares of its subsidiary Xugong Group construction machinery co. to Carlyle at USD 375 million. The Chinese machinery giant with annual revenues of 17 billion yuan (USD 2.1 billion), controls more than 50 per cent of China's crane and road paving equipment market."

(At least someone gets new roads.)

At the moment a Chinese blogger is trying to stop the sale. Chinese Blog Tries to Derail Sale of Firm to Carlyle Group. BEIJING -- Armed with a blog and some nationalist rhetoric, a Chinese businessman is campaigning to derail the sale of a construction-equipment maker to U.S. investors.

"Selling anything is fine, but selling out the country is wrong!" is a typical sentiment on the businessman's blog. What gives the declarations more impact is their author: Xiang Wenbo, the 44-year-old executive president of heavy-machinery maker Sany Corp., which has roughly $750 million in annual sales."

You go Xiang Wenbo.

Sany has hired a local securities firm to help with its plan to buy Xugong Group Construction Machinery, the Shanghai Securities News reported Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.

The paper said Sany Group had appointed Guosen Securities to conduct the preliminary work for a potential offer to buy Xugong Group.

An official at Guosen Securities who declined to be named said the brokerage had taken on a role as consultant to Sany Group, but couldn't give more details.

"At the appropriate time, Sany Group and I will reveal all to the outside world," the paper quoted executive president Xiang Wenbo as saying."

Go Wenbo.

Carlyle's Asian Invasion. Carlyle is not alone in China of course. In the '90s megacorporations jumped into Asia/China like white on rice. Boeing, Nike, IBM, TRW, Allied Signal, Motorola, ConAgra, Rockwell, Dresser, Eastman Chemical, GM, UTC, Ford, AIG, AMP, and American Standard. Under Bubba Clinton?

And oh yes, life in China sweatshops has improved.)

Although China initially opposed the US war on Iraq it also "voted for the Security Council Resolution 1546 in June 2004, legitimizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq." And currently Chinese news portrays the US role in Iraq as downright positive, "safeguarding the new Iraqi government and helping train army officers and policemen."

Any question what part of the world will get most of Iraq's petro when production rises again? Surely the US will not fight a billion Chinese over ME oil when all the world's tennis shoes and teevees need to be made in Asia.