Word: china
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Today, Tiananmen seems forgotten in mainland China, or else it is seen as a blip on the march to prosperity. In Macau, the annual remembrances are almost invisible events (only 70 people attended last year's gathering, which jointly commemorated Sichuan earthquake victims). Only in Hong Kong are the killings still openly observed and debated by large numbers - a tribute to its unique status as China's freest society, and a reminder of the widely held view that China can truly move forward only when the 1989 protesters have been rehabilitated. "We have been China's conscience," said journalist Ching...
...Analysts were quick to argue that this was not a rerun of China's ill-fated attempt to buy the American oil company UNOCAL four years ago, political opposition in Washington led CNOOC to withdraw its bid. This deal, they said, fell apart for economic - not political - reasons. The proposed Chinalco investment came when global commodity prices were at their nadir; BHP had walked away from a merger with Rio a few months earlier, and the company was in sudden and desperate need of cash to cope with a nearly $40 billion debt burden...
...minerals prices have rebounded - in part (and ironically) because of a huge government spending binge in China that has had companies here frantically restocking their supplies of copper, iron ore and other commodities used in industrial production. "The biggest driver of discontent [with the Chinalco deal] among Rio shareholders," says Grant Craighead, managing director of Australia-based independent research group Stock Resource, "was that the deal was being struck close to the low point in the current financial crisis. Over recent months the market decided that the worst of the crisis was over, and life's likely to get better...
...Even though the economic rational for nixing the deal muted criticism in China today, the way it went still stings in Beijing. If a private sector company in the west had proposed buying a minority stake in Rio Tinto, would the Australian review process have taken as long? Or it would it have been waived through much more quickly - before commodity prices recovered? Now, far from gaining access to a giant iron ore reserves, Chinalco has to watch the two biggest producers in the world - BHP and Rio - do a joint venture with their reserves in the famed Pilbara region...
...deal's outcome also leaves another basic question unanswered: What is China going to do with all of it's money, if the developed world sends signals that it doesn't really want it - at least in forms other than investments in US Treasury debt? One of the things a country with more cash than it can possibly invest at home - a description which China fits in spades - does is recycle its surpluses is through foreign direct investment. And China, in fact, has done scores of resource deals in the developing world - of late with Russia, Kazakhstan and Brazil...