This earlier post addressed the folly of developing a mercantilist governmental policy in response to the China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s hostile takeover bid for Unocal, which had previously accepted Chevron Corporation’s friendly bid for the company. In this OpinionJournal op-ed, CNOOC, Ltd. chairman and CEO Fu Chengyu takes up that line of thinking in arguing that CNOOC’s bid is actually good for American business interests and poses no threat to those those interests or American security.
In the meantime, in this post, Brad Stetser, senior economist for the boutique firm Roubini Global Economics, has been thinking about the CNOOC bid in the context of the amount of foreign assets that the Chinese accumulate each month by exporting more than they import. Mr. Stetser estimates that the value of those assets is around $20 billion, which is more than the $18.5 billion that CNOOC is bidding for Unocal. Thus, Mr. Stetser notes that it’s a tad absurd to worry too much about the Chinese buying one second tier oil & gas company when the real issue is that China has become the largest creditor of an increasingly leveraged U.S. economy. Stated simply, it doesn’t make sense to object when Communists want to buy U.S. companies, but sell away when the same Commies offer to buy U.S. debt.

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Sebastian Mallaby joined the Washington Post editorial page in 1999 after 13 years with The Economist magazine, and is the author of The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (Penguin Press 2004).
In this fine piece regarding the China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s hostile takeover bid for Unocal (previous posts here and here), Mr. Mallaby points out that it’s usually a bad idea to prevent a foreign company from overpaying for an American company:

Does it matter if China owns U.S. companies? Japan went on a corporate spending spree in the 1980s, and the chief victims were not Americans, as the protectionists predicted, but the Japanese themselves. The Japanese paid inflated prices for Hollywood studios and landmark New York buildings. The exiting American owners made off with a nice profit. The Japanese got burned.
The Unocal bid has triggered the same muddled complaining that attended those Japanese takeovers. The protectionists say the Chinese want to pay for Unocal with cheap loans from their taxpayers, just as Japanese corporations were once denounced for accessing cheap capital from servile banks. But this means that China’s taxpayers are offering sure profits to Unocal’s shareholders. Admittedly, it also means that Chevron’s shareholders stand to forgo a business opportunity, but then that opportunity may not have paid off. From the view of U.S. economic interests, this is a net plus.

Read the entire piece, and also contemplate Exxon CEO Lee Raymond’s thoughts on Chevron’s earlier bid for Unocal:

Q: What do you think of ChevronTexaco’s decision to acquire Unocal?
Mr. Raymond: I can never remember an industry consolidating at high prices. But I can remember an industry consolidating at low prices.
Q: Some people think prices will keep going up.
Mr. Raymond: Maybe. I’ll bet they’ll be lower at some point.

Finally, in pointing out that trade restrictions against China make little sense, Lawrence Kudlow notes in this Washington Times op-ed:

If a store is selling quality products at low prices, why would anyone want to shut it down?

By the way, courtesy of John Wagner, Mark Palmer — who was Enron’s head public relations spokesperson as the company slid toward bankruptcy — is CNOOC’s public relations point person in its bid for Unocal.

Cnooc Ltd., China’s third-largest oil company and it’s major explorer of offshore oil and gas, yesterday made an unsolicited $18.5 billion cash bid for El Segundo, CA.-based Unocal Corp. The bid is attempting to scuttle the earlier $16.5 billion bid that San Ramone, CA.-based Chevron Corp. made for Unocal in April.
If successful, Cnooc’s bid would be the largest foreign acquisition ever attempted by a Chinese company and would be the first time that a Chinese and U.S. company have competed in a takeover battle. Cnooc had been considering making a bid for Unocal in April, but backed off at the last minute.
Inasmuch as a good case can be made that Chevron’s bid was over-priced, Cnooc’s offer for Unocal reflects that China’s government (about a 70% owner of Cnooc) will pay a high price to gain direct control over more energy assets to fuel its booming economy. Nearly half of Unocal’s reserves — the oil and natural gas equivalent of about 1.75 billion barrels — consists of natural gas in Asia. Cnooc is offering $67 a share for Unocal, and would have to pay Chevron a $500 million breakup fee and assume Unocal’s $1.6 billion in debt.
Although Cnooc’s bid will undoubtedly raise political concerns in Washington, prominent U.S. executives advised political interests to remain calm. The Wall Street Journal reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Lee Raymond said it would be a “big mistake” for the U.S. government to block Cnnoc’s bid. “You have to have free trade. If you start to put inefficiencies in the system, all of us eventually pay for that.”