[rant] I have first hand experience with this. In China there is a law which states that in certain sectors and above a certain level of "security" (guess who defines security) the supplier company must be Chinese and its legal representative must be a Chinese national. Of course this law is loosely enforced. It's not that they prevent you from doing business there. Simply it's like a gun pointed to your head. When they decide it's time to pull the trigger, you're out. You might think to buy a Chinese company or set up a commercial partnership or found a JV and then sell your products through them. One successful example of this is Blizzard. However this works up to a point- the "security" level. When you're above the line, even the product must be Chinese, and that's when you transfer your sources to the local counterpart or give up and leave.

Concretely, this means that you can forget doing business with the Chinese gov. Or prepare to be canned up any time.

Now couple this with the wild investments China is conducting on a cash-hungry Europe. And of course it is state-driven, because outbound capital flows are heavily restricted in China otherwise.

However it looks like Chinese acquisitions in EU not only play toward China's long-term goals to rebrand their production (and eventually make money off of our own market). You can also see it as a modern cold-war with the USA, where the stake is industrial predominance and the means is influence over Europe. Just like the old USA vs USSR times. The USA try to make deals with us, while the Chinese outright buy us.

Europe has mainly two choices, take a side or become the third pole. I think bot are politically valid choices, however what is really astonishing and enraging, and the article conveys it very well, is that EU has the political energy to do neither. It's not that our political agenda gets crushed by either side. Is that we have none. And this to me means that the European Union at the end of the story will be the only one true big loser, and we as Europeans will follow along. [/rant]