Rich enough not to care

China’s idiosyncratic path to economic development is leading it to do some unusual things. Its decision to hold down its currency by building up vast foreign reserves has already led to it buying scads of US treasury bonds. Now its appetite seems to have expanded to include foreign companies as well. The latest examples are CNOOC’s $18.5bn bid for oil producer Unocal and Haier’s participation in a $1.3bn consortium bidding for the household appliance maker Maytag. Relatively speaking, buying ...