A Chinese chemicals firm bids for a troubled South Korean car manufacturer. A Chinese television maker teams up with a European electronics giant. A Chinese phone company buys a bankrupt US network.
Corporate China is on a move abroad, a long march to capture foreign markets and resources as part of Beijing's "Go Forth" policy to get firms on the globalization bandwagon.
The moves signal that China's maturing corporate sector is growing increasingly confident.
Yet analysts warn that bad management and lack of marketing and branding chops mean many such deals could be duds.
"Most globalization strategies I've seen are misconceived because they are basically a CEO fantasy," said Arthur Kroeber, editor of the China Economic Quarterly.
"I have a high degree of scepticism about that [policy] because it's not being driven by a correct understanding of how they can be most competitive."
Last week, chemicals conglomerate China National Blue Star raised eyebrows when it was named as top bidder for a US$620 million controlling stake in South Korean sport utility maker Ssangyong Motor.
The move by Blue Star, which also runs a chain of noodle shops, left some analysts scratching their heads.
"I have no idea what they are up to. It just doesn't make sense. They would have no cost advantage if they manufactured vehicles in Korea," said Lin Wenjun, an auto analyst with Capital International Holdings in Shanghai.
But China may not be after factories and assembly lines as much as foreign know-how and style.
"Clearly, the process of globalization is viewed as a way of exposing Chinese companies to competition and efficiency and corporate governance," said Spencer White, equities analyst with Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong.
"You begin to see how other management models work and how other businesses work."
Take Chinese television maker TCL International.
TCL bought bankrupt German TV maker Schneider Electronics for 8.2 million euros last year and in November signed a deal with France's Thomson SA to combine their television and DVD businesses.
"It's not just plain manufacturing. It takes them into areas hitherto untrodden, like brand management," White said.
Some deals aim to give China a foothold in strategic sectors.
In November last year, China Netcom, the country's No. 2 fixed-line telephone company, bought bankrupt Asia Global Crossing and its cross-Pacific data network a year ago for US$120 million.
"That was a very specific strategic move, it's an Asia-based asset that essentially hooks into Netcom's existing fixed-line network," said Matthew Bersani, an attorney for law firm Shearman & Sterling who has helped Chinese companies list in the US.
That deal amounted to a high-tech version of another form of globalization China has stepped up recently -- securing resources like oil.
Earlier last week Petrochina, the country's top oil producer, said it may bid for new oil and gas exploration acreage in Indonesia. China National Offshore Oil has also bought Indonesian oil assets. Chinese firms are also eyeing gas and oil projects in Australia and Central Asia.
China has scrambled to buy oil and gas assets overseas as it seeks fuel for its booming economy and tries to reduce dependence on supplies from the volatile Middle East.
"They do this because they are big state-owned companies ... and they have the concept that they have to have physical control of resources," Kroeber said.
On Wednesday, China made its first purchase of foreign power assets when its biggest independent electricity producer, Huaneng Power Group, bought two Australian power plants for US$227 million.
"Energy is the most obvious and first stage of this process," White said.
But selling Chinese goods abroad is a different story. With China's annual economic growth expected to top 8.5 percent this year, Chinese companies may be better off focusing on the market they know best, analysts said.
"China is a big market already and is growing so fast that many of these companies are busy consolidating their business here," said Ed Feitzinger, vice president of Menlo Worldwide Technologies, an arm of the global transport services company. "The challenge for Chinese companies is how to get their products established outside of China."
Only a few Chinese brands are known in other countries. There is Tsingtao Beer, and Haier, an appliance giant making inroads in the US with its small refrigerators and wine coolers.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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