In the media reports about offshore acquisitions by Chinese companies, the myriad diverse buyers are usually described in headlines and electronic tickers in a single word: “China”.

It is a convenient compression. Autonomous as they may claim to be, every Chinese state enterprise, be it Minmetals, the Bank of China or Shanghai Automotive, answers ultimately to the ruling Communist party. So what then are we to make of the high-profile spat between two of China’s three big state airline groups, Air China, the national carrier, and China Eastern, based in Shanghai?