With its $3bn investment in Blackstone, China's new state investment corporation has delivered an emphatic message at home and abroad that it will be a very different kind of Chinese company from other state enterprises heading offshore.

Even before it has been officially established, and ahead of a decision on how the foreign exchange reserves it will invest will be transferred to its control, the corporation has pulled off an investment coup that would have been unthinkable for China's cautious bureaucracy only a few months ago.