CHINA The collapse of the planned $19.5bn investment by Chinalco in Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto is a serious blow to China’s self-esteem. The state-backed aluminium company was proposing the country’s biggest foreign investment as part of efforts to secure a stable, cost-effective supply of the natural resources it needs in vast quantities to continue its rapid growth.
China will learn a bitter lesson from this. The speed of global expansion has given its corporate behemoths little practice of the pitiless reality of western-style acquisitions.
