A thrifty Asian powerhouse saves and invests its way to economic stardom, inspiring admiration and paranoia in the rich world. The powerhouse begins to lose momentum, driving its corporations to switch their investment appetites towards assets abroad. But, lacking worldly experience, the corporations bungle. Billions in hard-earned national savings disappear down a black hole.
Such was the experience of Japan from the late 1980s, when it snapped up trophy assets from New York’s Rockefeller Center to the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, for which a Japanese acquirer paid the equivalent of $2.3m in 2016 dollars — per room. Now, a quarter of a century later, China may be following the same script, to judge from today’s merger wars at least.
Exhibit A, until recently, was the commodity sector. State-owned companies bought up mines and oil reserves at the peak of the market, and have now lost their shirts. The theory of the purchases was that China, a commodity importer, should protect itself from rising global prices. But these same prices reflected the country’s unsustainable expansion. Far from hedging prudently, it was taking a leveraged bet on its own growth.