The state-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corporation has bid $18.5 billion for Unocal, an American energy company, in the latest sign that China is looking overseas for natural resources and brands. Controversially, acquisitive Chinese firms are getting a lot of help from their government

OTHER than capturing the mood of cold-war paranoia, the 1960s film “Battle Beneath the Earth” has little to recommend it. But the message that Communist China was set to take over America by sending an army through a set of tunnels dug beneath the Pacific Ocean played on popular fears. Nowadays it is China’s economic might that has the world in a tizzy, and the Chinese are coming armed with money to buy assets, not guns.

China’s biggest strike so far is an offer for Unocal, a California-based oil and gas firm. On Thursday June 23rd, the state-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) made a cash bid of $18.5 billion for Unocal ($20.6 billion including assumed debt and a break-up fee), trumping a $18 billion share-and-cash offer (including the debt) from Chevron, America’s second-largest oil company. Opponents in America have based their hostility to CNOOC’s bid on national-security issues. The Chinese firm has promised to preserve American jobs and keep Unocal’s products on sale in the country to assuage nationalist sentiment. Unocal said it will evaluate the bid but that its board’s recommendation of Chevron’s offer “remains in effect”.

China’s move for Unocal neatly sums up the two forces driving the country’s ongoing bid to acquire foreign assets: the thirst for raw materials to feed and maintain its booming economy, and the desire to obtain western brands to help market Chinese exports.

Last year China’s economy grew by 9.5%, and the pace does not appear to be slowing much. The economy is in the throes of a gradual transition from state control to the free market. Much of Chinese industry is government-controlled, and some years ago China’s authorities concluded that to challenge the rest of the world they needed to build up to 50 of the country’s better firms into globally competitive multinationals—helping them along the way with tax breaks, free land and all-but-free financing through state-owned banks. The eventual aim was to create national champions that could take on the world’s leading companies while remaining under the watchful eye of the state.

To this end, Chinese firms have made deals to gain access to natural resources. Buying Unocal would give CNOOC fresh oil and gas reserves (many of which are located in Asia) at a time when energy prices are high and China’s appetite is strong. Last year Baosteel, China’s leading steelmaker, entered into joint-ventures in Australia and Brazil to assure supplies of iron ore. PetroChina and Sinopec, the two biggest state oil firms, have also shopped abroad. But this quest for commodities has not always proved successful. Last year China Minmetals, the country’s biggest base-metals firm, failed in a $7 billion attempted takeover of Canada’s Noranda, an ore producer. Fears that Minmetals still harbours ambitions spurred Canada’s government to introduce a bill this week intended to block foreign takeovers on national-security grounds.

As well as securing the natural resources necessary to keep output bubbling, Chinese firms are looking around the world for struggling but globally recognised brands. This is because Chinese companies, while enjoying cost advantages thanks to a vast pool of cheap labour, have an image problem. Foreign consumers think of Chinese goods as admirably cheap but lacking in quality. As Chinese firms move up the “value chain”, they are keen to buy foreign brands that they can attach to their more promising products.

Late last year Lenovo, China’s leading PC-maker, which is connected to the government through its ownership by the Chinese Academy of Science, bought the PC business of IBM for $1.75 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Lenovo acquired the right to use the IBM name on its computers for five years. And this week Haier, China’s leading appliance maker, teamed up with two American buy-out firms to bid $1.3 billion for Maytag in an effort to make a substantial move beyond China, where it has a market share of up to 70% for some products. The ailing American maker of Hoover vacuum cleaners had previously agreed to a $1.1 billion offer from a domestic private-equity firm. In early 2004, China’s TCL bought the television-making business of France’s Thomson, making it the world’s leading volume manufacturer of TV sets.

Undoubtedly, it is quicker (and possibly cheaper) to buy a well-known brand than to build one from scratch. But the Chinese are not throwing money at any and every firm with a well-known name. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC), which last year trumped a South Korean rival to buy Ssangyong, Korea’s fourth-largest carmaker, recently pulled out of a deal to buy MG Rover, a foundering British car company that has since folded. In fact, SAIC had apparently acquired much of the intellectual property that it wanted from Rover and was unwilling to foot the bill to keep the firm going. In this case, the Chinese were as keen to get their hands on useful technology as they were to secure the rights to a western brand.

The Chinese government’s coddling of its state-owned firms is another force behind the current wave of overseas expansion. While officials want to see markets develop at home, up to a point, they fear the fallout from the collapse of hundreds of large, communist-era basket-cases. So the government props these enterprises up with ultra-cheap loans through the banking system and other favours, which have the effect of creating overcapacity and nurturing unfair competition. This, in turn, pushes the more successful state firms, and private companies like Haier, to seek opportunities in markets abroad.

China’s favoured companies, with their access to cut-price funding, will usually be at an advantage compared with overseas rivals when bidding for assets, and may be prepared to pay over the odds. Critics suggest that CNOOC is paying too high a price for Unocal and that the money is coming from China’s government, which has let its desire to create global businesses cloud commercial logic. CNOOC has said it will borrow $16 billion from its government-owned parent and banks to finance the offer.

Shareholders of target firms like Unocal may well be pleased by this readiness to splash out, but their workers might worry. Jobs often go as Chinese buyers shift production to lower-cost plants at home. This fuels opposition to such takeovers in the targets’ countries. But for now at least, the spread of Chinese business around the world is set to continue.

　　本想把大学的回忆封存起来，就像黑盒测试一样，不考虑中间的过程如何，只关心输入的变量和输出的结果。然而，我越来越觉得如果只把这四年黑盒测试的结果作为下一个黑盒的输入，那么本是连续的丰富多彩的生活和记忆却被抽样成离散了。确实应该明察黑盒中的每个过程，把四年中值得回忆的细节都记录下来，这样我的大学生活才算功德圆满。

　　中学的时候从来没想到我的大学会走出这样的路，就连现在的我也惊异自己的变化。可能这种变化从高中就埋下了种子，在大学生根发芽。初中的我绝对是个不折不扣的听话懂事爱学习的孩子，毕竟中考全校第三还是能佐证我的评价的。然而从高中开始，我便走上了素质教育的不归路，那时还被树立为我们学校素质教育的典型，而代价是不那么听话、不那么爱学习了。追求思想解放和不受约束的行动自由成为了我当时人生观的主要内容，然而大学正是给了我实现理想的沃土，但却没有成为我学习的良田。

　　大学的我一共做了两件事，应付考试和用心网协。对计算机的偏执和热爱的我来到大学的第一件大事就是加入了网络开拓者协会。通过我的努力两年后我成为了网协的当家。然而当时的协会是盛名之下，其实难副。资金短缺、设备落后、人才流失……我的主要精力都投入到了协会的发展中，经过了非典黄金月的洗礼和黑客的一次又一次拜访，网协逐渐又壮大了起来。网协论坛、视听在线、网络广播电台、电子竞技、校内即时通讯等等成为了校园网上最受同学欢迎的服务。网络技术讲座、金秋网络节、电子竞技联赛、网协论坛庆典等活动不仅锻炼了我也丰富了校园生活。一个社团之所以让我如此投入，是因为一点：我可以按照自己的想法做事情。这样的自由在学生会甚至是校内的其他社团都是相当奢侈的。我在这里体验了白手起家的艰难和指点江山的激情，体会了团队合作的重要和情同手足的感动。在即将离开校园的时候，当我再次回想起在网协的日日夜夜，我才发现我留给了网协问心无愧的汗水，网协也留给了我珍贵的体验和美好的回忆。“为什么我的眼里常含着泪水，因为我对网协爱得深沉!”

　　说起大学的学业，我算得上一波三折。物理系一班，电子系实验班，电子系三班都是和我有关的班号。一个月，一年，三年，我很自豪我曾经是实验班63人中的一员，我也很自豪我现在是一名三班人。无论是在实验班还是现在的三班我生活的关键字都和学习无关。这也难怪我跟别人我说我去自习他们说我虚伪，我跟别人说我要考研他们说我有病。似乎我的大学真的是和学习背道而驰了。

　　大学四年我改变了很多，唯一没变的是我的理想。小时候我的理想是当一名发明家，偶像自然是爱迪生。中学时我的理想是创办一家自己的计算机公司，偶像当然就是比尔了。现在，我的理想似乎并不具体，但却很明确——开创自己的品牌。在我的价值观中，为人类和社会创造价值才能体现出我存在的意义。像通用、福特这样的百年品牌是不会因为斯隆和福特的离开而消失。我知道自己成为斯隆和福特这样的人属于小概率事件。但创办世代传承品牌的理想并不狂妄，无论是服装品牌、IT品牌、教育品牌还是饮食品牌都是我理想的元素。大学四年的时光让我提前享受了打造品牌的乐趣，更加坚定了我实现理想的信心。

　　大学时光太长了，因为四年的时光对于我们来说实在太珍贵；大学时光又太短了，因为自己还有很多知识要学，还有很多事情没有做，还有很多的同学没能熟识。如果有人问我现在最想做的事，我会跟他说：再借我四年。

Apple has announced that it will switch its computers from microprocessors supplied by IBM and Freescale to those made by Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker. Emboldened by the success of its iPod music player, this is Apple’s latest move in an attempt to return to the mass market

ASK people to describe their computers. Most, with a shrug, will mention a couple of grey-coloured (or is that cream?) boxes, and software that crashes occasionally. But the sliver of the population who own one of Apple’s products are more likely to enthuse about the cool design of their hardware and the robustness and user-friendliness of their software. It is a surprise, then, that more people don’t chose the American firm’s computers. This is what Steve Jobs, its chief executive, hopes to put right.

On Monday June 6th, Mr Jobs used the platform of Apple’s annual developers conference to announce that the firm will switch from the chips supplied for over a decade by IBM and Freescale (which was spun off from Motorola last year) to products from Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker. The first products with Intel chips should be available next year. Most observers suggest that the move is part of a strategy dedicated to returning Apple to the mass market for computers, which it dominated before the advance of Microsoft and Intel in the 1980s.

There are several suggestions about what prompted the change. Apple blamed its current chip suppliers for slow delivery last year, which held up production of some lines. And chip development has not lived up to promises Apple made for improvements in processing speed. Intel’s chips are faster and run cooler than Apple’s current chips. And cooler chips are important for the production of better laptops, a market growing considerably faster than that for desktop PCs. But there is much speculation that Intel can simply supply chips more cheaply than IBM and Freescale, and that Apple can use the saving to cut the retail price of its computers.

Apple’s problems in increasing its market share are, to a large extent, a result of the high prices it charges for its computers compared with similar products from the likes of Dell or Hewlett-Packard. Apple sold only around 2.3% of new desktop and laptop computers worldwide in the first quarter of 2005, according to IDC, a research firm. Dell commanded 18.9% of the market, HP 15.4%. But Apple is concentrating hard on ways to improve its market share and is banking on the huge success of the iPod, its digital music player, to create a “halo effect” and speed the revival of Apple as a force in world computing.

The firm’s recovery has been apparent for 18 months, after several years in the doldrums. In 2004, Apple’s net profits were four times higher than the year before, at $276m, and in mid-April the firm announced another blistering set of quarterly results: revenues up by 70% compared with the same period the year before, and net profits 530% higher, at $290m; Apple shipped over 1m computers (a 43% rise) and a staggering 5.3m iPods (over six times more than the year before).

The iPod has done wonders for Apple, providing not only profits but a positive brand image to a swathe of new young consumers. Though the iPod was derided by some as exorbitantly expensive at the time of its launch in 2001, it has amassed some two-thirds of the world market for hand-held music devices. And not content with anything less than total domination, in January Apple introduced the iPod shuffle, a flash-memory player, which is naturally smaller and better looking than anything the competition can yet muster. No wonder iTunes, Apple’s online music store, leads the field.

But Apple still makes most of its cash from computers, and to extend its product range it introduced the Mac mini at the beginning of the year. This small, relatively cheap computer comes without “peripherals”—customers can add their own keyboard, mouse or screen. This helps to keep costs low and so, it is hoped, will nudge more users of Microsoft’s Windows to switch to Apple. Mr Jobs hopes to spread the Apple message further still through a network of Apple retail stores. There are now over 100 around the world in prized locations.

The lead that the iPod has in the hand-held music player market looks unassailable for the time being. That said, Bill Gates is touting Microsoft’s own software format, Windows Media, to several online music services and hardware firms, hoping to set a rival standard with greater interoperability. At present, iTunes offerings only work with the iPod. Mr Gates suggests that the convergence of mobile phones and music players (using his software, of course) could threaten the iPod’s dominance. Apple should take the threat seriously. Nokia recently announced that it was preparing to launch a handset with a hard drive. Sony Ericsson will unveil its first Walkman phone later this year. To counter these threats, a deal between Motorola and Apple is expected to spawn phones with iTunes included in a couple of months.

If Apple is to make the most of the halo effect from the iPod to push its upmarket computers on greater numbers of customers, it would be well to do so as soon as it can. Such is the importance of the iPod to Apple that on June 3rd the firm’s shares fell by 4.5% after analysts suggested that sales of the device may be flat in the current quarter. If the halo slips, Apple may have to content itself with selling its wares just to the select, fashion-conscious bunch who presently make up the company’s loyal fan base.