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Corporate China's aggressive quest for a slice of the foreign market saw success and failure in a week indicative of Chinese companies' determination to step onto the global stage.

With its economy firing about 9.0 percent growth on average during the past quarter century, Chinese companies have become cashed-up and more ambitious and are increasingly making forays overseas.

Just in the past week, China National Offshore Oil Corp., the country's largest domestic appliance maker Haier Group, and car-maker Nanjing Automotive have made headlines for their bids for famous foreign brands.

State-owned Nanjing Auto's purchase on Friday of collapsed British car firm MG Rover adds to a growing list of Chinese businesses with forceful acquisition strategies.

It may be that Nanjing is not part of the elite rich set of multinational titans such as Siemens, HSBC, or General Motors, but flush with money, Chinese companies are spending billions on expansion plans and are catching up as fast as they can.

Overall, Chinese companies have invested 33 billion dollars in 7,470 companies in more than 160 countries and territories by the end of 2003, according to the latest data available from the Ministry of Commerce.

"I expect more overseas companies to merge with or be acquired by Chinese companies in the future," said Zhang Qi of Haitong Securities.

While Nanjing gained a foothold in Britain, China's hopes of driving into the United States faltered with CNOOC's 18.5 billion dollar cash bid for oil major Unocal rejected amid concern about its potential threat to American security.

Unocal said it instead accepted an increased 63.01 dollars per share stock and cash takeover offer from Chevron Corp., valuing the California-based oil company at 17.1 billion dollars.

Unocal's decision came after Haier Group dropped its 1.28 billion dollar bid for iconic US-based household appliance manufacturer Maytag, reportedly concerned about the complexities of integrating the two businesses.

Like the CNOOC offer, the Maytag bidding was being watched closely because of Haier's participation as the US Congress eyes Chinese businesses' attempts to purchase US firms.

Despite the political factors that have come into play, analysts said CNOOC, for one, was not out of the race yet for what would be the largest takeover by a Chinese company of a foreign concern.

Macquarie Securities analyst Scott Weaver noted a couple of weeks remain before Unocal shareholders meet on August 10 and it is hard to predict how they would vote.

"We still think that CNOOC has a good chance of winning," he said, adding the large stock component in Chevron's offer made it vulnerable to stock price changes.

The sort of corporate muscle and prestige shown by CNOOC is precisely what China's ambitious leadership wants as they continue to engineer the massive economic transformation.

Among other mainland corporations rapidly carving out names for themselves overseas, China's largest computer maker Lenovo purchased IBM's personal computing division for 1.75 billion dollars in May.

Observers characterized it then as the most dramatic example yet of Chinese companies' expansion abroad, a herald of what the world can expect from a revitalized China in the years and decades ahead.

"In the 1980s, a group of unknown South Korean companies turned themselves into international brands and in the 1960s Japanese companies started to enter the global stage," said Zhang.

"Now it is the turn of Chinese enterprises which have grown to a certain stage at home but now need to take a great leap forward," he said.

(Photo Source:Baidu/Google)