Is China testing the waters with respect to nationalizing U.S. corporation's factories in mainland China? I have reason to believe that they may be.
I can't find anything on this on the web. Nor in the local paper in Peoria. However, my spouse used to work at Caterpillar and was told this story by someone currently working there. On one hand, I find it quite unbelievable that this has been kept quiet if it is in fact true. On the other hand, I have no reason to think that our friend there would just randomly make up this story.
So here is the story:
Caterpillar like many corporations has established factories in China. They have several there, including a foundry. A couple months ago, the Chinese government decided to take over Caterpillar's foundry. Caterpillar's retaliation to this was very swift and they immediately impounded all of their construction equipment in their control that had been ordered by China. China needs that equipment to continue it's building and modernization plans. As far as I know, China is still in possession of the factory, Caterpillar is still keeping the ordered equipment and it is tied up in the courts.
If this is true, I don't think it is an anomoly. I think China is testing to see how long it takes for the mega-corporations with facilities there to retaliate and to see what course of action these corporations take. It may be China's eventual goal to nationalize all of the factories that US companies have put there.
Which if you think about it is a great idea. If I am the leader of a 3rd world Communist country, with over a billion people, what would I do? Hmmmmm. How about pretend to open my doors to the first world capitalist countries, invite them in to set up shop, use my power to keep the people in line and pay very low to lure companies in with promises of cheap and pliable labor, ensure that my country has access to energy supplies, wait until I think that I have enough capital, and BAM! take over every single facility and kick out the foreign corporations. It's brilliant in it's simplicity. And it relies on the greatest weakness of capitalist countries: unfettered greed. It requires corporations to look at just the immediate bottom line, while forgetting that the first rule of capitalism is to assume that all parties have equal knowledge about what is going on and what is really being traded.