China Buys American; Is CNOOC's bid for Unocal the act of an aspiring oil major, or a true threat to U.S. energy supplies?(China National Offshore Oil Corp.)

Newsweek International, July, 2005 by Glain, Stephen; Schafer, Sarah

Byline: Sarah Schafer and Stephen Glain

Fu Chengyu says Americans won't fear his company, once they get to know it better. Fu is CEO of the China National Offshore Oil Co., which recently placed an unsolicited bid to buy Unocal of California for $18.5 billion. By far the largest Chinese bid for an American company, the move stirred fears in Washington that CNOOC is the spearhead of a Chinese campaign to secure world oil reserves, at U.S. expense. As legislators lobbied a reluctant White House last week to block the deal, Fu compared the backlash to America's misplaced fear of Japan in the 1980s. "Personally I think that the Chinese are being misunderstood all the time," he says. "They have one heart, two eyes. They are not monsters."

Fu insists his...

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