China has embarked on a buying spree of foreign firms, $92 billion worth so far this year, with motives that range from commercial to nationalistic — to murky, as was the case with the bid for Starwood hotels by Anbang, a previously unheralded Chinese insurance conglomerate with ties to the Deng Xiaoping family but, according to news accounts, no one answering its headquarters telephone. If China deploys its cash to create jobs in the West, well and good. But given the nontransparent and cronyistic nature of Chinese companies, both state-owned and “private,” there may be risks, too, of a kind not posed by investment from democratic allies such as Japan, say, or Germany. The United States needs a new approach to account for the new reality.
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