Fresh from a lunchtime steak, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for China’s desperate efforts to secure potash supplies, which are aimed at making sure more Chinese can enjoy meals like mine.
Liu Deshu, chief executive of Sinochem, would put it differently. He would say the state-owned group’s effort to block BHP Billiton’s $39bn hostile bid for Canada’s PotashCorp is a play on the commercial prospects of the global fertiliser industry, which are reasonably good because of steadily increasing global demand.
The reality, though, is that the motivation is entirely political, reflecting the communist leadership‘s determination never to allow a repetition of the foreign domination suffered by China up to 1945.
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