China Snubs Google Again: Today's Outrage

SHANGHAI (TheStreet) -- China snubbed Google (GOOG) but picked Apple (AAPL) when it decided to divert some of its $300 billion investment fund into U.S. stocks.

Anyone surprised? Could it possibly have anything to do with Google's threat to leave China over a dispute about censorship, hacking, etc?

Google's China Crisis

The Google-China intrigue also caught the attention of my colleague Michael Corkery over at the Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog. Other than that, Corkery said he didn't find any dire signs of a plot to achieve world domination in China's recent filing with the SEC to report the purchase of $9.6 billion worth of U.S. shares last year.

We could get up in arms about China buying up America, but that's yesterday's news. Why shouldn't the Chinese invest in the U.S.? Let's take it as a sign of respect that they like what they see here -- at least as far as investments go.

So let's review what the Chinese government considers good investments in America. There's Coca-Cola(KO) and Johnson & Johnson(JNJ) (two of Warren Buffett's favorites) and China also put some cash in big banks, including Morgan Stanley (MS), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC).

The most political move appears to have been the purchase of $1.2 billion of Morgan Stanley shares when the investment bank sold shares to repay the U.S. taxpayer bailout funds it received, according to the New York Times.

Nothing too sinister there, but...