China Snubs Google Again: Today's Outrage
SHANGHAI (
) -- China snubbed
(GOOG) - Get Report
but picked
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
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
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) - Get Report
and
Johnson & Johnson
(JNJ) - Get Report
(two of Warren Buffett's favorites) and China also put some cash in big banks, including
Morgan Stanley
(MS) - Get Report
,
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
and
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
.
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...
While I'm intrigued by the intrigue surrounding China's SEC filing, all I see is value investing.
Ultimately, my outrage is not so much about what China
is
doing but what
isn't
doing. The new transparency about its U.S. stock holdings belies China's old dichotomy about exploiting Western capitalism while eschewing the underlying democratic principles.
If I were running Google, I'd be happy that the Chinese aren't buying my stock.
China just doesn't get what Google is about - creating value through openness.
--Written by Glenn Hall in New York.
Follow TheStreet.com on
and become a fan on
Facebook.
TheStreet's editorial policy prohibits editors and reporters from holding positions in any individual stocks.