There's a long history, first of the Poms losing money on miners...

There's a long history, first of the Poms losing money on miners in Oz, and now the Chinese. Many companies with Chinese cornerstone investors doing badly. There's nothing especially smart about a group just because they are Chinese. Plenty of crap circulating about how they plan for the long term etc - COW are property developers and pawnbrokers for God's sake. In it for a quick buck and out again. They are also plenty big enough (on paper, anyway) for losses in CDU to be unnoticeable. Likewise Sino are under pressure to keep the machines running, gotta keep the illusion of a constant 7.5% GDP growth year in year out going.

Plenty of Aussies seem convinced it's the best thing since sliced bread, why wouldn't the Chinese think so too? And, maybe it still is, just costing twice what the company originally promised.