rio tinto iron ore sales team arrestd in china, page-61

While prefacing this post with the thought that this is a grubby debacle on the part of the Chinese, I feel for them on one level. Their money (our money originally) was not good enough to buy into Rio but it is the money we are paying them for their flat screen televisions. The Americans said the same thing to the Chinese a few years back over an energy company. We need to sort this out. Why can a western company buy slices of BHP or Rio (let's face it they are both foreign owned from a local perspective) but not the Chinese? We want their cheap stuff paid for with IOUs but the IOUs are not worth anything here?