Sun Jiawei/Shanghai Daily news

CNOOC's US$18.5 billion bid on Thursday to acquire Unocal Corp, if successful, will make history as the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese mainland firm.
CNOOC's oil and gas output will more than double, and its reserves will increase significantly.
However, the bid is bound to be tangled up in politics. US Treasury Secretary John Snow has already indicated the deal has to pass a US government review for security considerations.
Even if it passes the review, the proposal will be a big financial challenge for CNOOC. The company plans to drain its US$3 billion in cash, while the rest will be financed by debt.
Both Moody's and Standard & Poor's have put CNOOC's ratings on review for possible downgrade on the day the proposal was announced.
But there is another issue. Shen Dayong, professor at Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade, said even if CNOOC overcomes the above difficulties, "it would have to put much more efforts on internal integration, which will be a challenge no smaller than the financial one."
This is due to the mixture of a huge state-owned company and a multinational company.
Anyone familiar with the corporate governance structure of the average state-owned company in China knows it is a breed apart from the Western structure. Conflicts in personnel management, for example, may well scuttle the synergy arising from any merger.
"Only when Chinese firms get familiar with all the international game rules can they finally become multinational giants (via mergers and acquisition)." Shen said.
Lenovo, which bought IBM's personal computer unit last December, and Haier Group, which is joining a group of US investors to bid US$1.28 billion for Maytag Corp, also face the same issues.