From The Associated Press:

“This is a commercial deal, a commercial bid from one New York Stock Exchange listed company to another New York Stock Exchange listed company designed to improve shareholder value for both,” said Mark Palmer, a managing director at Public Strategies Inc. of Austin, Texas, one of two public relations firms hired by CNOOC.

Actually, it’s a company owned by the Chinese government, which is a totalitarian dictatorship and, if history doesn’t break right, a potential enemy down the road. Unocal’s Asian oil reserves would fall completely under Chinese control with the acquisition.

For those who believe that the blossoming of capitalism in China will inevitably lead to democracy, this is a reasonable hope, but certainly not a guaranteed outcome. American corporations, you may recall, were avid supporters of Hitler’s Germany in the early stages of his rule. But capitalism did not bring democracy to Germany; it took a war to accomplish that.