China (Cnooc) withdraws its bid for Unocal but the tactic seems to have worked. How this became a "national security" question is anyone's guess (oil reserves in Asia are now considered to be a 'strategic asset'-interesting.) By our estimates, roughly 20 Canadian energy companies were bought out by US counterparts in the past decade). How it's in our interest to implicitly encourage China now to link itself up with Iranian oil facilities is an open question. All of this is very interesting and at the heart of it is this growing fear the grizzly has for the panda. With $700 bln in FX reserves, don't expect China's appetite for global acquisitions to subside anytime soon.