Can China Spoil BHP-Rio?

Some in Beijing have made no secret of their dislike of the miners' plans after Chinese state-controlled aluminum producer Chinalco's planned investment in Rio Tinto was rejected.

Last week, an official from China's Ministry of Commerce described the companies' plan for an iron-ore production joint venture in Western Australia as having "an obvious color of monopoly."

This could simply be rhetoric, designed to appease a domestic audience. But China has never been comfortable with any coziness between Rio and BHP. The two companies are China's chief suppliers of iron ore.

Beijing does have the means to involve itself through its anti-monopoly law. This is no toothless piece of bureaucracy, having already been used to impose conditions on a merger between Anheuser-Busch and InBev, both non-Chinese companies. The law also was cited when Coca-Cola was denied the right to buy juice maker China Huiyuan.

Most likely, Beijing would be on similarly shaky legal ground with the Rio-BHP deal. The anti-monopoly law is broadly similar to the European Union's antitrust law. In the past, that hasn't often been used to halt production tie-ups such as that proposed by Rio and BHP; few expect the EU will put any major obstacles in the way of the deal.

That's because BHP's and Rio's marketing operations will remain separate. Annual price negotiations between Chinese steelmakers and the iron-ore producers should be unaffected, weakening any argument the tie-up is harmful to China.

The risk is that a Chinese challenge to BHP-Rio would look like an attempt to achieve through political meddling with the law what it failed to achieve through negotiation. It also would make previous Chinese protestations that Chinalco's interest in Rio was purely commercial look pretty hollow. That would only fuel mistrust of China's motives, which can hardly be in Beijing's long-term interest.

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