In recent years there has been a trend of Chinese companies buying up ailing western companies, there was Nanjing MG and Rover, Chinese banks buying stakes in Barclays bank, and then the Indians were at it too; The British company, Corus Steel was taken over by an Indian billionaire – its a reverse colonization of sorts, instead of moving people in, you move your money in, it becomes an economic empire.

Recently the American insurer, AIG, bought a 25% stake in Lifan reversing the above trend. Lifan plans to IPO on the (Shanghai) A-market soon, with hopes of raising an extra 1 billion RMB to fund their extensive plans for taking their cars to all corners of the world. Lifan is planning on increasing their production capacity to 500,000 vehicles per year by 2010, this year they plan on making a more modest 60,000 vehicles for the domestic markets. Lifans second plant in Chongqing will be churning out cars later this year.