Among policymakers, media, and the broader public, confusion reigns supreme when it comes to Chinese corporations. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are assumed to be blindly following Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or security service orders with little concern for their own commercial interests. And private Chinese firms are conflated with SOEs and viewed as pawns in the CCP's regional expansion strategy, despite the enormous growth of the Chinese private sector over the past two decades.Lurking behind these judgments is a biased frame of reference that views Chinese investors primarily as a threat, especially when compared to foreign investors from traditional allies of Canada and Australia. This bias exacerbates regional tensions that are already strained due to US-Chinese rivalry. This paper challenges these myths and biases through case studies of major private and State-controlled Chinese corporations in Australia. Subjects will include infrastructure/resources firms (Chinalco, Landbridge Group, Fosun Group), real estate firms (Wanda Group), and hi-tech innovators (Huawei Technologies). While the main focus is on Australia, most of these Chinese companies have also invested in Canada, where similar attitudes towards Chinese investment are evident.

Colin Hawes is Associate Professor and Director of Courses in the Law Faculty at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Dr. Hawes studied Chinese at Durham University, UK, and in Beijing and Wuhan, China. He holds a Ph.D. in Asian Studies and an LL.B. from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. He practised law in Vancouver focusing on Asia-related cases before joining the UTS Law Faculty in 2005. Colin is especially interested in the intersection between corporations, law and culture: how cultural values impact on the way that corporations behave in different societies, and how large business corporations can be held accountable for their actions. He has published numerous articles on Chinese corporate governance and Chinese law and society in international journals and a book entitled The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture (Routledge Press 2012). Colin is currently engaged in collaborative research projects on the creative interpretation of corporate law by Chinese judges, and on the complex governance structures of large Chinese corporations.