China has picked a strange time to lay down a marker in defense of economic nationalism — and an even stranger industry in which to do it. Amid a global recession, with Beijing’s state-owned companies fanning out across the globe trying to invest in or buy foreign producers of minerals, precious metals, oil and gas, China’s Ministry of Commerce on March 18 formally blocked what would have been the largest acquisition by a foreign company in China, a $2.4 billion deal
