The NYT also offers a less conspiratorial view of the Cnooc bid for Unocal and other deals, from Andrew Ross Sorkin (via China Digital Times):

Many deals with Chinese companies - and, by extension, the Chinese government - may actually help the United States economy, just as China has helped prop up the nation by buying Treasury bonds en masse.
Indeed, so far, the businesses in which China has taken an interest could be categorized as "least likely to succeed." And the Chinese may eventually revive them.
Look at Maytag. That struggling company is a business that no other strategic rival in the world - yes, the entire world - was prepared to bid on. Before Haier expressed interest, the only potential buyer was a consortium of private equity players led by Ripplewood Holdings of New York. And what do you think they would likely have done with the company? The Maytag repairman would almost certainly have lost his job, along with dozens if not hundreds of others until the private equity group trimmed enough costs that it could take some cash out by flipping the business to another private equity team. This hot-potato game might have gone on for a decade or two until the company was milked of its very last dollar.
Haier, on the other hand, wants Maytag for its brand and its managers’ experience, so it can have some help building the business. While Haier is also likely to cut jobs, pink slips will probably come much slower in the United States. And the Maytag brand, its culture and legacy will probably live on much longer.

To be fair, the bid by CNOOC, as the Chinese oil company is called, is considerably more complicated. But at base, lawmakers and investors should remember that despite Unocal’s history - it was founded in 1890 as the Union Oil Company of California - it is already more Asian than "made in America." About 73 percent of its proven natural-gas reserves are in Asia. And if CNOOC acquired Unocal, it "would not increase energy flows to the Chinese market, because most of Unocal’s upstream assets are locked up by long-term contracts to supply other regional markets," according to Jason Kindopp, an analyst at the Eurasia Group.

And then there is the even more basic argument about capitalism. "U.S. oil companies need to play on an equal playing field around the world," said Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. "The prospects of that happening are diminished if the U.S. government interferes in a deal like this," he said.

Mr. Kindopp makes the point even stronger, with a slight twist: "The main long-term risk is if the economic nationalism driving Beijing’s quest for energy becomes the norm, compelling Washington, Tokyo, New Dehli and others to adopt an equally strategic view of energy security."

But in the end, the Washington brow-furrowers probably won’t need that Botox anyway: Chevron, not CNOOC, is likely to win Unocal.

Chevron, whose earlier $16.4 billion bid for Unocal was topped by CNOOC, is likely to prevail with that lower bid. Investors, you see, are likely to side with Chevron, not because they are xenophobic but because they most certainly hate political uncertainty.