In the 1972, then U.S. President Richard Nixon did something no American President had done before.
He went to communist China, opening the door for trade relations we enjoy today. >From that visit spawned the old adage, "only Nixon can go to China", meaning only a right-wing Republican president to be able to expand relations to the communist country without being viewed as too liberal towards the communists.
A year later in small Canadian province called Saskatchewan, a left-of-centre social democratic government created a state-owned oil company called the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Corporation or SaskOil.
It would be met with fierce opposition from the private oil sector, who rightly questioned the inherent unfairness of having to pay royalties to an NDP government and then seeing that government create a state-owned oil company to compete against them.
So what do these two stories have in common?
Well, some 40 years later, a right-wing Canadian Prime Minister in Stephen Harper would do what Liberal prime ministers before him likely couldn't do without enduring significant opposition.
The Conservative government has given the go-ahead for a $15.1-billion takeover of Nexen Inc. by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for $15.1 (US) billion.
China and its state-owned oil company is about to become a very big player in the Canadian oil sector by taking over the Calgary-based company that produced $6.5 billion in revenue and $700 million income in 2011.
But there is more to this connection.
Nexen came into existence in 2001 by taking over a company called Canadian Occidental Petroleum. "CanOxy" was the company that had taken complete control of a smaller Regina-based oil company named Wascana Energy in 1997.
In fact, CanOxy bought its first shares in Wascana Energy in 1987, a year after Wascana Energy came into existence as a private company traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Wascana was the new private sector entity that emerged out of former the Grant Devine Progressive Conservative government's 1985 privatization of SaskOil.
After 40 years of loathing Tommy Douglas and the CCF/NDP governments' royalties and interventionism, the oil sector had exacted some revenge through the privatization of the state-owned oil company.
Little did they know back in 1985 that, within 40 years, China's state-owned oil company would become a fellow player in Western Canada's oil sector.
Of course, SaskOil is now seen as a political footnote. It never did become the player in exploration or heavy crude oil development, a victim of low oil prices and the federal Liberal government's National Energy policy of the 1970s.
It was profitable, creating $30 million in 1983 that was quickly swallowed up by the debt-plagued Progressive Conservative government. And its privatization yielded Saskatchewan taxpayers $75 million, again, money quickly swallowed up by big-spending Tories.
Mostly, though, our once-state-owned oil company is now part of the intriguing tale of how the Chinese have evolved into becoming a big part of our economy.
It's not just the potash and oil companies we sell to them or the countless imports we buy from them. Consider the farmland around your own local rural communities.
In rural communities like Ogema, rising grain prices, comparably cheap farmland prices (at least compared with Ontario and B.C.) and the demise of the Canadian Wheat Board have opened the door for Chinese investment.
Saskatchewan may still have the country's strictest farm ownership rules. (Only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and 100-per-cent Canadian-owned companies can own more than 10 acres.) But this isn't stopping investment arrangements that see Chinese money plopped down in Saskatchewan.
Clearly, China isn't the economically isolated place it was 40 years ago when Nixon first visited the isolated communist state.
It is now a big player in our economy and it's even buying up parts of it.
