A year later, Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd., teamed up with China Minmetals Corp., to buy out Northern Peru Copper Corp.

Don't let the names of the two copper companies fool you – both targets were Canadian mining ventures. And all three of the suitors hailed from China.

Commodity-rich Canada has become China's personal shopping mall.

And the wheeling and dealing continues.

A Bright Spot at a Dour Conference Illuminates Future

When it comes to global mining conferences, none has the cachet of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto. In short, it is the world mining conference – which is why I make sure to attend each year.

When this year's conference was held in March, the world's financial markets were hitting multi-year lows and the future was uncertain. But there was a bright spot: The attendance of the Chinese delegation, which signaled that country's continued interest in Canadian mining assets.

So it was no surprise to me when, in July, the state-run China Investment Corp. (CIC) bought a $1.5 billion stake in Canada's Teck Resources Ltd. (NYSE: TCK). CIC is one of the new breed of so-called "sovereign wealth funds" (SWF), essentially government controlled investment funds that all told control trillions in foreign reserves. CIC manages about $200 billion of China's estimated $2.3 trillion in foreign-exchange holdings.

For Teck, the 17.2% stake taken by CIC provided a badly needed cash infusion, since the Vancouver-based producer of copper, zinc, gold, metallurgical coal, and a host of specialty metals and excess energy was saddled with debt.

Since then, China has picked up the pace.

Now PetroChina Co. Ltd. (NYSE ADR: PTR) is purchasing a 60% interest in two undeveloped projects of the privately held Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.