The courting of Mr. Lou

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Lou Jiwei leads a double life. Almost unknown in his own country, the bespectacled 58-year-old - who manages a $200-billion (U.S.) sovereign wealth fund known as the China Investment Corp. - has become one of the most powerful and sought-after figures in the global economy.

Last year, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. His fund, set up in 2007 to help China find a home for some of its more than $2-trillion in foreign reserves, plans to invest almost half its holdings abroad.

Canada, home to one of the first of those investments, wants an even bigger share. During a 45-minute meeting Tuesday in Beijing, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty pitched Mr. Lou on investing more of CIC's wealth in Canada, saying that access to more capital would be a boon to Canadian companies.

"Foreign investment is helpful for economic growth, it's as simple as that," Mr. Flaherty said in an interview.

But there's one big caveat: That the fund refrain from mixing political goals with commercial ones.

China's attempts to make investments abroad have often raised suspicions that there is more to purchases than simply trying to generate a good return - that there is some underlying political motive.

In Canada, China's strategic goals may touch directly on the kinds of companies of which this country can be most protective. According to Mr. Flaherty, Mr. Lou asked questions about Canada's mining, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

"There are a lot of sensitivities around certain iconic companies and certain iconic technologies and they [CIC]just have to recognize that," said former Canadian trade minister David Emerson.

Mr. Emerson now sits on CIC's recently created international advisory board.

The most telling case of these suspicions was Chinese oil company CNOOC Ltd.'s 2005 bid to purchase U.S. oil producer Unocal Corp., which died when U.S. Congress raised concerns about national security.

CIC skirts the political issue by focusing on minority investments, such as last month's $1.5-billion acquisition of a 17-per-cent non-voting stake in Teck Resources Ltd. Mr. Lou wrote in the company's recent annual report - its first published financial statement - that CIC "is not pursuing control of companies or industries in its investments."

"They're looking for how they can participate without provoking an anti-China reaction," Mr. Emerson said. This trip was as much about relationship rebuilding as sealing deals.

Trade between Canada and China has suffered during the Conservative government's three years in office, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed not to sacrifice human rights principles for the "almighty dollar."

Mr. Harper skipped the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Canada awarded honorary citizenship to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader whom China brands a dangerous separatist. Beijing responded by putting commercial ties into a deep freeze.

The Harper government has had a change of heart in recent months. Mr. Harper himself is expected to visit later this year. Canada Beckons Chinese Firms With Open Arms, read one headline in yesterday's edition of the state-run China Daily newspaper.

"For Canada to have more CIC-style investments, like with Teck, is all good for the Canadian economy. I think that the Conservatives have finally figured that out, that there's nothing to fear from China," said Wenran Jiang, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Mr. Flaherty, who previously visited China as finance minister in 2007, said he thinks the visits are having their intended effect.

"I've found on this trip that the welcome has been warm and they want to talk business."

Canada may have an advantage because Felix Chee, one of Mr. Lou's top advisers, is a long-time veteran of the Canadian financial scene.

Mr. Lou is a well-connected technocrat who rose from vice-governor of the southern Chinese province of Guizhou to vice-minister of finance in the central government to head of CIC in 12 years.

"Mr. Lou is very influential, clearly. He and his senior people are among the most worldly in the economic leadership, an economic leadership that far more worldly than any that have come before them in China," said Howard Balloch, a former Canadian ambassador to China who now runs a Beijing-based investment bank.