China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are sometimes compared to Canadian Crown corporations, such as VIA Rail or the CBC. But that comparison is not only profoundly inaccurate, it can also be a dangerous assumption to make when crafting Canadian economic policy. China's SOEs have been actively buying up interests in major Canadian resource firms. But that phenomenon has much more serious implications for Canada than if these were, say, state-owned European firms, such as Norway's Statoil. China's SOEs do not operate by the normal rules of commerce. They are, in fact, a very powerful tool of the Chinese government's industrial policy, which is aimed at a ruthless expansion of its global economic empire.