When China Investment Corp, the country's $200bn sovereign wealth fund, was founded last September the rest of the world woke to the realisation that China was about to go on a global shopping spree.

Many in the west were ambivalent about the prospect of a huge pool of capital under the control of a secretive and autocratic government buying up prized corporations to meet the Chinese Communist party's undeclared political and strategic objectives.

Before CIC came into existence, however, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe), the regulator in charge of managing the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, was already dipping its toe into global equity markets, secretly buying small stakes in large-cap listed western companies.