Lenovo CEO shown in an IBM PC in a live feed from Beijing in Hong Kong. (Reuters)

Dec. 8: No one?s screaming blue murder ? the Reds are coming! Forget summoning ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, America is talking IBM and building trans-Pacific business and cultural bridges.

A company partly owned by the communist government of China is taking over the PC business of IBM which brought the computer to the world. The deal is worth only $1.25 billion but will be to business bonds between the US and China what the ping pong ball was to the two countries? diplomatic relations.

That is not the only landmark Lenovo Group Ltd, China?s largest personal computer company, and IBM, the world?s third most precious brand, are setting.

China has been the economic success story of the world for over a decade but the deal signals its corporate arrival on the global stage. The combined PC business of the two will turn Lenovo from the eighth to the world?s third largest player in the market with a share of 7.7 per cent and sales of $12 billion (last year?s figure).

If China announced its global business aspirations with the transaction, IBM decided to move up the value chain. The sale of the PC business ? it pioneered the desktop in 1981 ? is a recognition by IBM that its own future lies farther up the economic ladder.

Big Blue, as the company is known, is as American and as multinational as it gets ? McDonald?s and Coke included.