IBM's decision to sell its PC business to China's Lenovo for cash and stock is smart move.

It's a sign of the times that Chinese firms are now doing what Japanese and Koreans did 20 years ago, buying U.S. assets to get a foothold in the mainstream market. (The picture is copied from Xinhua's coverage of the IBM-Lenovo announcement in Beijing.)

For IBM this is like the Braves trading Kevin Millwood to Philly for a back-up catcher, a salary dump. Some 10,000 people whose severance might have caused trouble got blown out.

IBM will now concentrate on things that aren't commodities, like servers, services, big iron and Linux, areas where it can earn a high mark-up on its employees' time. The PCs that IBM sells its corporate clients will now have the best of both worlds, IBM quality control and management matched with the lowest possible cost. That's what its salesmen need to compete with Dell.

What's in this for Lenovo?

1. The IBM nameplate will remain on the PCs, just as the RCA name stayed on TVs when GE sold that business to Thomson years ago.
2. Lenovo will learn American management techniques, starting with senior vice president Stephen Ward, who is part of the deal.
3. There is little downside. If the deal doesn't work out as envisioned, Lenovo simply plays the heavy, dumps the plant and people, then slaps the IBM name on China-made PCs and moves on.
4. Lenovo gets IBM's sales channels, which is very important in moving its production out of the cut-throat "white box" market into corporate suites, in both the East and West.

I should say here that China-made PCs aren't bad. I have one here. Lenovo boxes are probably just as good as those of rival Chinese PC makers, but with the IBM name on them they can sell at a premium.

More proof of a Chinese Century? Perhaps. But that's another story...