Chinese companies are not off limits for purchase. They just need to mature a bit, become more sophisticated, and distance themselves from their repressive government. After that, the suitors will come.
How much more mature should a company become that owns IBMs hardware business and one of the oldest and the most renowned mobile companys. How much more mature as "largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world" (which is Huawei)?
A US company will never buy such a company. What happened in the past was them creating Joint Ventures with western companys or buying them straight away to get into other markets.
It's just too much of chinas next step after manufacturing the low cost goods of the world, to create the high-tech as well. And of course to sell it to you and me. And that's politics as much as economics.
Even if you were right, this will not happen in a couple of years. It certainly won't happen on the watch of current Chinese leadership, their plan to "move up" in the production chain being quite clear and well-known.
They are off limits for purchase if the Chinese government does not want to allow them to be sold, is the point. If the government sees them as strategic means of growing China's technology sector, good luck.
AFAIK, foreigners can't legally own a Chinese telecoms corporation at all.
