Power Shuffle

Jin Renqing, who has been shifted from finance minister to deputy director of the State Council Development Research Center, is only one of six ministers to have been moved in a shuffle ahead of the Party congress in October. Jin’s “personal reasons” for resigning may have less to do with the vague allegations of improper [...]

Call In The Clones

Knock-off CDs, videos, software, medicines — and now cars? BMW and Daimler Chrysler are threatening legal action if the Chinese-made SUV CEO and Nobel, which bear a striking similarity to BMW’s X5 and DaimlerChrysler’s Smart For-two, respectively, are shown at the Frankfurt motor show, AFX reports.
And no jokes, please, about the way to tell the [...]

Passing Lane

An piquant if no doubt passing twist in the rivalry between China and India to be Asia’s emerging economic power. Indian steel-to-consultancy conglomerate Tata Group says it is interested in buying Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor. The U.S. car maker lost $12.7 billion last year and has been looking to offload its luxury-car [...]

Toy Sense

Forget the recriminations, the U.S and China have to work out how to make toy manufacturing safer, as this from a Forbes Hong Kong correspondent, Shu-Ching Jean Chen, shows:
By combining Hong Kong toy makers’ shrewdness with China’s sprawling low-cost production base, Chinese manufacturers have won close to 80% of the world toy market. In addition, [...]

Fake Pharmacies

MarkMonitor is a consultancy that tracks online brand abuse. The article accompanying the latest quarterly revision of its Brandjacking Index (requires registration) focuses on discount online pharmacies — and paints an alarming picture of counterfeit, expired, stolen and diluted drugs being widely peddled by uncredentialled online pharmacies using spam e-mails. 
Bad timing though it is given [...]

Safe Hands

Vice-Premier Wu Yi is to head up the top-level crisis team dealing with product quality and food safety. That such a senior troubleshooter as Wu has been appointed is a sign of how seriously this is being taken in Beijing as an external issue. Wu is  one of China’s internationally best known officials, heading the Chinese side [...]

Corporate Bonds

China is kick-starting its moribund corporate bond market. New rules let companies listed on domestic and overseas markets issue bonds up to 40% of their net assets. 
The funds can be used for any purpose approved by shareholders “but must conform with the government’s macroeconomic policies”, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which has wrested [...]

Citius, Altius, Fortius

I’ve steered clear of the Olympics so far — there’’s hardly a shortage of coverage — but the call by Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency for China to step up its drugs testing of athletes and to crack down on internet sales of performance enhancing drugs stuck me as yet one more [...]

Falling Apart

The fatal collapse of a footbridge under construction in Fenghuang in Hunan province follows the collapse of a road bridge in Minneapolis. The Communications Ministry says more than 6,000 unsafe bridges will be fixed or rebuilt by 2010. The American Society of Cvil Engineers says  nearly 30% of the bridges in the U.S. are structurally [...]

Powering Up, er Shortly, Perhaps

An update on the two proposed third-generation pressurized water reactors to be built in Guangdong: Areva, the French company that is the world’s leading nuclear power plant builder, and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp. were expected to sign a letter of intent at the end of July. But no chop to paper yet. The Financial [...]