Chen Deming & China’s Future

In the latest of the slow shuffle of top jobs that takes place in the six months or so between a quintennial party congress and the next annual session of China’s legislature — the hires, fires and retires that signal both the tides of time and the shifting sands of power — Chen Deming [...]

From Steel To Insurance

Baosteel, China’s largest steel maker, is making a measured diversification into financial services in general and insurance in particular. The moves are worth following as a case study in the shaping of a national champion.
This month the company has upped its stake in New China Life, the country’s fourth largest life insurer, to 17.3% [...]

Poor Rich Country

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, as the old saw has it. Then there is the World Bank’s shrinking of its estimate of the size of China’s economy.
The new number shows gross domestic product at $5.3 trillion in 2005 or 40% lower than previously estimated. It is based on purchasing power, and is intended [...]

Bali Result: China 1 – 0 U.S.

Those scoring the undercard match between the U.S. and China at the U.N. conference on climate change in Bali would have given it to China on points.
Beijing scored for being seen to be a constructive participant whereas Washington was seen as obstructive. China’s media has been playing up U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments about how [...]

Getting Off The Bottom Rung In India And China

Here is one of those snapshot statistics that throws into sharp relief an entire economy, or two in this case. It comes via journalist Rob Gifford, writing about Hefei in Prospect magazine.
There is one crucial difference between China and India, and a perfect example of it is coated in black tarmac and runs east [...]

Slowly Spreading Jam

The latest Strategic Economic Dialogue meeting between China and the U.S. has concluded with a long study list for the two governments and few parting gifts from Beijing in the form of more financial markets opening.
Foreign firms will be allowed to invest again in domestic securities companies, though a cap of a maximum 33.3% stake [...]

Cut!

Not only is Hollywood having to deal with a writers’ strike, now China has halted the import of its films, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who is in China for the biannual bilateral dialogue talks. The Hollywood trade rag Variety reports that the ban will last for 3 months.
Why isn’t clear, and there [...]

Dialogue And Departures

A couple of notes ahead of the U.S.-China chinwag later this week that goes under the rubric of the two countries’ biannual Strategic Economic Dialogue.
The first is that this looks likely to be the last of these meetings for Vice Premier Wu Yi. China’s most powerful woman is due to retire shortly. At 68 she [...]

Tightening The Monetary Policy Wrench

China’s tenth turn of the bank reserves ratio wrench was more vigorous than the previous ones but just as likely to be as ineffective. The People’s Bank of China said today that it will raise from December 25 the proportion of deposits that banks must hold in reserve by one percentage point to 14.5%. The [...]

Bali High

China is a polluted place but getting less so. That according to Germanwatch, a German environment watchdog that releases an annual ranking of the most environmentally friendly industrialized and developing countries.
Its latest annual Climate Change Performance Index, which covers 56 countries that account for 90% of global carbon dioxide emissions and was released at the [...]