What’s the difference between Chinese and western banks?No write-offs and more lending than authorities like versus huge write-offs and less lending than authorities like.
The FT reports that Chinese banks will be announcing record profits for 2007 over the next few weeks. One domestic media report put pre-tax profits for all domestic banks at Rmb610bn ($85.4 [...]
Entries from February 2008
February 29, 2008
Banking Up The Profits
February 28, 2008
Kicking The Foreign Investment Tires
The U.S. tire-maker Goodyear is close to investing $1 billion in a second plant near Dalian, according to Reuters, though the company says it has yet to make a final decision.
Goodyear has been producing in China since 1994, when it set up a joint venture with Dalian Rubber General Factory, and now has a [...]
February 27, 2008
No 4 as No 1. Some Mistake, Surely?
Just ran across this Gallup Poll from earlier this month, asking Americans which of China, the U.S., the E.U., Japan, Russia and India is the world’s leading economic power, now and in 20 years. China easily tops both lists, a contrast to when Gallup asked the same questions in 2000 and the U.S. was the [...]
February 26, 2008
After Hu
Political futures are being decided in Beijing this week. The party’s central committee started a three day full session on Monday to put in place the key state and government leaders for the next five years, Xinhua reports.
This is the layer below President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, National Peoples Congress chairman Wu Bangguo [...]
February 24, 2008
Higher Yuan Signaled
Another signal from the central bank that it will let the yuan rise faster this year to stimulate domestic demand as part of its fight on inflation, now at an 11-year high.
The Peoples Bank of China’s latest monetary policy report says currency appreciation will play a bigger part in a push to tighten monetary policy, [...]
February 23, 2008
Million Buck Bonuses
Chinese securities companies and asset management firms are now paying million dollar bonus to retain staff, according to the FT. So fierce is competition for experienced professionals that Wall St.-style bonuses now rule.
There are only 300 people with all the required regulatory qualifications to manage funds, according to the FT’s report, and staff turnover [...]
February 22, 2008
Learning Chinese
Forbes magazine set one of its reporters to learning Mandarin in four days. A futile task but painfully funny in the telling.
That piece is one of a collection on language. Another is by Chris O’Brien, who writes the wonderful Beijing Newspeak blog, on his experiences of turning Xinhua’s English service into English. Another painfully funny [...]
February 21, 2008
Food Games
A convergence of three touchy issues, the Beijing Olympics, product safety and relations with the U.S.: The U.S. Olympic team is to bring all its food with it from America and will take its meals in its training camp, not the Olympic Athletes Village. It is concerned about ensuring that local food is safe [...]
February 20, 2008
ChiPhone
Intriguing snippet over on MacNN: one in ten of Apple’s oh-so-fashionable iPhones – some 400,000 handsets — are being used in China. The twist is that the iPhone isn’t sold in China. So any iPhones being used there must have been imported on the grey market and unlocked.
The MacNN report quotes In-Stat, a research consultancy, [...]
February 19, 2008
Rising Prices. Rising Yuan?
The latest monthly inflation figures showing a 7.1% rise in consumer prices in January, the biggest increase in 11 years, are little surprise given the transport bottlenecks and food shortages caused by the severe winter in the south and west of the country. The question is, how long it will take for their impact to [...]
