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August 31, 2007
Mainland China investors have shown strong interest in buying Hong Kong stocks after individuals got approval to directly invest in the market last Monday. Over a thousand mainland investors have registered with four wealth management centers at Bank of China's (BOC) Tianjin branch to enable them to buy Hong Kong stocks, according to a client service hotline at the branch. "And thousands of individuals have made phone enquiries about the process and how to apply," the hotline said. Investors will be able to buy Hong Kong stocks directly five days after they open an account with BOC. They will be charged fees for buying and selling Hong Kong stocks at 0.718 percent of the transaction volume - lower than the rate for buying and selling A shares, according to the hotline. The bank is yet to receive approval from the regulator to get the ball rolling. But as the initial gateway for the pilot scheme, the bank has 17 wealth management centers at its Tianjin branch ready to provide the service once it's approved, the hotline said. Xiao Gang, chairman of BOC, said last Thursday that the bank is expected to publish details and start accepting applications from customers in Tianjin from this week. "The bank will gradually extend the service to 40 major cities," the chairman said. But a BOC source who did not wish to be named said yesterday that risk control concerns might prevent the bank from starting the service this week. "The regulator expects BOC to improve its risk control before it starts providing the new service. There is no clear timetable for that to happen," he said. "The pilot program is a significant part of China's forex administration reform. The regulator needs to fix many details before it starts the business. These include determining whether applicants are qualified, which financial institutions can provide the services and how to protect investors' interests," said Zhao Xijun, a professor at Renmin University of China. Zhang Jianguo, president of China Construction Bank, said yesterday that it had applied to regulators and expects to be involved in the new business soon.
Fashion retailer Esprit Holdings (0330) said it plans to spend about HK$1 billion to open more than 100 new retail stores and upgrade existing stores in Asia and other new markets after the company posted better than expected full-year earnings. CNOOC (0883), the mainland's largest offshore oil and gas producer, said interim earnings tumbled 10.6 percent as global oil prices softened in the second half of last year and the first half this year.
China's top leader Hu Jintao has called for accelerating banking reform to push forward the sustainable and healthy development of the country's financial sector. Hu, state president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the call on Wednesday when presiding over a brainstorm of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Members of the Political Bureau attended and discussed the lectures by two banking experts, Ba Shusong, a researcher from the State Council Research Center for Development, and Li Fu'an, a senior economist from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. Hu pledged in his speech to push forward banking reform in an all-around way, focusing on building a modern banking system and innovating organization, service and administration of the sector. He stressed to accelerate the banking reform for the countryside, and push forward the healthy development of the financial market. He also called for more effective use of financial means in macro-economic control and demanded to strengthen risk control to ensure the country's financial security. He urged officials to take the lead in studying financial theories, particularly knowledge about modern banking, to increase their abilities concerning the banking sector. Toy manufacturers have dismissed recent criticism of "brutal working conditions" leveled by a US-based workers' rights group. "The foreign organization does not understand how difficult it is for us to find and keep skilled workers because of stiff competition.
August 30, 2007
The Hospital Authority on Wednesday announced plans to raise the salary of doctors who joined the public hospital system after 2000, in an effort to retain talents.
China's Tonhwa Grape Wine Co., Ltd inked a contract with the King's Court Estate Winery from Canada to purchase a 70 percent stake of the Canadian company with 50 million yuan (6.6 million U.S. dollars), announced the company on Tuesday. With about 133 hectares of grape plantation and advanced icewine producing technique from its Canadian counterpart, Tonhwa vows to expand its ice wine market. "We would provide the Chinese people the first bottle of classic icewine with VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) standard produced by an enterprise acquired overseas," said Wang Xiaoming, general manager of Tonhwa. Tonhwa Grape Wine Co., Ltd, established in 1937 and based in northeast China's Jilin Province, is the first icewine producer in China. Tonhwa is China's winery at highest latitude. It took the golden prize in the International Wine Challenge (IWC) last year. Canada is the largest producer of icewine, and the King's Court Estate Winery in Ontario is a supplier of wholesale VQA Canadian wines to other wineries in bulk or bottles worldwide.
Construction will begin this year on a railroad linking Lanzhou, capital of West China's Gansu Province, and Chongqing, on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Gansu governor Xu Shousheng said the provincial government had decided that a special railway investment company be set up to represent the provincial government and participate in investing, building and operating the new railway. The Lanzhou-Chongqing double line will run 800 km from Lanzhou, pass through Longnan in Gansu, Guangyuan and Nanchong cities in Sichuan, to Chongqing. It will cost 55.5 billion yuan (US$6.94 billion) to be shared by the Ministry of Railways, Gansu, Sichuan provinces and Chongqing. The railway is intended to increase exchanges between northwest and southwestern China and benefit economic development along its length. Railways Minister Liu Zhijun was quoted as describing the Lanzhou-Chongqing railway as a "strategic national route". "It will be a convenient, fast and efficient transport route for freight and goods alike between northwest and southwest China," said Liu.
China Telecom (0728), the mainland's largest fixed-line services operator, said first-half profit fell 4.8 percent to 13.48 billion yuan (HK$13.91 billion) as growth in its broadband business failed to make up for a decline in voice calls. August 29, 2007
Hong Kong blue chips and H shares capped a day of heavy trading roaring to new record highs yesterday, propelled by positive investor sentiment stemming from strong earnings growth, expectations of a US interest rate cut and a trial investment scheme that opens the door to huge new flows of liquidity into Hong Kong securities. A Legislative Council by-election to fill the seat on Hong Kong Island left vacant by the death of former DAB leader Ma Lik will be held on December 2, the Electoral Affairs Commission said on Tuesday. A spokesman explained that setting the date for December was an attempt to avoid confusion between the by-election and District Council polls, which are to be held in November. “To avoid confusing electors on polling day, the commission considered it was not appropriate to hold the by-election on the same day as the District Council election on November 18,” he said. Nomination was scheduled for mid-October, with the exact date to be published in a government gazette later, the spokesman said. “In accordance with the electoral laws, the nomination period must not be less than 14 days or more than 21 days. It must end not less than 28 days and not more than 42 days before the polling day,” he explained. The seat was left vacant by the death of Beijing loyalist Ma Lik, who was the former chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong. He died aged 55, of colon cancer, on August 8. The pan-democrats are discussing a way to select one single candidate in order to maximize the chance of winning. Several politicians from the camp have expressed interest in contesting the seat. They included former legislator Cyd Ho Sau-lan and Democratic Party member Kam Nai-Wai. The League of Social Democrats also intends to field a candidate. Regina Ip Lau Shuk-yee, former security chief, is tipped as a potential candidate with the backing of Beijing-friendly parties. She has not revealed her intention yet. The DAB is expected to discuss the upcoming by-election later on Tuesday when its central and standing committees meet to elect a new chairman.
The values of Hong Kong's total exports and imports of goods rose 8.6 percent and 9.8 percent respectively in July over a year earlier, according to the statistics announced Monday by Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. The value of total exports of goods in July rose 8.6 percent to 238.5 billion HK dollars (30.6 billion U.S. dollars), with the value of re-exports surging 10.9 percent to 228.1 billion HK dollars (29.2 billion U.S. dollars) and the value of domestic exports falling 25.1 percent to 10.5 billion HK dollars (1.3 billion U.S. dollars). For this year's first seven months, the value of total exports of goods rose 10.1 percent over a year earlier, with the value of re-exports up 12.4 percent and the value of domestic exports down 25.7 percent. The value of goods imports rose 9.8 percent in July over a year earlier to 246.7 billion HK dollars. The value of goods imports grew 10.7 percent for the first seven months from the same period of 2006. Thirteen men had been arrested in Hong Kong for smuggling VCDs and CDs, Hong Kong Customs said Sunday. During the operation on Saturday, the Customs officers seized 53 million HK dollars (6.8 million U.S. dollars) worth of VCDs and CDs loaded onto mainland-bound speedboats at Lau Fau Shan pier. The 13 men, aged 16 to 44, are local residents. They are on bail pending further investigation, according to the Customs. China Life Insurance (2628), the nation's biggest life insurer, reported a forecast-beating interim profit of 23.29 billion yuan (HK$24.03 billion), a rise of 159.7 percent from a year earlier boosted by soaring returns from stock market investments. The curtain came down on the four-day Hong Kong Computer and Communications Festival 2007 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre yesterday with both attendance and sales at new highs.
Significant mission - The wording may sound strange to you. But Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi's description of an impending campaign on product quality and food safety as "a serious political task" is a blessing to all concerned about quality and safety of Chinese commodities, within and without the country. In the lexicon of contemporary Chinese politics, that is the official way to state superlative importance. Things labeled that way have greater chances to be accomplished. Nothing is supposed to be in the way of a mission of political significance. Yesterday's national teleconference inaugurating the high-profile campaign, which will last until year's end, was a great follow-up to the central government's latest efforts to pacify safety concerns at home and abroad. Wu, who heads the leading group overseeing quality and safety issues, termed the campaign as a "special battle" to protect people's lives and health as well as to safeguard the credibility of Chinese products and national image. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose. If recent overseas suspicion over the Made-in-China label is more or less magnified by a protectionist inclination, safety concerns in the home market are based on sometimes-fatal damages in real life. More than 99 percent of our food exports were up to standards. But the present embarrassment reminds us even that the rest less than 1 percent suffices to neutralize long-term confidence-building. We appreciate the inclusiveness and thoroughness the campaign organizers have requested. The chain of oversight they have envisaged is a sensible prescription for most of our current problems. It is good to have specific obligations assigned to specific agencies. That is the way to prevent them from throwing responsibilities. We are particularly impressed by their use of "100 percent" in defining the campaign coverage. The audience heard it dozens of times throughout the conference. The only question left is to what extent such political will be shared at local levels. Building an omnipresent monitoring and guarantee mechanism will prove a challenging mission for a four-month campaign. Especially because, as Wu said, it is aimed at a long-term remedy, instead of achieving one or several goals. Still, an ultimate success is possible, as long as there is a positive resonance from local officials.
Beijing will ban celebrities, including movie stars and pop singers, from endorsing medicines, health supplements and food tonics in a move to ensure product quality, the country's quarantine chief said.
August 28, 2007
Kowloon Canton Railway Corp has proposed to scale down the residential development on West Rail's Nam Cheong Station amid the community's increasing concern over wind-blocking high-rises.
Quality wine from Suntime, a wine company of northwest China's Xinjiang, are now available on 260 global air routes of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, according to Xinjiang Daily. Three kinds of Suntime grape wine are on board since last April. Wine dealers from Europe and America also expressed intent of cooperation with Suntime. More than 63 percent of Taiwan entrepreneurs want to scale up their investment in the Chinese mainland, a recent survey of the Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (TEEMA) showed. Having inquired its member companies, the Taiwan's largest industry association found that the number of Taiwan business people who hope to return to Taiwan for business has been decreasing in recent years. The proportion reduced to 1.83 percent this year from 1.97 percent in 2006 and 2.7 percent in 2005, showed the 2007 survey on environment and risk of investing in the Chinese mainland. About 34 percent of the respondents said they would continue to invest in Taiwan, the survey said. Also according to the survey, Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province was among the most recommended cities in terms of hi-tech, service and traditional industries. Shanghai, Beijing, Kunshan and Chengdu were also on the list. The association, with its member companies contributing to about half of Taiwan's total industrial value, got about 2,500 questionnaires from industries including electronics, machinery, metal processing and plastic products. It has been conducting such surveys since 2000.
As subway construction keeps booming around the country, there has been an increasing demand for talents in the subway sector. Beijing's subway system, for instance, is expected to need about at least 10,000 new staff in the coming years. China Construction Bank (0939) - the last mainland bank to report robust interim earnings - said yesterday it has about US$1.062 billion (HK$8.28 billion) of securities backed by US subprime mortgage loans and has set aside 139 million yuan (HK$143.15 million) to cover potential losses. August 27, 2007
Hong Kong starts investment promotion campaign in Chinese mainland - With Zhejiang Province taking the lead, Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) on Thursday launched a three-year campaign of business-focused activities in the Chinese mainland. The campaign, under the theme of "On Your Marks, Get Set, Go", will focus on seven key economically developed provinces in the Chinese mainland, namely Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Liaoning, Sichuan, Guangdong and Fujian. "On Your Marks" covers promotional activities aimed at raising awareness among China's growing class of privately-owned enterprises of business opportunities in Hong Kong. This stage includes a targeted nationwide advertising and editorial campaign, followed by large-scale seminars highlighting opportunities in Hong Kong. "Get Set" focused on workshops designed to equip local companies with the information and tools to develop an overseas business strategy, using Hong Kong as a springboard. "Go!", the final stage, is a series of visits to Hong Kong. Tailored programs will allow companies that are seriously considering expanding their business in Hong Kong to better understand the market, to meet relevant industry associations and to identify business partners, clients and premises.
China's first anti-monopoly law, which requires foreign purchases of Chinese companies to go through national security checks, is expected to be put to a vote later this month after being 13 years of deliberation. The draft law was "ready for adoption", the Law Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) told the ongoing session of the NPC Standing Committee on Friday when submitting the bill for consideration. China warned of risks of imbalanced sex ratio - Sex ratio for newborns aged zero to four had reached 163.5 boys to 100 girls by the end of 2005 in Lianyungang, a city in east China's Jiangsu Province.
August 25 - 26, 2007
HSBC (0005) may have to wait at least three years before it will be allowed to purchase majority control of Korea Exchange Bank, as South Korean regulators said yesterday any acquisition of a stake in the controversy-laden lender should proceed only after legal proceedings involving KEB are concluded.
The number of patents filed by foreigners living in the United States has tripled in the past decade - yet the tight cap on permanent visas may force entrepreneurs to go back home to create rival companies in China, India and elsewhere, according to a study.
A nine-year-old boy was on Thursday offered a place at the Baptist University to study mathematics – becoming the youngest university student in Hong Kong. Net Dragon Holdings, a mainland online game company, plans to raise as much as HK$800 million by selling new shares on the Growth Enterprise Market in October, in what will be the first new offering this year on Hong Kong's foundering second board, market sources said. Net Dragon also would be the first online game company to be listed in Hong Kong since the dotcom bubble burst in early 2000. Mainland technology companies have largely eschewed Hong Kong in favour of the Nasdaq Stock Market, where they tend to receive more generous valuations. This has undercut the GEM board, which was set up in 1999 to give start-ups a fund-raising platform but has been struggling to find a direction as turnover fell. Net Dragon initially had intended to list on Nasdaq, the sources said, without explaining why it changed its plans. "The current ample market liquidity could allow the offering to go smoothly even as the company is still in its growing stage, with thin profitability. That is the reason the firm chose to sell shares in GEM but not the main board," a source said. The last online game company to list on the GEM was Hong Kong-based Billybala Holdings, which raised HK$16 million in 2001. It changed hands three years after the GEM listing. US investment bank Bear Stearns, which has been absent from the local equity market for quite some time, had been mandated to lead the Net Dragon offering, a source close to the deal said.
The actual number of enterprises with foreign investment in China grew slowly but their scale continued to expand, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. By the end of June, China had 280,000 foreign-invested enterprises, with their actual investment reaching 1.8 trillion US dollars and a registered capital of 1 trillion dollars. Of them, 38,000 invested more than 10 million dollars, 2,095 more than at the end of last year and taking 13.5 percent of the total number. As more business fields were opened to foreign investors, the number of exclusively foreign-owned enterprises and foreign-funded joint stock limited companies increased, and that of Chinese-foreign joint ventures and contractual joint ventures decreased. This is because that foreign investors favor independent, flexible operations of exclusively funded firms while contractual joint ventures are restricted by some cooperative elements and therefore require higher investment costs. Statistics showed that foreign-funded corporate banks grew rapidly in number, most of them gathering in Shanghai and driving up the finance sector. During the first half of this year ten such banks had a registered capital of 6.49 billion dollars. There were 220 of them across China, 38 more than at the last yearend and rising 20.9 percent. China's main stock index surpassed the 5,000-point mark for the first time on Thursday, even after a couple of cooling measures were unveiled this week. The Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China is enjoying a booming tourism industry thanks to the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway over a year ago. The railway, the highest in the world, has been bringing record numbers of tourists into the plateau, with inbound visitors reaching 2.5 million last year, a 40 percent jump from 2005, said Deng Xiaogang, vice chairman of region of Tibet during a press conference in Lhasa on August 22. Opened in July 2006, the railway serves as a major transport link for passengers and goods. It has greatly decreased the cost of moving cargo to 0.12 yuan per ton, compared with 0.27 yuan by road, making commodities more accessible and cheaper for Tibetan residents. At the same time, more Tibetan products are finding their way to bigger markets in the country. But tourism has created the biggest boost in this area. Faced with the unprecedented number of travelers from home and aboard, the vice-chairman said the regional government is paying great attention to preserving culture in the autonomous region where Tibetan residents have developed its own arts.
China appoints new ambassadors - Chinese President Hu Jintao has appointed and dismissed ambassadors to nine countries in accordance with a decision made by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature. Zhang keyuan is appointed as ambassador to Iceland to replace Wang Xinshi. Yu Hongyao replaces Gao Shumao as new ambassador to Mongolia. Wang Xiaodu replaces Shen Jiangkuan as new ambassador to Djibouti. Huang Changqing replaces Wang Sifa as new ambassador to Cameroon. Zhou Yuxiao replaces Lin Songtian as new ambassador to Liberia. Ma Zhixue replaces Sun Rongmin as new ambassador to Luxembourg. Sun Rongmin replaces Yuan Guisen as new ambassador to Poland. Cheng Shuping replaces Bao Shusheng as new ambassador to Vanuatu. Wang Xiaoyuan is appointed as ambassador to Costa Rica and he is dismissed from ambassador to Uruguay.
August 24, 2007
The number of Macao's visitor arrivals reached 2.20 million in July, a remarkable year-on-year rise of 22.5 percent, according to official statistics issued Wednesday. The figures from the government-run Statistics and Census Service (SCS) showed that the majority of the visitors in the month came from the Chinese mainland (53.5 percent), Hong Kong (32. 4 percent) and Taiwan (5.6 percent). Among the mainland visitors, some 50 percent traveled to Macao under the Individual Visit Scheme, which frees mainland tourists from the group tour. Macao, the only part of China where casino gaming is legal, has been enhancing its fame as a tourism destination with the aid of the booming gaming industry. Hopewell Holdings (0054) reported net profit for the fiscal year ended June 30 jumped 17 percent to HK$2.63 billion, or HK$2.93 per share, up from HK$2.25 billion, or HK$2.50 a share the previous year. Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd (2332), the telecom unit controlled by Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa (0013), recorded a first-half net profit of HK$70.1 billion - of which HK$69.34 billion was derived from the disposal of its controlling interest in Hutchison Essar in India.
City University of Hong Kong is to boost the English language skills of its students by assigning them overseas instructors. Public confidence in the future of Hong Kong and the mainland remains high despite the recent turbulence in global stock markets, an opinion poll shows.
Boeing 737-800 jets used by two
Hong Kong airlines have been inspected to ensure there are no fuel leaks,
according to the Civil Aviation Department.
Officials berated over food safety - Senior Guangzhou officials have taken a tough public stand on food safety, with the mayor vowing to shut down all substandard producers and his deputy berating grass-roots cadres for their lack of commitment to the issue, mainland media reported yesterday. At a municipal conference on product quality and food safety on Monday, Deputy Mayor Cao Jianliao criticised his colleagues at the district and county levels for sending low-level staff to the meeting, The Southern Metropolis News reported. "From this we can see the district government leaders aren't taking food safety seriously," Mr Cao was quoted as saying. Mr Cao said some neighbourhood cadres had protected unqualified food producers, hindering municipal efforts to improve food safety. His comments came amid an aggressive public relations campaign by mainland authorities to prove to people at home and abroad that it is a reliable manufacturer. Last month, the State Council passed 20 new rules to force governments to raise food-safety standards and implement harsher punishment for dodgy producers. In his address to the meeting, Guangzhou's mayor, Zhang Guangning , called on officials from all levels to acknowledge the importance of the new rules, a report posted on the municipal government website said. "Any company or individual who violates the law will lose all their property," he said. Mr Zhang also ordered officials to impose tougher supervision and stricter market-entry requirements for companies with bad records, as well as introduce better technology to monitor quality. Chen Yongquan , a food-safety expert from South China Agriculture University in Guangzhou, said many mainland food products did not meet international safety standards simply because there was no comprehensive mechanism to help them do so. "Actually, the grass-roots cadres are busy dealing with countless small unlicensed workshops," he said.
US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen said yesterday that he has been given unprecedented access to China's navy, including naval exercises, and that his ongoing visit to the country is productive. Addressing a press briefing, Admiral Mullen said: "I'm very encouraged about the commitment made by Chinese defense and foreign policy officials to continue improving the relationship, (and though) there is a long way to go, I'm reassured." During his weeklong trip that began on August 17, Mullen visited Beijing and the naval facilities at Lushun, Qingdao and Ningbo, and addressed students of the Dalian Naval Academy. "To get on a destroyer and see an exercise that included air, submarine and surface exercises was a first for a US Naval officer," he said, hinting that he would continue to improve ties if he took over as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His trip follows Chinese navy chief Vice-Admiral Wu Shengli's visit to the US in April. Mullen appreciated the chance his visit offered to carry forward his discussions with Wu and other senior Chinese military and civilian leaders. They discussed issues of mutual concern, including increased contacts between the two navies at all levels. He said growing interaction between the two militaries will help avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations. It's really important that we reach a better mutual understanding.
In a surprise move Tuesday, the central bank announced a rate increase for the fourth time this year, taking aim at rising consumer price pressure in the economy and a roaring bull run in the stock market, which is edging ever closer to 5,000 points. Haitian International Holdings (1882), a mainland manufacturer of plastic injection molding machines, said interim earnings surged 26.3 percent as demand grew from automobile and electrical appliance industries as well as plastic container makers in the domestic market.
August 23, 2007
Macao's composite consumer price index (CCPI) in July increased 0.68 percent over the previous month, standing at 115.15, according to official statistics issued on Tuesday. The government-run Statistics and Census Service (SCS) dues the rise of the CCPI mainly to the price hike occurred in sectors including housing, food and non-alcohol beverage. However, the prices of cloth saw decrease in the month, the figures showed. The government of the Macao Special Administrative Region has collected 16.01 billion patacas (2.01 billion U.S. dollars) in direct gaming taxes in the first seven months of the year, a remarkable year-on-year rise of 48.1 percent. The statistics issued Tuesday by the Finance Services Bureau ( FSB) showed that the gaming taxes accounted for 73 percent of the government total revenue in the period. Macao's 26 casinos pay 35 percent of their gross receipts as direct tax to the government. The region, with a population of 580,000, has a 150-year history of gaming industry and is the only part of China where casino gaming is legitimate. Macao saw a 3.0-percent unemployment rate in the second quarter, a year-on-year drop of 0.9 percent, according to official statistics issued here Tuesday. The figures from the government-run Statistics and Census Service showed that Macao's total labor force was estimated at 305,600 in the period. The figures showed that some 54 percent of the employed population was male in the second quarter. The special administrative region has a population of 580,000.
Green tea may help cancer-fighting - Healthy subjects who received daily caffeine-free green tea extract capsules had an increased production of detoxification enzymes, which may provide some cancer-fighting benefits, study findings show. "Concentrated green tea extract could be beneficial to those who are deficient in the detoxification enzyme and shouldn't be harmful for those who have adequate detoxification enzyme," lead investigator Dr. H.-H. Sherry Chow, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said. Genetic and environmental factors cause people to have varying levels of glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzymes. These enzymes may play a crucial role in helping the body defend against toxic and cancer-causing compounds, note Chow and colleagues. Previous laboratory and animal studies found that green tea compounds, antioxidants called "catechins," activate these GST enzymes. Therefore, Chow's team investigated the effect that concentrated compounds from green tea would have on GST enzymes levels in 42 healthy adults. Their findings are published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. For 4 weeks prior to the study, the non-smoking volunteers refrained from drinking green tea, taking supplements, or eating foods known to contain epigallocatechin gallate, a potential cancer-fighting antioxidant. Over the next 4 weeks the volunteers took four capsules, each containing 200 mg of epigallocatechin gallate, every morning prior to eating. This provided the equivalent amount of epigallocatechin gallate obtained from drinking 8 to 16 cups of green tea daily, Chow said. The researchers found that the detoxifying GST enzymes increased by 80 percent in the study participants with the lowest GST levels at the start of the study. Participants with medium or high GST levels had either no increase or a slight increase in GST levels. The capsules used in this study were specifically made for clinical trial use. Chow cautions that commercially available green tea extracts are not required to meet the same strict concentration and purity standards. Chow adds, "More clinical testing is underway to confirm the cancer preventive activities of green tea or green tea extract." Hutchison China MediTech, the mainland subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa (0013) that is listed on London's Alternative Investment Market, yesterday announced its collaboration with US-based global pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to develop Western drugs for treating cancer and inflammation.
The recent wave of recalls of China- made
products by US and European retailers has sounded alarm bells among Hong Kong
industrialists and officials. Local manufacturers are worried about a potential
crisis following the string of recalls of products, particularly toys, as there
are some 5,000 toymakers registered in the SAR, most of which have factories in
the Pearl River Delta. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has warned of a lottery scam in which people claimed to be authority staffers on telephone and told victims that they had won cash prizes. In the calls, victims were told that they had won a lottery, and to collect the winnings, they had to deposit an advance fee into a designated bank account, the HKMA said. A HKMA spokeswoman told SCMP.com on Tuesday the alleged scam came to the authority’s attention when 15 people, mostly from the mainland, had called to them asking whether the lottery existed. “But since they only asked if we had held such a lottery, up to this stage we have not been able to determine whether any of them suffered a financial loss,” the spokeswoman said. The calls from the alleged fraudsters also showed telephone numbers very similar to those of the HKMA. “We are still looking into how they displayed these phone numbers,” the spokeswoman said. The case had been reported to the Police Commercial Crime Bureau for further investigations, she said. The HKMA issued a statement late on Monday saying it had no connection with the fraudulent phone calls. It urged people who received such calls of to report to police on telephone: 852-2860-5012.
China's central bank raised the benchmark interest rates on Tuesday for the fourth time this year in an effort to curb accelerating inflation.
August 22, 2007
Traffic at the Hong Kong International Airport in July grew steadily by over 6 percent year- on-year, the Airport Authority said Sunday. Passenger volume in the month surged to 4.39 million, up 6.6 percent from July 2006, and air traffic movements added 6 percent at 25,380. Cargo volume went up 7.4 percent to 315,000 tons, driven by strong demand for exports and increase in transshipments. Summer is traditionally the peak season for air travel in Hong Kong and this July saw particularly strong visitor traffic from Europe and Southeast Asia at the airport, one of the world's busiest air traffic centers, the Airport Authority said in a report. Stanley Hui, chief executive officer of Airport Authority Hong Kong, said the growth reaffirmed the airport's status as one of the world's busiest aviation hubs. In the 12 months ending on July 31, the airport handled over 46 million passengers and 3.63 million tons of cargo, a year-on-year increase of 7.3 percent and 3.4 percent. Air traffic movements grew 4.2 percent to 288,115, the report said. Hong Kong International Airport was recently named the world's best airport in the annual Skytrax survey, the sixth time it ranked first in the survey in seven years.
Melco PBL Entertainment, an associate company of Macau casino operator Melco International Development (0200), said losses widened to US$96.4 million (HK$751.92 million) in the first half as costs increased.
The Antiquities Advisory Board - the government statutory body evaluating Hong Kong's old buildings - should be empowered to declare historic structures or those with architectural merit as monuments, a nongovernment organization has urged. Albert Lai Kwong-tak, who chairs the Hong Kong People's Council for Sustainable Development, told a forum yesterday the board should have the authority to declare that structures are monuments. Calling the Queen's Pier row a bid by radicals to "foment unrest for a broader political agenda," lawmaker and Liberal Party chief James Tien Pei-chun has warned that investor confidence will be affected if Hong Kong's major projects are left open to legal challenges. Star Cruises - the Asia-Pacific region's leading cruise operator and the world's third-largest - is poised to go big in the Greater China region in expectation of a surge in cruise travel, fueled by a robust economy and the immense market potential arising from next year's Beijing Olympics.
HK jobless rate falls to nearly 4% - Hong Kong has achieved its lowest unemployment rate in nine years – dropping to around four per cent of the workforce, latest statistics released on Monday showed.
The 2007 China Trade Exhibition will be held in Costarica from Aug. 22 to 25, according to the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT). Nearly 30 Chinese enterprises in eight Chinese provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Chongqing and Zhejiang, have been confirmed to attend the first trade fair to be held in Costarica, said CCPIT vice chairman Wang Jinzhen. The exhibits will include home appliances, communication equipment, electronics, automobile, motorcycle, farm machinery, textile and clothing. As a comprehensive international exhibition of Chinese-made products, it is aimed at promoting bilateral trade and economic cooperation, Wang said. The CCPIT also plans to set up a representative office in Costarica before the end of this year, which will serve as the second representative office in Latin America and the 17th such office abroad. The retail sales of accommodation and catering industry in China saw an 18 percent growth in July to score 92.3 billion yuan (12.1 billion U.S. dollars) of business volume over the same month of 2006, according to the latest figures revealed by the Ministry of Commerce. From January to July this year, the accommodation and catering industry maintained robust growth momentum, with the retail sales volume surpassing 673 billion yuan, up 18 percent on a yearly basis, which accounted for 13.7 percent of the nation's total consumption volume. The nation's consumer price index (CPI) in July set a 33-month high of 5.6 percent and foodstuffs were priced 15.4 percent higher than the same period last year, helping to push the country's accommodation and catering consumption to a new high. In recent years, investment constituted a much bigger share of the nation's GDP growth, while the consumption was relatively weak. This has become a key concern for the government. Against this backdrop, the government has taken measures to boost domestic consumption. During the first half of this year, the nation's investment growth rate has slowed down by 3.8 percent and the consumption growth rate increased by 2.1 percent compared with last year, said Xie Fuzhan, director of the National Bureau of Statistics. The strong consumption indicated the investment and consumption were favorably coordinated this year due to the efforts of the government's policy in energizing domestic consumption, said Qi Jingmei, an analyst with the State Information Center. Qi held that traditionally the fourth quarter is a peak season of consumption, so the country's consumption volume may continue its rapid growth momentum till the end of the year. The Chinese government has approved six more countries as the destinations for outbound tourist groups, said sources with the China National Tourism Administration on Sunday. The six countries are Oman, Morocco, Monaco, Syria, Namibia and Bulgaria. In the first half of the year, China's outbound tourism saw rapid growth, with the number of tourists up 14.04 percent from the same period of last year, said the administration. The country remained Asia's largest source of outbound tourism last year, with 34 million Chinese tourists traveling abroad, up 10 percent year-on-year. China has so far approved 132 countries and regions as destinations for outbound tourism, 86 of which receive Chinese tourist groups.
The death toll in the bridge collapse in Central China's Hunan Province rose to 64 after rescuers found more bodies on Saturday. The rescue headquarters said about 152 people were working on the bridge when it collapsed on the afternoon of August 13. Twenty-two of them have been injured. But a source with the rescue headquarters said final figures of the dead and missing can be known only after the rescue work is over. It's difficult to know the exact number of people working on the bridge when it collapsed because they were part of seven construction teams, with some being casual laborers. The headquarters has talked to project managers, labor contractors and families of the workers and arrived at a conclusion that 152 were working on the ill-fated bridge. The government on Saturday suspended work on all unreinforced arch bridges in the country. Minister of Communications Li Shenglin passed the order on Friday, asking all provincial transportation departments to organize special teams to examine all unreinforced arch bridges. Work on them could resume only after they are declared safe. The search for victims became easier after experts detonated explosives at 2:28 am on Friday to demolish the three collapsed concrete piers, where more bodies were feared to have been buried, rescuers said.
China Safety watchdog hits toys recall - Politically motivated, unfair, biased and poisoned by jealousy - China's quality watchdog chief gave his verdict yesterday on the storm surrounding the quality of mainland goods, describing it as a "cold wind." Li Changjiang told a carefully choreographed talk show on state television that his department was doing everything possible to check quality and probe substandard goods, especially following the toy recall by Mattel. "I'm here to tell you: have faith in made-in-China," Li told a selected group of foreign and mainland executives and journalists. "Children are our future. So their health and safety is very important," added Li, the man leading the counter- offensive to convince the world that mainland goods are safe. "We have three million people working hard, making toys to make children around the world happy." Show host Chen Weihong held up a small plastic toy that was part of the recall, and asked the audience to guess which part contained too much lead. Eyes? No. Tail? Not that either. Legs? Way out. The answer - the eyebrows, only visible if you looked up close. "There is no danger. You can hold it with no problem," Li said. "The US has told us that there have been no cases of children being harmed." Next appeared a wooden toy train set. The only part with too much lead in it - the reason it was recalled - was a small bright red stop sign. "Children won't eat this sign, or smell it every day. The effect is very limited," Li said. "It's exaggerated. In the first example it was the eyebrows that exceeded standards. And in this whole set, it's only the stop sign. It's not fair to say China's products are not up to scratch. Not fair at all. "Why was the recall so large? Because they couldn't judge exactly which toys had too much lead in them. There's no way to distinguish, so they all had to be recalled. "More than 99 percent of our goods meet standards. Demonizing Chinese products, or talking of the Chinese product threat, I think is simply a new kind of trade protectionism." Li said that, curiously, it has only been in the last few months that the made-in-China stamp has attracted such suspicion, adding that over the last few years, "more than 90 percent of our exports have been up to standard. Why have the problems only come to light now? It's very worrying," he said.
August 21, 2007
HK firms slam `politicized' recall - Following the recall of toys by Mattel, Hong Kong toymakers who now dominate the mainland's toy production said the episode had been "politicized" and could force some toymakers out of business. I do think there will be companies closing down ... but it won't be like the Asian financial crisis where half the companies will be wiped out," said Ivan Ting, executive director of Kader Holdings, one of Hong Kong's largest toymakers. But longer term, Ting said the majority of Hong Kong toymakers would be unaffected by the scandal and might benefit by being forced to better manage their supply chains. The Federation of Hong Kong Industries, which represents toymakers on the influential Hong Kong Toys Council, said there was a degree of politicization of the recalls, following other scandals that had tarnished the "Made in China" name for products such as pet food and toothpaste. "It's been politicized," said Clement Chen, the federation chairman, who added most of China's toy exports made in Hong Kong-owned factories were safe and that those with problems were "isolated cases." In Guangzhou, some merchants said the recall was one of a number of factors now squeezing the industry including rising labor and raw material costs. But for now, demand for toys is still outstripping supply in the world's largest toy production hub of the Pearl River Delta.
US investigators probing the Dow Jones insider trading case are said to have offered a settlement deal to Bank of East Asia (0023) chairman David Li Kwok- po.
Hong Kong's working-age mainland migrants are generally not as well educated and earn less than their local peers although their fortunes can be expected to improve with time, according to statistics released by the government. In its half-yearly economic report, the government said last year's data showed that only 7.9 per cent of working-age mainlanders arriving in Hong Kong had attained post-secondary education compared with 23 per cent for the entire population. Some 22.9 per cent of arrivals had not advanced beyond primary level, slightly less than the 25.4 per cent for locals. However, 69.2 per cent of mainland migrants had attained secondary education, more than the 51.6 per cent for the whole population. Wages earned by mainland arrivals also lagged locals, the report said. Last year, the median wage was about HK$6,000 for these arrivals while locals earned HK$10,000. The majority, or 82 per cent, of the 63,900 mainlanders working in Hong Kong last year held lower-skilled positions, like service workers and shop sales staff. People aged 15 or above are considered of working age. "Generally speaking, mainland arrivals have been constrained in the local labour market by their lower education and skill levels and limited social network," the report said. "Nevertheless, the situation can be expected to improve over time, as these newcomers acquire more knowledge and experience and become more integrated into the community." The report said that 54 per cent of the mainland arrivals were not part of the labor force, meaning they are mostly homemakers or students. Those who are employed account for a mere 2 per cent of the total workforce. Significantly, between 1991 and last year, there were fewer mainland women workers compared with local women. In 1991, 53.4 per cent of the women were part of the labor force versus 41.5 per cent last year. Local women with jobs rose from 49.4 per cent to 52.8 per cent. "Given that mainland arrivals constitute only a minor share of the labor force aggregates in Hong Kong, it seems unlikely that their movements will have too much impact on the overall labor market situation," the report said. Claims that the entry of mainlanders had led to a worsening in Hong Kong's employment situation were over-exaggerated, it added. Hong Kong's private hospitals are calling for an easing of visa procedures for mainland tourists seeking medical treatment in Hong Kong to promote medical tourism in the city. Alan Lau Kwok-lam, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, said more mainlanders would seek medical services in Hong Kong in the coming years as they became more affluent. "Mainland tourists are willing to pay a premium price for treatment in Hong Kong," he said yesterday at the Hong Kong-Taiwan Medical Services Forum. He said they had better access to medicine in the city and had confidence in doctors here. "Hong Kong is well-positioned to capture this growing market." Mr Lau said the government was not doing enough to promote medical tourism. He said the government should simplify visa procedures for mainlanders seeking medical services in Hong Kong. And the government should take into account the length of time needed for good treatment when considering visa extensions for mainland visitors. Anthony Lee Kai-yiu, chief manager of Union Hospital, said immigration policy was not friendly to mainland visitors seeking treatment. "We still find it difficult for patients seeking treatment in Hong Kong to extend their visas [for post-medical treatments]," Mr Lee said. Hong Kong has been a medical tourism destination for 30 years, with competitors including Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Mr Lau said the development of medical tourism could bring a huge amount of foreign exchange to Hong Kong and create more jobs. He said the government should spend more on medical infrastructure to further promote medical tourism. More hospitals were needed to cope with the increasing demand of medical services from local residents and medical tourists. The government should also revise legislation on advertisement of medical services and facilitate the publicity of medical tourism.
China's first 1.5 megawatt (1, 500 kW) wind-power generator with completely independent intellectual property rights has rolled off the assembly line in the southern Guangdong province. The price was at least 20 percent lower than similar imported products or those manufactured by joint ventures, said the Guangdong Mingyang Wind Power Technology Co., Ltd. The generator was designed for China's climate and is resistant to typhoons, sand storms and extremely low temperatures. The technologies of the generator have been certified by GL Germanischer Lloyd, according to the company. The company has received orders for 250,000 kw of its wind power generators valued at 1.6 billion yuan (210.5 million U.S. dollars), said Zhang Chuanwei, chairman of the the parent company Guangdong Mingyang Electric Group Co., Ltd. He said that company's annual production capacity of wind power generators will rise from the current 450 units to 1,000 units by 2010. China's wind power resource exceeds one billion kilowatts, according to official estimates. Food safety high on agenda - China issued its first White Paper on food safety on Friday, and on the same day Vice-Premier Wu Yi was named as the head of a 19-member Cabinet-level panel to oversee product quality and food safety. The 39-page White Paper, released by the State Council Information Office, details a series of achievements and planned measures to improve food quality, from establishing a national food recall system to increasing exchanges with quality officials from other countries. The paper said the proportion of Chinese food products that passed quality inspections had risen steadily in recent years, from 77.9 percent last year to the current figure of 85.1 percent. The paper also said the qualification rate of exported Chinese food had remained higher than 99 percent for many years. It said China exported 24 million tons of food to more than 200 countries last year, up 13 percent over the same period the previous year. Seafood, vegetables and canned goods were among the most popular products, while Japan, the United States and South Korea were the top three importers. Also on Friday, the government published a statement on its website, saying it had appointed Vice-Premier Wu to head a panel on food safety and product quality. The decision to set up such a panel was made on July 25 at a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao. The statement said the panel is made up of 19 high-ranking officials from 16 central government departments, including Health Minister Chen Zhu, Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai, and Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). Wu will lead the panel in coordinating ways to address the country's problems in food safety and product quality and oversee the implementation of policies. Also as part of the government's efforts to improve product quality, the AQSIQ said on Friday it has sent 150 officials, one-third of its total staff, to 14 provinces on a three-month inspection of production in enterprises. "It's the first time that the administration has sent so many officials, Li said. He said the officials have been briefed to find production and supervision loopholes as well as solutions. Luo Yunbo, dean of the food science and nutritional engineering school of China Agricultural University, said the latest moves underscored the government's determination to improve product quality after a spate of safety scares. The quality of Chinese products, especially food, have been in the international spotlight in recent months following additives exported from China contaminated some pet food in North America. The foreign media has also reported that toothpaste, seafood, toys, and even cooking pots from China were found to be unsafe, fanning global criticism of Chinese products in general. "As a responsible country, China should show the public, as well the world, a true and complete picture of the food safety situation in the country," Luo said.
Tainted-toy row hurts workers - Many mainland toy workers have lost their jobs following Mattel's global recall of toys, an industry body said on Friday, but insisted overall confidence in their products was high ahead of the key Christmas season. China has been struggling to convince the world its goods are safe after a series of scandals over a string of products from tainted pet food and drugs to tires, toys and toothpaste. In its second recall this month, Mattel, the largest US toy company, recalled millions of Chinese-made toys on Tuesday due to safety risks from magnets and lead paint. It warned it may recall additional products as it steps up testing. The China Toy Association, representing about 1,500 manufacturers and suppliers, said the production of poor-quality goods was not deliberate. "The industry itself did not mean to produce poor-quality goods and paid a heavy price for its mistakes," it said. "Most of the employees will have to leave factories they have been serving at for many years and are facing unemployment or reemployment problems. This has had a huge impact on the industry and society. "The recent recalls were instigated by foreign brands," it said. "Nobody was injured." May Liang, the industry's secretary general, said orders remained strong at present, and that toys for the Christmas season abroad had mostly already been shipped. "Foreign companies still have a lot of faith in made-in-China toys," she said. "We have more and more of the world toy market. This is an approval of Chinese toys." Liang added it was unfair to criticize the mainland industry for reacting slowly to the recall, as compared with the apparently rapid US reaction. Investigations took time, she said. "The impression in the media is that they reacted very fast and we were very passive. But we had to understand exactly what the reasons were and related departments had to investigate." In previous export crises, mainland warnings of factories going to the wall were not borne out by the facts, as companies managed to pare costs and pass on some to customers. The group also blamed "unobjective whipping up of public opinion" for the troubles which "certainly led to excessive worries for domestic and foreign consumers." "Including our colleagues overseas, we do not agree with foreign media fanning the flames, as it is not in accordance with the facts," Liang said. Rising costs and squeezed profit margins coupled with the current safety recall could drive some companies to stop exporting altogether and concentrate on the domestic market, she added. Meanwhile, Vice Premier Wu Yi, the mainland's top troubleshooter, has been appointed to head a previously announced Cabinet-level panel to oversee product quality and food safety. It will look at agricultural products, food and related consumer products and pharmaceutical goods. China to issue judicial interpretation on Property Law - The Supreme People's Court (SPC) will promulgate judicial interpretations on Property Law, Corporate Bankruptcy Law and regulations of criminal evidences in 2007, according to a SPC annual plan on judicial interpretations. The landmark property law was adopted on March 16 after taking 13 years to wind its way through the legislative process. The law, which will come into effect on Oct. 1, states, "The property of the state, the collective, the individual is protected by law, and no unit or individuals may infringe upon it." Legal experts said the property law was a significant step in the country's efforts to further economic reforms and boost social harmony, but as some articles were vague, courts would have difficulty in applying it. A SPC official said the supreme court had ordered courts across China to organize training sessions on the Property Law. Courts were required to submit experience tips of handling property cases to the supreme court for reference. "Opinions and suggestions from local courts, legal experts and members of the public will be taken into consideration," he said, adding the SPC has already received more than 50 suggestions on judicial interpretations of various laws and regulations, 10 of which were put forward by people outside the law circle. The SPC will reply each proposer in written form every time after a final version of a judicial interpretation takes shape, said the official. Shanghai Electric Group (2727), the mainland's biggest maker of power equipment by sales, posted a 50 percent increase in net profit in the first half on strong demand for its generators and significant earnings from equity investments.
August 20, 2007
August 18 - 19, 2007
Hong Kong youngsters have serious problems in concentrating and nearly 80 percent find it hard to focus on schoolwork, sport or leisure activities, a survey has found. The study, conducted by Research International in May, interviewed 3,048 youths in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mainland China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The study targeted youths aged 15 to 22 in five key areas - school, sports, leisure activities, social time and family gatherings. Of the 300 youths interviewed in Hong Kong, only 22 percent were able to adequately focus on their schooling, sports and socializing. This was much lower than the average in Asia, which was 29 percent, according to Research International director Raymond Chan Yue-kuen. Chewing-gum maker Wrigley sponsored the study and its Hong Kong managing director Peter Tsang Cheng- keong said the results were worrying. "It is worrisome the concentration and confidence levels of Hong Kong youths are among the lowest when compared with their counterparts in the region. Young people themselves have expressed anxiety about their future," Tsang said yesterday. "We discovered that low concentration levels increase stress levels, decrease self-confidence and, therefore, jeopardize the ability of the youths to realize their full potential." One of those involved in the study, Wong Chung-kwong, said from his own experience, many people in Hong Kong lack concrete goals, focus, organization and prioritization. "People must individually make an effort to improve their concentration and undergo concentration training techniques and therapy," he said. "Apart from getting more rest, we have found that exercise, a quick head or eye massage and chewing gum are among the healthier habits that help young people focus better." Last year Wrigley, in collaboration with the authorities and education institutions in China, launched a campaign called China Youth Concentration Care Program to provide scientific guidance that may improve students' concentration and performance. Wrigley also organized a seminar in Hong Kong where head teachers from several mainland cities shared their experiences on handling this issue. "We are now working with relevant stakeholders in some of the locations to promote healthy habits that will help young people focus better," Tsang said. "We feel a good place to start would be during the students' study time, which is when they are getting bored and easily lose concentration."
Fans of kung fu legend Bruce Lee will be waiting to see who has been chosen to try to fill their hero's shoes after Hollywood studio Warner Bros announced plans to remake Lee's last film, 1973's Enter the Dragon. The entertainment giant said the remake, to be called Awaken the Dragon, would feature an FBI agent who investigates a Shaolin monk and underground kung fu fight clubs. In the original, Lee played a kung fu fighter who infiltrated an island occupied by a rogue martial artist. He died aged 32 of swelling of the brain just weeks before the original was released. The film, to be made under the Warner Independent Pictures label, will be directed by Kurt Sutter, who is best known for his involvement in television series, including the gritty police drama The Shield. He will also write the script. Warner Bros publicist Laura Kim declined to reveal casting choices, the budget or the shooting schedule. Enter the Dragon, also produced by Warner Bros, was the first kung fu film made by a Hollywood studio. Bruce Lee Club president Wong Yiu-keung said he still remembered the movie "inside out". "The plot of Enter the Dragon was not outstanding. Its success was all based on Lee's charm and his lively performance," he said. Mr Wong said it would be hard to find an actor who can be rated anywhere near the kung fu legend. "Everyone will look forward to the choice of the hero and will compare him with Lee," he said. "But then Lee was a unique person. He is such an icon that he is in the same rank as John Lennon and Elvis Presley." He said the new script should have a major revamp. "Audiences nowadays are more demanding," he said. Business leaders have expressed anxiety over taking the "wrong direction" if democratic reform is rushed, Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen said last night. "The business community has been very sensible, although they have expressed some anxiety that if the pace were too fast, it would pose an undue challenge to the business community," said Mr Tang, speaking after a closed forum organized by various business chambers. He said business leaders would like to see democracy develop in a "gradual and orderly" fashion. "If you walk too quickly, then you might walk in the wrong direction," Mr Tang said. Federation of Hong Kong Industries chairman Clement Chen Cheng-jen said he told officials that maintaining the functional constituencies in the Legislative Council was a "must". "I haven't heard a single voice in our sector saying they are willing to let directly elected legislators take the place [of functional constituency lawmakers]," he said. He added that he was open to changes in the selection of functional constituencies but was skeptical about letting the public return functional lawmakers. "I doubt very much the general public will understand the unique concerns [of the industries represented] and they may not be interested at all," he added. A Lingnan University survey found 79.8 per cent of 673 respondents believed candidates should have good relations with Beijing, with 15 per cent disagreeing. More than half of the respondents supported replacing all Legco functional constituencies with geographical representatives. About 23 per cent opposed the proposition.
August 17, 2007
Hang Lung Properties (0101) reported a 45 percent surge in full-year net profit yesterday, underpinned by strong rental income growth and a larger investment property revaluation surplus. Li & Fung (0494), the world's largest export trading company, said it plans to focus on footwear and personal care businesses and improve sales in the European market in the three years from 2008 to 2010. Former Semtech International Holdings chairman Derek Wong Chong-kwong, who is believed to have absconded, was yesterday sentenced to 39 months' jail for bribing a banker and broker to manipulate his company's shares. A Hong Kong toy producer who ran up big debts after a US toy giant ordered a recall of items his company had produced has committed suicide, it was reported yesterday. Cheung Shu-hung, 50, who ran Lee Der Industrial, hanged himself in a factory warehouse on Saturday in Foshan's Nanhai district, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis News reported. The report said Cheung had plunged into more than US$30 million of debt since US firm Mattel this month recalled 967,000 toys produced by his company. Excessive levels of lead were detected in the plastic toys for under-fives, sold under the Fisher-Price brand. The Mattel recall came just two months after New York's RC2 Corp recalled 1.5 million mainland-made toys and parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line because of concerns about the lead content in their paint. In extreme cases, lead poisoning can cause nerve damage and even death. The recalls prompted the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to ban exports from Lee Der and from Hansheng Wood Products in Dongguan in an attempt to push mainland producers to obey safety rules. The Southern Metropolis News quoted a Lee Der factory manager as saying that Cheung hanged himself on Saturday after visiting his three plants and saying goodbye to staff. The company was also a victim of the recall, the manager said. "The boss and the company were harmed by the paint supplier, the closest friend of our boss," he said. Workers said Cheung had asked them to stop work from Saturday. On Friday, the quality watchdog ordered authorities to investigate the company's use of "fake plastic pigment". Lee Der's Hong Kong office could not be contacted for comment and staff at its Nanhai head office declined to comment. Workers said they expected Cheung's funeral would be today.
China Wednesday called for global cooperation to improve food safety, noting that it along with product quality are an international problem. "No country's products are immune to problems," said Zhao Baoqing, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington. But Zhao added that China will intensify food safety supervision and punish all those responsible for supplying tainted food. "Food safety and product quality is an international problem, and is also something that all countries pay attention to," said Zhao, who previously worked for China's product quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). Zhao admitted that China's food safety needs improving, but said that the vast majority of Chinese exports to United States are of high quality. "During 2004 to 2006, more than 99 percent of Chinese food to the U.S. met the U.S. safety and quality standards," he said. The official said the Chinese government has been actively cooperating with other countries to seek solutions to issues of food safety and product quality. "Quality and safety questions are something that every country has to deal with," Zhao reiterated, adding that more international cooperation and less finger-pointing was needed. China's Ministry of Commerce will help related departments implement measures to ensure the quality and safety of Chinese-made toys, said a spokesman with the ministry on Thursday. The measures include enhancing self-discipline and supervision of the toy industry, helping local authorities train manufacturers to improve management over product quality, and strengthening international cooperation and information exchange on toy production, spokesman Wang Xinpei said. Wang said most toys made in China were produced in accordance with importers' designs, techniques and quality criteria. Some problematic toys uncovered recently stemmed from poor quality management in the production process and slack supervision by importers and traders as well. A spokesman for China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said late last week that the United States importers and brand owners should take responsibility for recalled toys. To prevent loopholes in quality control, overseas brand owners should improve their product design and supervision over product quality, the spokesman said. The US product quality watchdog filed 29 recall cases involving toys made in China last year. A recall case filed by US RC2 Corp. and CPSC last month involved toy trains made by a Guangdong-based company which used paint containing lead poisonous to children. On August 2, another toy company, Fisher-Price, also recalled more than one million character toys with unqualified paint. The producer's paint provider made the paint using fake materials. China's quality control department has suspended the export of the problematic toys, while the police have launched an investigation into the case. China exported more than US$7 billion worth of toys last year, a growth of 7.5 percent over the previous year. The total included 300,000 batches of toys sold to the United States. Setting the standard - On Tuesday, the world's largest toy company, Mattel, recalled a total of 436,000 Chinese-made toys that were said to have contained "impermissible levels of lead". This is the latest in a succession of bad news from overseas involving Chinese commodities. Not all allegations are fair. But most of the quality problems exposed have to do with standards - either the standards themselves were inadequate, or strict standards were not implemented faithfully. Disregard of standards can cost manufacturers dearly - Mattel has reportedly indicated it might shift away from Chinese contractors and subcontractors. While domestic manufacturers swallow the bitter fruit of their neglect of standards, the national procuratorial authorities' recent enthusiasm for standards appears particularly impressive. Last week, the Supreme People's Procuratorate published rules on the work of procuratorial departments in the second trial of cases involving death sentences. Now, it is talking about a set of new standards for procuratorial decisions about whether or not to initiate a criminal prosecution. Our Criminal Procedure Law authorizes procuratorates to launch public prosecutions in court. But Clause 2 of Article 142 of the law allows them to not lodge a prosecution when the offense is minor. Throughout the country's criminal legislation, that line tallies perfectly with the latest jurisprudential slogan to combine lenience and severity in criminal justice. There has been a rather principled rule that a public prosecution should not be raised unless it is indispensable. That sounds very good. But beneath it is a tricky pitfall. For one thing, without due criteria, who can tell how much leniency is enough, or too much? The fresh standards for no-prosecution decisions took an impressive step forward by naming specific circumstances that suffice as justifications. Beyond that, the new documents offer an explicit definition of "mistaken" decisions to or not to make prosecutions. While making clear the once murky lines, such new standards will bring the promise of leniency to an achievable level. But more important, perhaps, their adoption might reduce the undesirable side effects of the once undefined latitude for procurators to decide whether or not to prosecute. The precious clarity will also prove to be conducive to preventing judicial corruption. Quality problems sapping trade strength: Beijing - Ineffective controls are sapping China’s competitiveness, the nation’s safety watchdog said, as tainted toy exports were traced to a fraudulent paint supplier. The toy recall comes after a number of scares over tainted Chinese exports, from toothpaste containing an anti-freeze ingredient to toxic chemicals in pet foods to deadly chemicals turning up in drugs and foods. Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, warned officials that failure to improve quality was undermining national trade strength, the official People’s Daily reported on Thursday. “We may have entered the ranks of big traders but we’re still far, far from being a strong trade power, and the fundamental reason is that our product quality competitiveness is not strong,” he said in comments to officials a few days ago. “Quality is a symbol of national strength,” he said. Li’s call for tougher regulation of manufacturers appeared as Beijing grapples with another massive recall of Chinese-made toys found to fail US safety standards. Mattel Incorporated, the largest US toy company, this week recalled 18.2 million toys globally, including 9.5 million in the United States. The toys were recalled due to hazards from small, powerful magnets and lead paint. Earlier this month, Mattel’s Fisher-Price unit recalled about 1.5 million preschool toys made by contract manufacturer Lee Der Industrial Company because the paint on the toys contained excessive amounts of lead. The recall prompted some US lawmakers to demand a temporary halt and inspections of shipments of Chinese products for children that contain paint. News of the second recall came soon after an owner of the Lee Der factory at the centre of the first recall was reported to have committed suicide. A Lee Der manager told local papers in Guangdong, where the manufacturer has factories, that the company had used a batch of yellow paint falsely certified by a long-time supplier as lead-free. Li, whose agency has been at the centre of the uproar, blamed deep-seated problems that he said demanded a rethink of economic priorities, including “backward production methods and weak overall competitiveness.” “To transform the concept of development and re-invent the development model we must give even greater prominence to quality problems,” he said.
China is suspending applications for new airlines until 2010 and imposing stricter monitoring in order to prevent overheating of the airline industry.
China will begin to issue 28 billion yuan (US$3.68 billion) worth of book-entry T-bonds on Thursday, the 13th batch of its kind issued this year.
President Hu Jintao sought a new energy and transport corridor for China's country's surging economy in Kyrgyzstan yesterday, the second day of a Central Asian tour to boost ties with the region. August 16, 2007
Fast-food giant McDonald's is attracting unwanted attention after news of the arrest of its managing director for Hong Kong, Joseph Lau Sze-shing, for alleged bribery broke this week. McDonald's Hong Kong yesterday declined to comment on Lau's arrest and would only say the 47-year-old executive is currently on leave. In a statement, McDonald's vice president for corporate relations Liam Jeory said: "We can only confirm that Mr Lau is on leave. Beyond that we ask you to address your questions concerning ICAC activities to the ICAC." The Independent Commission Against Corruption refused to comment on Lau's case. But a source said yesterday the bribery allegation involved only new food product promotions and did not include the beef used in hamburgers or the potatoes in french fries. It has been reported Lau was suspended after being arrested and questioned by the ICAC following complaints food distributors had paid bribes to have their products used in McDonald's outlets in Hong Kong. Lau was appointed to his post in June 2004 and was previously managing director for McDonald's operations in the Philippines, where he turned the business around to achieve profitability within three years. Before that, he spent 10 years developing McDonald's business in the mainland, helping to establish operation teams in cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Fujian, Xiamen and Guangzhou. A Hong Kong native, Lau joined McDonald's in 1983 when he was in Los Angeles. McDonald's, which was established in Hong Kong 30 years ago, currently has more than 200 local outlets and employs 10,000 workers. Hong Kong's population has risen by 0.9 percent to 6.9 million since mid- 2006 - the bulk of the increase coming from births and the inflow of one-way permit holders from the mainland - according to the Census and Statistics Department. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is determined to ensure the 2008 equestrian venues are the best in Olympic history, club chairman John Chan Cho-chak said yesterday.
Telecommunications giant Motorola has signed an agreement to supply equipment worth 394 million U.S. dollars to China Mobile Communication Corporation (CMCC) in order to expand its network capacity in China. The U.S. mobile phone manufacturer said in a statement published on its website that it had signed the contracts in the first half of this year, and about 60 percent of the sales included in the contracts had been registered during that period. However, Motorola recorded a loss of 28 million U.S. dollars in the second quarter following its first-quarter losses, its first back-to-back losses in five years, according to its financial report announced in July. Its weak performance has prompted analysts to say it had slipped to third in the global mobile phone market behind Nokia of Finland and Samsung of the Republic of Korea in the second quarter. The company said it had provided equipment and project services for the Chinese company, which operates a network based on the GSM standard of wireless communication, and had helped expand or update the network in 16 Chinese provinces covered by the CMCC service. China Mobile is the largest mobile communication operator in China with more than 330 million users by April this year.
The project, based in Qinshui Basin, North China's Shanxi Province, is expected to produce one million cubic meters of liquefied coalbed methane daily when put into operation next January, said a manager of China United Coalbed Methane Corp Ltd (CUCBM), developer of the project. The production lines will be completed at the end of this year. The annual output is expected to reach 150,000 tons and the annual sales may hit 200 million cubic meters, the manager said. The CUCBM manager said that Hong Kong-listed China Leason Investment Group Co Ltd signed a liquefied coalbed methane purchasing contract with the company in Beijing earlier this month. Coalbed methane is usually burned during mining in order to avoid gas explosion accidents. A proper use of the gas would not only make the best use of resources, but also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. China United Coalbed Methane Corp Ltd, held by China National Petroleum Corporation and China National Coal Group Corp, is the only company entitled to cooperate with foreign companies to exploit coalbed methane resources. Its coalbed methane drills take up to 85 percent of the nation's total. It has signed 21 production sharing contracts with 10 overseas companies, with a total foreign investment of US$119 million.
August 14 - 15, 2007
In an unprecedented move last week Thursday, the European Central bank poured a record 94.8 billion euros (HK$1.02 trillion) into the markets, with the US central bank also injecting capital as banks gasped for liquidity. China National Building Material (3323) - the mainland's second- largest cement producer - and one of its existing shareholders are offering to sell up to HK$2.73 billion worth of shares via a share placement.
Latest statistics released by the China Automotive Industry Association on the 8th show that from January to July this year the sales volume of passenger vehicles in China reached 3.5402 million, up 23.73% over the same period last year.
August 11 - 13, 2007
Beijing will limit foreign investment in the domestic insurance sector to companies that have minimum US$2 billion (HK$15.6 billion) in assets in the latest attempt to slow inward investment in important businesses. Interest rate changes in the United States will remain unclear for the time being, said Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief executive Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, but he warned the local stock market may be susceptible to fallout from US subprime mortgage problems. PetroChina (0857), the Hong Kong- listed arm of China National Petroleum Corporation, plans to list in Shanghai in October, raising at least 40 billion yuan (HK$41.36 billion), China Daily said yesterday, citing an unnamed official with the oil producer's parent.
Conglomerate Swire Pacific (SEHK: 0019) posted a 58 per
cent increase in net profit for the first six months of the year on Thursday,
boosted by the revaluation of its investment properties. The company, which has
a vast array of interests including stakes in Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay
Pacific (SEHK: 0293), said net profit rose to HK$12.49 billion from HK$7.92
billion in the first six months of last year. The company recorded revaluation
gains of HK$8.9 billion from its investment properties for the period, up 48 per
cent from a year earlier. Chairman Christopher Pratt said the group’s underlying
profit, adjusted for Hong Kong accounting standards and the interpretation of
the group’s investment properties and income taxes, amounted to HK$5.26 billion,
up 51 per cent from a year earlier. Its underlying profit exceeded analysts’
forecasts of HK$3.6 billion to HK$4.14 billion. Mr Pratt said core profit in the
property division, excluding the net property revaluation gain, rose 15 per cent
year-on-year to HK$1.77 billion, driven mainly by strong rental income growth of
17 per cent. The aviation division recorded a 30 per cent rise in attributable
profit to HK$1.28 billion due to increased passenger demand and a strong
performance from engineering division Haeco (SEHK: 0044) group. Mr Pratt said
the company was looking to expand its property portfolio in both Hong Kong and
mainland China and a number of other opportunities on the mainland were being
actively pursued. The board has recommended an interim dividend of 90 HK cents
for its A-shares and 18 cents for its B-shares, up from 63 cents and 13 cents
last year. Swire A shares ended the day HK$1.30 or 1.47 per cent down at
HK$87.20 against a 0.43 per cent decline in the Hang Seng Index.
Jackie Chan said on Thursday he hopes to finish an animated film based on him that late Cannes-winning Taiwanese-American director Edward Yang was working on at the time of his death. A spokesman for Chan also said on Thursday the Hong Kong actor is working on the script for an action film that he will direct, but denied that it would be the third instalment of Chan’s Armor of God series, as reported in Chinese media. In a blog entry on Chan’s website on Thursday, Chan mourned the death of Yang, who passed away on June 29 from complications from colon cancer. Chan had been working with Yang on the animated film The Wind, which revolves around a character inspired by Chan. A spokesman for Chan, Solon So, said the film was partly finished. Chan said in his blog he wants to complete the film. “I’ve started to wonder how I would finish The Wind ... I can’t let his [Yang’s] efforts go to waste,” Chan said. Yang, known for his realistic portrayals of modern Taiwan, won the Cannes Film Festival’s best director award in 2000 for Yi Yi, a film about a Taiwanese family that copes with the serious illness of their elderly mother. Spokesman So also denied reports that Chan plans to shoot the third instalment of Armor of God. The first two installments revolve around an Indiana Jones-style treasure hunter named Asian Hawk. Chan suffered one of the worst injuries of his career while filming the first instalment, which led to a brain haemorrhage. So, however, said Chan is working on the script for an action movie he hopes to direct. The film will be funded by Chan’s JC Group. So declined to reveal the plot. Chan is currently filming The Forbidden Kingdom, a Hollywood kung fu film that co-stars Jet Li. He is scheduled to start shooting a film by Hong Kong director Derek Yee at the end of the year, So said. The film, called Shinjuku Incident in Chinese, is reportedly about Chinese immigrants in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s most crowded shopping and entertainment districts.
August 10, 2007
PetroChina (0857), the Hong Kong-
listed arm of China National Petroleum Corporation, plans to list in Shanghai in
October, raising at least 40 billion yuan (HK$41.36 billion), China Daily said
yesterday, citing an unnamed official with the oil producer's parent.
Incumbent MTR Corp chairman Raymond Ch'ien Kuo-fung has been named to head MTR Corporation Limited, which is to be set up after the merger between MTR Corp and the Kowloon- Canton Railway Corporation.
China spends $1b improving food, drug safety - China will spend more than $1 billion improving food and drug safety by 2010 and the regulator will be given stronger oversight powers, an official said on Wednesday. State Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said the government had earmarked 8.8 billion yuan (US$1.16 billion) for food and drug safety over the current Five Year Plan, which runs to 2010. Part of this would be spent on a large, new laboratory, she said, adding this was the first time the spending figure had been made public. Yan did not provide a comparison for previous years. "Once the Five Year Plan has been completed, the abilities and the base of the regulator will be substantially raised," Yan said. "There will be an enormous improvement in the system for guaranteeing food and drug safety for the public." New rules would give the watchdog the power to seal factories and seize whatever materials they need when probing sub-standard goods, she added. Yan said her department would also take the safety message nationwide, starting out in the enormous countryside, home to 60 percent of the 1.3 billion population. "We will focus on rural food safety," Yan said. A deputy agriculture minister admitted recently that the backward state of Chinese farming was a major obstacle to raising food safety. State media said on Wednesday, the beginning of the one-year year countdown to the Beijing Olympics, the government would launch a campaign to crack down on the use of highly potent and poisonous pesticides which are banned but still in use. Five pesticides were banned earlier this year, and the Agriculture Ministry was compiling a blacklist of companies still making them. As part of the government's food safety strategy, it will educate farmers how to properly use pesticides. The mainland's top quality control agency said yesterday that domestic toy companies whose exports had been recalled because of consumer health scares would face severe punishment and stringent supervision, China News Service reported. Export licences for such companies would be suspended until they cleaned up their acts, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said. "Serious violators will be transferred to legal authorities to be dealt with severely according to the law," the report quoted an official from the agency as saying. "The administration will increase its level of supervision, stop the export of the goods in question and resume exports when qualifications are completely overhauled." The report also named two mainland companies recently involved in massive recalls of exported toys due to their poisonous lead content. The two Guangdong-based companies - Hansheng Wood in Dongguan and Lida Lee Der Industrial in Foshan - had temporarily been banned from exporting and had been ordered to "regulate and redress" their business practices, the report said. Last week, the US toymaker Mattel recalled nearly 1.5 million plastic preschool toys worldwide, all made by Lee Der, because they contained paint found to have excessive amounts of lead. In June, US toy importer RC2 Corporation recalled 1.5 million "Thomas & Friends" wooden railway toys made by Hansheng and painted with toxic lead paint. ansheng's general manager said he had been expecting the quality watchdog's strong stance but the tough supervision rules would hurt the business. "Americans are making very loud noises," the manager, surnamed Zhang, said. "They would protest louder if [administration] didn't make any gesture. It'll surely affect our company. We'll have to purchase more quality-supervision facilities, hire more people to monitor production processes and send our products to quality checking agencies more frequently. All of these will raise the cost of the product." The company had not always conducted quality checks, he admitted, because they were "too costly and too time-consuming". "One quality check can cost several thousand yuan," Mr Zhang said. There had recently been more inspections from governmental quality supervision agencies, he said. "They [officials] used to visit our factory once in a quarter, but now they come up much more frequently, without notifying us beforehand," he said. The administration said it would implement more measures to enhance the quality of the "Made-in-China" label, but did not go into details. American toy production experts and officials were welcome to inspect Chinese toy factories and quality laboratories, it added. August 9, 2007
News of Chang Wen-i, founder and former chairman of women's shoe retailer Prime Success (0210), being led away in handcuffs back to Taipei from Macau yesterday have compounded the woes of small-caps traded in Hong Kong.
Ma Lik, the leader of Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing party, has died of cancer on the mainland, his party members confirmed on Wednesday.
An increasing amount of foreign investment capital flowed into China's real estate market between January and June, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Data from NBS show that in the first half of this year, realized foreign investment in the property sector accounted for 24.1 percent of the country's total used foreign capital, 11 percentage points higher than the whole of last year. Foreign investment in property projects averaged US$7.04 million between January and February, up US$3.61 million from last year's average, while investment averaged US$7.17 million between January and March, up US$3.74 million. During January and February, 18 foreign companies invested more than US$2 million each in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. More than half of them invested in the province's booming real estate market. A total of US$169.15 million realized foreign capital was recorded in the property sector, making up 79.3 percent of the province's total. The growth rate of foreign capital in China's property sector surged 154.4 percent on a yearly basis in the first three months, 101.4 percentage points higher than all of last year. That was also 127.5 percentage points higher than the growth rate of total investment in the property sector during the same period. Five Chinese airlines on Monday jointly launched an express air service between Beijing and Shanghai. The public welcomes improvement in service quality but also expects an explanation for increased prices. China Asset Management Co Ltd (China AMC) plans to launch its first qualified domestic institutional investor (QDII) fund in September to raise 8 billion to 10 billion yuan ($1.06-$1.32 billion), a source close to the plan said on Tuesday. August 8, 2007
Cathay Pacific Airways of Hong Kong announced here Tuesday that from Oct. 28 it will operate a sixth daily flight from Hong Kong to Narita International Airport in Tokyo, Japan. The additional flight will depart Hong Kong early in the morning to provide more options throughout the day for business travelers and the leisure travel market. Besides, Cathay Pacific's sister airline Dragonair announced Tuesday the launch of its new non-stop services from Hong Kong to Fukuoka and Sendai, Japan, which will also start from 28 October. This new service will operate daily non-stop from Hong Kong to Fukuoka, supplementing Cathay Pacific's existing daily Fukuoka flight that goes via Taipei. While Sendai becomes a new addition to the Cathay Pacific network when the new service begins operation. The above service enhancements mean the number of flights operated by the Cathay Pacific Group from Hong Kong to Japan will increase from 91 to 101 each week. China International Marine Containers (CIMC), the country's largest shipping container company, yesterday announced that it bought a 42.18 percent stake in Enric Energy Equipment Holdings Ltd for HK$1.13 billion. It is the first time an A-share company is purchasing an H-share firm. CIMC's share soared to the daily allowable limit to close at 32.12 yuan in yesterday's trading on Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Mainland-listed CIMC reached an agreement on July 30 to buy 190.7 million shares from Xinao Group International Investment Limited. The latter originally owned 51.79 percent shares of Enric, through its wholly owned subsidiary Charm Wise Limited, according to the company's statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The purchase price was HK$5.92 per share, a 27.36 percent discount on Enric's closing price on July 30 at Hong Kong Stock Exchange. CIMC said in the statement that it would make a general offer for all outstanding shares it did not own in the company. Analysts said the deal, which was low in purchase price, is expected to expand CIMC's business into gas and energy equipment sector and greatly improve the company's canned transportation production line, after it indirectly acquired 80 percent of Burg Industries BV on July 28. "The deal is expected to speed up CIMC's industrial structure transition and greatly improve its logistics services to energy end-users," said Huang Dongsheng, an analyst at Changjiang Securities. "Besides, CIMC already had the competency in cross-regional merger and acquisition, which can ensure the success of the deal," he added. "Canned transportation should be a major concern for CIMC in the deal. CIMC can be benefited from Enric's rich experience in providing the energy equipment," said Ye Zhigang, an analyst at Haitong Securities. Tank container is the major means of transporting gases and liquids for oil, chemical and food industries. "The deal is also expected to provide new sales channel for CIMC, though the amount will not be large," he added. Enric, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2005, had net assets of 505.52 million yuan at the end of 2006 and sales revenue of 769.65 million yuan. CIMC's revenue in 2006 was 33.2 billion yuan and its total assets amounted to 23.3 billion yuan.
After becoming a leader in the Hong Kong telecoms market in offering packaged services with mobile, fixed-line, television and internet services together, PCCW (0008) now plans to roll out mobile voice services in Britain over its wireless broadband network.
Exhibition trade experts say the Tourism Commission should oversee strategic development of the convention industry to protect Hong Kong's share of the lucrative business, which contributed HK$26 billion to the economy last year. Stanley Chu Yu-lun, chairman of the Exhibition and Convention Industry Association, warned that intensifying regional competition highlighted the increasingly tenuous lead Hong Kong holds in the convention industry. With Singapore, Thailand and other markets dedicating more resources to attracting lucrative trade shows and exhibitions, Hong Kong needed to demonstrate its commitment to growing the sector, he said. "Who is going to bid and compete for events? We can't just sit and wait for Beijing's blessing," he said. He pointed out that the Korea Convention Bureau, a government agency under the Korea Tourism Organization, had been in operation for about three decades. Likewise, the Singapore Exhibition and Convention Bureau was a division of the Singapore Tourism Board. In 2002, the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau was set up to market corporate meetings, incentive events, conventions and exhibitions. But in Hong Kong no one official agency is responsible for promoting the city to show organizers, he said. The Trade Development Council and Tourism Board looked after different aspects of the business, which made co-ordinating efforts more difficult, Mr Chu said. The council also has its own trade fairs, which could result in a conflict of interest if organizers put on competing shows. The falling US dollar and the rising yuan have narrowed the advantage Beijing and Shanghai enjoy over Hong Kong in costs of living for expatriates, a worldwide survey shows. But ECA International, which carried out the survey, said Hong Kong could not draw much satisfaction from its findings. Worsening air pollution and the lack of school places could put expatriates, especially those with families, off the city, said ECA's Lee Quane. And the survey does not factor in rents; an earlier survey by the company found rents for expatriates in Hong Kong were the highest in the world. "Hong Kong is getting cheaper but the city was in fact less attractive to expatriates," Mr Quane said. The survey, carried out in March, found Seoul remained the most expensive city in Asia for expatriates, followed by Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe, all in Japan. Hong Kong ranked fifth of the 39 Asian cities covered by the survey, unchanged from ECA's previous half-yearly survey. Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore occupied sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth place respectively. The survey provides information for multinationals that need to send senior executives overseas. "The general cost of living in Shanghai is 8 per cent lower than in Hong Kong now. Five years ago, Shanghai's cost of living was 18 per cent lower," Mr Quane said. He said the narrowing of the gap should help Hong Kong maintain a competitive edge in attracting foreign companies. ECA surveys the prices of a basket of 125 goods and services in 300 cities worldwide. Mr Quane said some items in Beijing and Shanghai, such as imported clothing and entertainment, were more expensive than in Hong Kong. But mainland cities were still cheaper for daily necessities. In global terms, Hong Kong dropped to 81st costliest city for expatriates in March, down from 78th in September. Beijing rose to 103rd costliest, from 107th, while Shanghai climbed from 122nd to 115th. The latest rankings took the mainland cities past Melbourne and some cities in eastern Europe and Canada. Luanda, capital of Angola, was the most expensive city in the world for expatriates, followed by the Norwegian capital, Oslo. ECA's survey on housing costs, released two months ago, showed that rent on a three-bedroom apartment suitable for expatriates was 20 per cent higher in Hong Kong than in Tokyo and 115 per cent higher than in Shanghai.
Police have closed an underground bank that carried out 4.3 billion yuan (HK$4.45 billion) worth of unlawful deposit-taking and lending in every province in the country since last year. China will launch a nationwide crackdown and propaganda offensive to fight public alarm about unsafe food, the government announced yesterday, as the Olympic Games one-year countdown focused attention on the problem. The State Council had decided to "launch a quality improvement campaign focused on food safety," said Zhou Baihua, director of the General Administration for Industry and Commerce, according to the government website. Zhou promised a public relations campaign to accompany the crackdown. "Wage a battle to guide opinion," he told officials. "Comprehensively strengthen opinion and information work." "The overall quality of our country's products has been steadily improving, but the situation, especially for food safety, doesn't allow for optimism," Zhou said. He added that in some respects "there are still many problems and weak links." This week marks the one-year countdown to Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games, bringing worries about whether athletes will also be exposed to food tainted with chemicals or hormones - often used in Chinese farming. Food for athletes would be strictly monitored through every step of farming, processing and transport, said Wang Wei, secretary general of the Beijing organizing committee for the games. "Our country and the Beijing municipal government are taking the food safety issue very seriously, especially for the Olympics," Wang said. China will use global positioning satellites to ensure food safety at next year's Beijing Olympics as it steps up efforts to blacklist manufacturers who violate safety regulations, Wang said in outlining a system that will monitor food production, processing factories and food hygiene during the Summer Games. The high-tech plans are aimed at making sure healthy food is delivered to the 10,500 athletes residing in the Olympic Village, starting with an "Olympic food safety logistics code" which will be attached to the products, he said. He did not provide further details of the device. Food transportation vehicles will be tracked using global positioning satellites, Wang, an executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, said two days before the one-year countdown to the games. The developments come after Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng announced that 429 exporters have been blacklisted and punished for producing dangerously substandard products. The companies include Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology, whose products were implicated in the deaths of dozens of pets in North America. August 7, 2007
Sino Life Insurance had become the first mainland insurer to win regulatory approval to invest part of its assets in the Hong Kong stock market after new rules announced last month, the China Business News said on Monday. Sino Life won approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) to invest in H shares and red-chips, the semi-official newspaper said. Sino Life, a relatively small insurer set up in 2001 in Shanghai, had total assets of 10 billion yuan (US$1.32 billion) at the end of May, according to the newspaper. The CIRC announced in late July that Beijing would allow Chinese insurers to invest 15 percent of their assets abroad under long-awaited regulations marking the latest relaxation of China's capital controls. The rules fleshed out a decision taken in April last year by the State Council, China's cabinet, to let financial institutions invest some of their clients' funds abroad under the landmark Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme. Other regulators earlier this year published detailed QDII rules for banks, brokerages and asset management companies. The assets of all insurance firms operating in China were 2.53 trillion yuan at the end of June, potentially making 380 billion yuan available for overseas investment. However, the actual totals will be determined by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the currency regulator, which will allot quotas to individual insurers - as it does for banks and fund managers. A few insurers were already permitted to invest in overseas stocks before the new regulations, but only using foreign exchange raised from initial public offerings overseas.
Perceived listing hurdles are deterring mainland firms from floating shares in Hong Kong - and market watchers fear this could undermine its status as an international financial center. Eyeing growth opportunities in Vietnam, containerboard maker Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing (2314) yesterday embarked on the construction of an HK$8 billion production plant in Can Tho.
Schoolchildren in the Chinese capital will get compulsory anti-corruption lessons this school year, including case studies on executed officials, a state newspaper said on Monday. August 5 - 6, 2007
A traditional herbal medicine concoction can help reduce the severity of a common skin condition among children, according to Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers.
Cross-border taskforce to help factories hit by new export rule - Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua have agreed to form a cross-border taskforce to help about 30,000 Hong Kong-owned processing factories hit by the mainland's new export rules. The taskforce, aimed at helping manufacturers move up the technology ladder and high-value production chain, would hammer out details of how to assist in the transition, Mr Tsang told the 10th plenary session of the Hong Kong-Guangdong Co-operation Joint Conference. In a move to rein in its swelling trade surplus, soothe international trade friction and cut pollution, Beijing has ordered all exporters to pay as a deposit half the amount they spend sourcing 1,853 raw materials such as metals, plastics and textiles for production into semi-finished goods. The move will tie up exporters' funds, hurting their cash flow and profitability. The number of raw materials subject to restriction will be expanded to about 5,000 eventually, according to some trade organisations. The latest agreement comes on top of a taskforce the Hong Kong government set up last week, with about 10 members comprising government officials and industry unions due to meet today for the first time. They will assess the impact of the rule on the livelihood of Hong Kong manufacturers and draw up support measures. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Frederick Ma Si-hang said last week the taskforce would help with communication between the mainland authorities and Hong Kong manufacturers. It planned to help seek mainland bank loans for manufacturers, play a bridging role in communication between Beijing and Hong Kong manufacturers and offer advice on how to improve technology levels, Mr Ma said. A fund has been made available for small and medium-sized enterprises to help meet environmental requirements across the border. Michael Yu Lee-ming, chairman of the Hong Kong Metals Manufacturers Association, urged Mr Tsang to fight for an extended grace period of six months instead of one month from the announcement of the rule on July 23. The regulation will be enforced on August 23.
All 435 districts in the US House of Representatives have benefited a lot from trade with China, according to a report released by the US-China Business Council (USCBC) on Thursday. The report, undertaken by the Trade Partnership, quantifies exports to China from 2000 -- the year before China joined the World Trade Organization -- through 2006 from every congressional district in the 110th Congress. "This report illustrates the widespread benefits to the US economy that have resulted from growing US exports to China," said USCBC President John Frisbie. "The report also acts as a reminder to Congress to keep the benefits of trade in mind when crafting legislation that may affect the US-China commercial relationship," he added. The report said overall US exports to China grew 240 percent from 2000 through 2006, while in Alabama's 2nd congressional district, exports rose 400 percent during the 2000-06 period; the top export category in 2006 was crop production. Tennessee's 4th district also exported more agricultural goods to China in 2006 than any other type of good; the district's exports to China increased more than 1,600 percent from 2000 through 2006. Exports to China from Colorado's 4th district increased 235 percent from 2000-06, with computers and electronics the top export category in 2006. Texas' 32nd district (Dallas County) exported almost 450 million dollars in computers and electronics equipment to China in 2006; exports to China from this district grew 374 percent from 2000 to 2006. Indiana's 5th district exported chemicals worth 57 million dollars in 2006; overall exports to China were up 156 percent from 2000 through 2006. Chemicals were also the top 2006 export from Missouri's 3rd district; exports were up more than 500 percent from this district from 2000-06. Machinery manufactures were the top export category in 2006 of Oklahoma's 1st congressional district; exports to China from this district grew 110 percent in the 2000-06 period. Michigan's 12th district exported 143 million dollar worth of transportation equipment to China in 2006; the district's export growth from 2000-06 was 389 percent, according to the report.
The Chinese inbound tourism market enjoyed a delightful rise in the first half this year, revealed statistics from the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA). The nation received a total of 63.37 million tourists in the first half, up 4.22 percent year-on-year. Of them, 12.12 million travelers were from foreign countries, climbing up 18.47 percent compared with a year before. Some 37.23 million were from Hong Kong, up 4.22 percent; 11.74 million from Macao, up 0.56 percent; and 2.28 million from Taiwan, up 8.74 percent. Some 25.9 million sight seers traveled throughout the Chinese mainland for at least two days, up 10.25 percent year-on-year. Of them, 9.91 million were foreigners, up 19.70 percent; 12.12 million from Hong Kong, up 4.89 percent; and 1.98 million from Macao, roughly the same from Taiwan, up 3.47 and 8.44 percent respectively. Between January and June, the number of tourists from 16 foreign countries went up. Specifically, the number of travelers from South Korea soared 30.26 percent year-on-year, India 16.48 percent, Russia 15.74 percent, Philippines 15.63 percent, Canada 15.02 percent, France 14.59 percent, Australia 14.34 percent, Indonesia 13.92 percent, Singapore 12.92 percent, Germany 12.65 percent, Malaysia 12.00 percent, Japan 11.90 percent, Britain 10.90 percent, the United States 10.77 percent, Thailand 1.40 percent and Mongolia 0.02 percent. In the first six months this year, Chinese tourism gained a total of US$17.94 billion in foreign exchange, a surge of 13.10 percent compared with a year before. Some US$16.45 billion, or 91.74 percent, came from visitors who stayed for more than one day, and the remaining US$1.48 billion came from those who visited for only one day. Considering the tourists' sources, overseas visitors in total spent US$1.25 billion, or 57.15 percent of the combined expenses of all travelers, up 19.64 percent from the same period last year. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan's brethrens spent US$3.93 billion, US$1.4 billion and US$2.36 billion respectively, growing 4.68 percent, 7.81 percent and 8.45 percent respectively. In June alone, China welcomed a total of 10.67 million inbound tourists, up 6.47 percent year-on-year, and the national tourism revenue reached US$3.13 billion, up 13.19 percent compared with a year before. The number of companies registered under the Companies Ordinance rose almost 20 per cent during the first six months compared with the corresponding period last year, latest statistics released on Friday showed. The Companies Registry s figures showed that 47,417 new domestic firms were incorporated during the first six months. This was an increase of 19.12 per cent from that of the corresponding period last year. The number of new registered overseas companies in the first six months was 316. This was a rise of 12.46 per cent from that of the corresponding period last year. The total number of “live” companies registered at the end of June was 622,318, up 30,374 from the end of last year. Unlike business failures during the Asian economic crisis and the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic, the increase in new companies reflects the strength of Hong Kong’s economy. The territory is enjoying falling unemployment, strong inbound tourism, increased retail sales value and increased export volume. Many Hong Kong people also have more disposable income to set up businesses. An increasing number of overseas investors set up their businesses in Hong Kong as they see the territory as a stepping stone to the mainland market. The top price regulator said yesterday that the food industry, including restaurants, was banned from forming cartels and collectively pushing up commodity prices. But the National Development and Reform Commission did not prohibit them from raising their prices individually, based on market demand. The notice follows steady rises in mainland food prices in the past six months, highlighted by a 4.4 per cent year-on-year increase in the Consumer Price Index last month. The notice also followed an announcement last month from major instant noodle companies who said they would collectively raise the price of products because of price increases for ingredients such as flour and oil. Another loose association of fastfood companies also said they would ratchet up their retail prices this month, citing the rising cost of eggs, meat, vegetables and grain. The NDRC said on its website yesterday that no industries were allowed to form alliances to manipulate market prices. It said associations and companies found to have been involved in pricemanipulation or stockpiling to influence market supplies would face severe consequences. The media should expose any business activities connected to such price manipulation, it said. The watchdog said most products’ prices should be decided by the market, and local price regulators should avoid price intervention except in exceptional circumstances, like natural disasters. This announcement signalled rejection of a bold move in June by price regulators in Lanzhou , Gansu , that ordered local restaurants to cap the retail price of a popular beef noodle dish at 2.5 yuan, despite soaring beef and flour prices. Lanzhou price officials said the limit was designed to protect ordinary people from rising prices. August 4, 2007
A new express rail linking Hong Kong
with Guangzhou via Shenzhen will be built as a dedicated track, Chief Executive
Donald Tsang Yam- kuen said yesterday. The announcement that the Hong Kong
section will not use Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp's existing West Rail lines came
after the end of the 10th annual Hong Kong-Guangdong Cooperation Joint
Conference. The choice was made, Tsang said, because of a difference in track
widths between Hong Kong and mainland lines, while several stations on the West
Rail made it unsuitable for a nonstop train service. "I really hope the
traveling time between Hong Kong and Guangzhou will be cut as much as possible,
to about an hour," he said. That is almost half the current traveling time of
one hour and 40 minutes by rail between Hung Hom and Guangzhou. Tsang said
despite the project being more expensive and requiring up to two more years to
complete, it would bring immense economic benefits. Previous estimates suggested
a dedicated rail link would cost HK$2.5 billion to build, about 1.5 times more
costly than using West Rail tracks. Tsang said the new line should help
consolidate the SAR's strategic position as the "gateway to southern China."
According to the KCRC's proposal, the West Kowloon station at the Hong Kong end
will be built on a 10-hectare site covering the existing City Golf Club's
driving range on Jordan Road, Yau Ma Tei. An immigration checkpoint, with four
terminals and eight tracks, will be built opposite the Mass Transit Railway
Corp's Kowloon station in Jordan. A Transport and Housing Bureau spokeswoman
estimated the link could begin operation in 2014 at the earliest, given that
such railway lines normally take seven years to complete. That, however, will be
about four years later than the estimated completion date for the mainland
section, which will include the building of a station at Futian in Shenzhen. As
for the much-awaited opening date of the Lok Ma Chau spur line, Tsang and
Guangdong governor Huang Huahua agreed on a target of August 15 - a full month
later than the original scheduled commencement date. "The spur line can provide
citizens in Hong Kong and Guangdong province with a second rail link, so as to
soothe serious congestion problems at the Lo Wu cross-border checkpoint," Tsang
said in his closing speech at the conference. Cross-border commuter traffic at
Lo Wu reached 241,000 travelers a day last year. On whether the hold-up was due
to issues over the Futian checkpoint as reported, Huang would only say that
inspections by central government authorities, which he said had been conducted
recently, were necessary. A KCRC employee said the company should be able to
start operations by August 15, with trial runs, hardware tests and personnel
checks indicating all systems are ready to go. Also at the conference, six new
agreements on further cooperation between the two governments were signed,
including enhancing the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, strengthening
quarantine measures for mainland fish products entering Hong Kong, promoting
energy saving among enterprises and joint development of service industries.
Other Hong Kong delegates at the conference included Financial Secretary John
Tsang Chun- wah and Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau Tang-wah.
The Guizhou Provincial Development and Reform Commission Monday announced that it will launch the world's largest single-aperture spherical radio telescope as one of the state's key sci-tech infrastructure projects in the Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in south Guizhou Province. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Guizhou Province will join hands in constructing a 500m-aperture spherical radio telescope by making use of the innovative design of Chinese scientists and the unique karst terrain and extremely quiet electronic wave environment in Guizhou. This platform for astronomical observations and research has reached international advanced level. It will provide important support for the country to conduct study and research on dark matter and dark energy, the origin of the universe, the evolution of the space and the search for the origins of life outside the Earth. More than 1,000 top American economists have signed a petition to urge Congress not to impose protectionist measures against China, saying such a move would hurt the US. The petition, sponsored by the Club for Growth, was signed by a total of 1,028 economists from all 50 states and top universities. In addition to many other prominent and well-respected economists, signatories include Nobel laureates Finn Kydland, Edward Prescott, Thomas Schelling and Vernon Smith. The economists said in the petition that China currently supplies American consumers with inexpensive goods and low-interest rate loans and retaliatory tariffs on China "are tantamount to taxing ourselves as a punishment." "Worse, such a move will likely encourage China to impose its own tariffs, increasing the possibility of a futile and harmful trade war. American consumers and businesses would pay the price for this senseless war through higher prices, worse jobs, and reduced economic growth," they warned. "As economists, we understand the vital and beneficial role that free trade plays in the world economy. Conversely, we believe that barriers to free trade destroy wealth and benefit no one in the long run," they said. "Because of these fundamental economic principles, we sign this letter to advise Congress against imposing retaliatory trade measures against China." The economists said trade between the US and China is mutually beneficial. Government data shows that total trade between the two countries has soared from US$116 billion in 2000 to almost US$343 billion in 2006. That's an average growth rate of almost 20 percent a year.
China's H-share banks could fall victim to the global US subprime mortgage fallout, which yesterday spread to Taiwan and Germany. A Goldman Sachs report warns the global phenomenon could filter into the mainland as H-share banks - particularly the Bank of China (3988) - may have exposure to subprime securities. So far, BOC and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1398) have been left largely unscathed by the US crisis, announcing minimal losses yesterday. BOC, the country's largest foreign- exchange lender, said it will book "insignificant" losses on subprime investments in the first half, as it had less than 10 percent of its overseas bond investments in asset-backed and mortgage- backed securities as at the end of 2006. Luo Nan, BOC's head of investor relations, told Bloomberg that its holding of subprime loans was even smaller. ICBC also has "negligible" investments in US subprime loans, which should have no impact on the company's profit, the bank's board secretary, Pan Gongsheng, told Bloomberg. But Goldman Sachs said there could be some exposure of US subprime mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligation at mainland banks, especially those listed in Hong Kong, which have modest foreign exchange investments after their H-share offerings. This would include BOC, given its large US-dollar securities investment portfolio. China said it will work with the United States to improve product safety amid a massive US recall yesterday of plastic preschool toys made by a mainland vendor. "We want to cooperate with other countries including the United States to strengthen cooperation and communication," Wei Chuanzhong, an official with the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, one of China's product safety watchdogs, said on the administration's website. "We shouldn't use problems found in one product to block all products," Wei said, in a nod to concerns in the mainland that scattered safety violations are threatening the reputation of Chinese exports as a whole. Beijing has acknowledged safety problems, but says other countries are grappling with similar issues and insists its products should not be unfairly singled out. The remarks came just ahead of toymaker Fisher-Price's announcement that it was recalling almost one million toys, the latest in a string of mainland product safety scandals. Wei's comments came in a meeting Wednesday with a visiting team of American health officials led by US Health and Human Services official Rich McKeown. The delegation's five- day visit is centered around developing systems for ensuring the safety of food, feed, drugs and medical devices exported from the mainland. Talks have also touched on a US block on Chinese catfish, basa, dace, shrimp and eel after repeated testing turned up contamination by drugs that have not been approved in the United States for farmed seafood. Fears were triggered earlier this year after a mainland-made ingredient in pet food was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in North America.
August 3, 2007
Fashion store Lane Crawford announced yesterday that it will open its first wholly owned store on the mainland in October following the termination of franchise agreements at the end of last year. The 25,000-square-meter store in the new Seasons Place Mall in Beijing will take an investment of HK$300 million investment and will employ more than 300 people. The store will feature over 600 brands, including Prada, Stella McCartney and Givenchy. More than half of its brand portfolio will be new to the Beijing market. "Our plan now is to introduce several wholly owned stores in key cities on the mainland, including Shanghai and Macao, within the next five years," said Jennifer Woo, president of the Hong Kong-headquartered company. She declined to reveal detailed figures. Lane Crawford opened a new-style store in Hong Kong in 2004 with its International Finance Center Mall flagship store, and the following year at Pacific Place, repositioning the company from a traditional department store to one with the largest portfolio of leading fashion brands. In line with expansion plans, Lane Crawford's former license and franchise operations in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Harbin, which predated the company's current repositioning strategy, have been discontinued. All the wholly owned stores on the mainland will be managed by Lane Crawford teams, she said. Each store has floor space between 25,000 and 36,000 square meters. "The Beijing store will equal to 80 percent of the revenue in a Hong Kong store for us in the first year," Woo said. Changes in the way horse racing is taxed and the flexibility given to the Jockey Club to meet the demands of the betting public saw turnover pass the HK$100 billion mark for the first time in the club's 120-year history. Chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, while warning that the club still faces tough challenges in winning back business from illegal and offshore operators as well as growing competition from other forms of entertainment especially in neighboring Macau, said the club's efforts to establish Hong Kong as a world hub of racing and equestrian sports were clearly paying off. Hong Kong's staging of the Beijing 2008 Olympic equestrian events will further put the city on the world map, he said yesterday, as well as leave a sporting legacy that will benefit the whole community. TVB (SEHK: 0511)'s sole mainland distributor for online programming has accused a major audio broadcasting website of infringing the copyright of a hit television series by providing links to unauthorized uploads of the drama. A statement on sina.com on Monday from online distributor Beijing Netmovie said Shanghai-based tudou.com - the mainland's version of YouTube - violated the copyright of TVB's hit series, The Drive of Life, by supplying links to non-Netmovie versions of the show and suggesting the links were authorized. The series aired last month on CCTV8. Netmovie has not filed a suit against the Shanghai firm or sent it documentation about the dispute. Beijing Netmovie marketing head, Li Fei, said the company paid 40 million yuan in December for the rights to be the sole online distributor of TVB programs on the mainland for one year. To access the authorized version, viewers must go to one of Netmovie's 30,000 or so franchised internet bars nationwide and pay to watch the show. A tudou.com marketing chief said the website's links to the show had received many hits but the company had done nothing wrong. "We are approved by TVB itself and they are satisfied with our efforts to generate more popularity for the show on the mainland," he said. From a click on the tudou.com home page, visitors can see the whole series uploaded by website members, as well as clips provided by TVB, according to the marketing chief. A TVB spokesman said the station had only asked tudou.com to promote The Drive of Life. "However, we didn't authorize them to play the series," he said, adding TVB had informed its legal department to follow up on the matter. Last moth, Beijing Netmovie took another major portal, tencent (SEHK: 0700).com, to the Shenzhen Nanshan district court for infringing copyright of TVB programs. It has also filed a copyright violation lawsuit in a Guangzhou court against Xunlei.com. Mr Li said many small websites run by some metropolitan telecom companies carried TVB series to attract interest from local residents. Tudou.com's marketing chief said such allegations of copyright violation were new and a controversial issue because most of the online content was uploaded by visitors. "We only censor uploaded content in terms of sex, violence and whether it's anti-Communist Party or the state government. Our staff don't have the knowledge to identify what has infringed copyright or not."
Although China has the world's fastest growing civil aviation industry, more airports are needed to extend airline services to more parts of the country, a senior official said recently. "The number of airports is still small compared to other countries," Yang Yuanyuan, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), said while addressing a training course for airport senior managers. In contrast to the United States, which is home to nearly 20,000 airports, and Brazil, with more than 2,500, China has less than 500, and then only if temporary runways are included. And the distribution is unbalanced. The density of airports in eastern China is 5.3 times the national average, while the density in western China is less than two-thirds the average. As a result, the country's dozen large airports are operating beyond their capacity, which raises their logistics costs, while many small ones are losing money because of a lack of passengers. Yang said that although less than 20 percent of all air passengers use small airports, they are "very important cornerstones of the sustainable development of civil aviation". "Airports should be regarded as public infrastructure," he said. "Local governments can continue to let profitable large airports operate as enterprises, but they should treat medium-sized and small airports as public welfare facilities." Wang Wei, a professor at the Tianjin-based Civil Aviation University of China, agreed with that assessment, saying such an approach would spur the development of airports. He told China Daily that the widespread notion that airports are enterprises rather than infrastructure had kept local governments and large airport groups from building more small airports in recent years. "If you simply look at the figures reflecting an airport's performance, it may seem like they are losing money. But the benefits they provide to the local economy and tourism sector are huge," Wang said. CAAC director Yang urged local governments and large airport groups to "pay enough attention to the development of small airports" by providing necessary support. President Hu Jintao reiterated the importance of maintaining stable and mutually beneficial Sino-US economic relations, urging the two sides to make full use of the strategic economic dialogue (SED) to address issues of common concern. Hu said the development of bilateral economic ties have not only brought tangible benefits to the people of both countries but have also been engines of global growth. He made the remarks during a meeting in Beijing yesterday with visiting US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who leads the US delegation in the SED. Vice-Premier Wu Yi heads the Chinese side at the twice-yearly forum. Calling Paulson an old friend of China, Hu said the two sides should ensure that the SED is coordinated well with other Sino-US negotiation mechanisms to promote cooperation. He also urged both countries to fully implement the follow-up actions of the SED to further enhance strategic mutual trust and deal with issues of mutual concern. Paulson hailed the SED as helpful to enhance bilateral economic relationship; and said he will work with Wu to make the dialogue a forum to ease friction and resolve disputes. He added that the US is looking forward to strengthening cooperation with China in the fields of energy, environmental protection, food safety and finance. Paulson joined other top Bush aides in a letter on Tuesday to congressional leaders to head off several trade-focused bills that are aimed at pressuring China to revalue the currency to ease the trade imbalance. The letter was released after Paulson met Wu on Tuesday. Paulson told reporters late Tuesday night that he warned against sanctioning Beijing over trade disputes and called for more dialogue. Paulson held another private meeting with Wu last night before leaving Beijing for home. The French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China (CCIFC) recently received its 1,000th member as more French companies arrive amid increasing bilateral trade between the two countries. Trade between China and France rose from 9 billion to 32 billion euros over the past decade, and increased 10 percent year-on-year in 2006, when the trade gap was narrowed as imports from France grew faster than exports from the Chinese side. "There is still high growth potential as France's market share was only 1.4 percent in 2006," said Annick de Kermadec-Bentzmann, president of CCIFC. French companies specializing in advanced technology, environmental industries, telecoms, financial services and the food industry should be in a good position to enter the Chinese market, Kermadec-Bentzmann added. Smaller enterprises in particular are coming to China in growing numbers. Seventy-five percent of member companies in the CCFIC have fewer than 250 employees. In 2006, 100 new members with fewer than 250 employees joined the chamber. As a result, support for smaller companies is a focus of the CCIFC, which is helping guide firms to search for partners and suppliers. The chamber has also established working groups to discuss business-related topics. "Looking at the increasing figures of our new members each year, I have every confidence that this trend will continue," said Kermadec-Bentzmann. August 2, 2007
Protesters hoping to save the 54-year- old Queen's Pier from demolition could be evicted early this morning despite the High Court's decision to review next Tuesday the government's decision not to declare it an historic monument.
Hong Kong enjoys the highest living standards in the Asia-Pacific region - but it is also the second costliest place to live, according to a survey by the Asian Development Bank.
Nearly 10,000 passengers have been stranded at the Beijing Capital International Airport as the heaviest rainstorm to hit Beijing this summer resulted in the cancellation of nearly all departing flights on Monday night, Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday. August 1, 2007
The number of the commercial flight movements at the Macao International Airport reached 24,407 at the end of June, seeing a year-on-year rise of 4 percent, according to official statistics issued Tuesday. The figures released by the government-run Statistics and Census Service showed that China's Taiwan and the Chinese Mainland were the major routes, which accounted for 44 percent and 34 percent, respectively, of the total commercial flights to and from Macao. The total weight of the outward cargo handled at the Macao International Airport fell by 20 percent year-on-year to 33,495 tons in the first half of 2007, the figures showed. Hong Kong Financial Secretary John C Tsang will leave for Australia Tuesday night to attend the 14th Finance Ministers' Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co- operation (APEC) in Coolum, Australia, according to Hong Kong government Tuesday. During the two-day meeting, Tsang will exchange views with finance ministers of other member economies on issues about the policy themes of this year, which are "Making private capital markets work better" and "Transparency and sustainability of the public balance sheet". He will also hold bilateral meetings with his ministerial counterparts. After the APEC meeting, Tsang will fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet senior government finance officials and have discussions with major banks and financial investment entities on global and regional financial development.
HSBC Holdings (0005) beat analysts' forecasts by reporting net profit in the first half jumping 25 percent to US$10.9 billion (HK$85.02 billion) despite loan impairment charges of US$6.3 billion, caused mainly by the subprime mortgage fiasco in the United States.
Hong Kong Pharmaceutical Holdings (0182) said it plans to invest 1.6 billion yuan (HK$1.656 billion) to develop four wind farms to generate wind power in Inner Mongolia and northeastern China this year, and a further 3 billion yuan for eight more wind farms in 2008. Melco PBL Entertainment, a subsidiary of Macau casino operator Melco International Development (0200), plans to issue convertible bonds to raise US$200 million (HK$1.56 billion), which will be used to buy back the company's own American depositary receipts.
Kerry Properties won the Hong Kong government land auction for a 920,516 square-foot residential site in Wong Tai Sin on Tuesday with a HK$3.98 billion bid. Visitor arrivals to Hong Kong rose 6.8 per cent in the first six months of 2007 to 13 million, with more than half of all tourists coming from the mainland, the Hong Kong Tourism Board said on Tuesday. In June alone, Hong Kong had attracted more than 2.03 million arrivals, up 7.7 per cent from the same month last year, the board spokesman said. Tourists from the mainland continued to swell in numbers, growing by 5.9 per cent in the first half to 7.10 million, while arrivals from Taiwan rose 2.5 per cent to 1.07 million. Arrivals from Europe, Africa and the Middle East revealed the largest increase by region, up 16.1 per cent at 1.0 million during the six month period. The Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific market had an 11.2 per cent rise whilst the Americas grew by 6.8 per cent. Visitors from South and Southeast Asia reported a growth of 6.1 per cent to 1.3 million. But the past six months had seen a 1.5 per cent drop in overnight visitors. Hotel occupancy for January to June averaged 83 per cent, three per cent lower than 2006, while the average hotel room rate increased by 12.9 per cent to HK$1,181 per night. A number of measures were adopted to establish closer ties between the territory and the mainland after the handover in 1997. In July 2003, the Individual Visit Scheme was first introduced in four Guangdong cities under the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement. The scheme allows residents of these cities to visit Hong Kong on individual basis without having business visas or joining group tours, as required before the scheme. The Tourism Commission website shows the scheme has now been extended to 49 cities in the mainland. The scheme was also a strategy to boost tourism in the territory following the severe acute respiratory syndrome which hurt Hong Kong’s economy. The ratio of visitors under the scheme rose from five per cent to 16.8 per cent between August and October 2003, and to more than 30 per cent in May 2004, according to Immigration Department statistics. Hong Kong’s tourism is growing on the back of China’s rapidly expanding economy. China’s economic growth surged to an 11-year high in the second quarter and inflation jumped to a near three-year high last month. Mainland tourists coming to the territory often have high purchasing power and help boost the economy, particularly through wholesale and retail. Other signs of Hong Kong’s robust economy include falling unemployment, strong consumption, a resurgent property market and a bullish share market.
Xi'an Satellite Control Center, a major Chinese institution responsible for recovering satellites and spaceships, has started training its rescue and search teams for the third manned space mission, scheduled to be launched in 2008. Yao Liang, head of the center's rescue and recovery team, said their work, which is the last step of a manned space program, includes locating the space capsule that re-enters the earth's atmosphere, rescuing astronauts and transporting the capsule from the landing site to the control center. Yao said initial training started after the Shenzhou VI space mission in 2005 and dozens of workers are being trained for four hours per day. "Compared to the previous two manned space missions, the up-coming Shenzhou VII space mission, which includes a space walk, is more complex. We have been organizing training in accordance with new requirements and learning to operate new equipment on the spaceship and deal with any possible hitches," Yao said. He said the team had recruited more workers as there will be three astronauts on the next spacecraft. Two workers will be assigned to each astronaut. China launched its manned space program in 1999. It successfully sent Yang Liwei, the country's first astronaut, into orbit on the Shenzhou V spacecraft in 2003. Yang spent about 21 hours in orbit. Two years later, astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng completed a Chinese record five-day flight on the Shenzhou VI. All astronauts returned to the ground safely. The Shenzhou VII is expected to carry three astronauts in 2008. The astronauts are scheduled to perform work outside the capsule such as installing equipment and "tightening screws". A total of 158 countries, regions and international organizations have confirmed their participation in the 2010 World Expo to be held in Shanghai. Yang Xiong, Vice mayor of Shanghai and member of the organizing committee for the World Expo 2010 Shanghai China, made the announcement at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday. The organizing committee forecast that more than 200 countries, regions and international organizations are expected to attend the 184-day event. "The international community is reacting positively to the event and we receive a confirmation letter every three days," Yang said. Research shows that a total of 70 million people will visit Shanghai during the event and the daily number may reach 800,000, Yang said, adding that transportation will be the biggest challenge. "The subway will be the solution," Yang said, "Shanghai will have 230 kilometers of subway in operation by 2007 and it will have 400 kilometers by 2010." Shanghai will also take other measures to fight traffic congestion, such as forbidding private cars from entering the expo park, Yang said. Shanghai is also expanding its airports, railway stations and highways to accommodate such an enormous passenger flow, Yang said. By 2010, 60 highways, connecting Shanghai and its neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, will be finished, Yang said. "By using new energies, such as solar power, there will be no emissions from the expo park," Yang added. The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai will be held from May 1 to Oct. 31.
Shares of PetroChina (0857), the world's second largest oil company, continued to slide yesterday as individual investors panicked after US billionaire Warren Buffett unexpectedly reduced his stake in the oil giant, sparking fears he may cut his stake further. The mainland's long-anticipated growth enterprise market board will be launched on the Shenzhen stock exchange next year offering another channel for new and small companies to raise funds.
*News information are obtained via various sources deemed reliable, but not guaranteed
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Hong Kong:
The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival will show 80 films in 63 categories this year.
Fest, jointly organized by Ying E Chi and Broadway Cinematheque, will open Sept.
23 with Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” and Stanley Tam’s “Breeze in July,” their
Asian premieres. The 18-day festival will close Oct. 10 with Jia Zhang-ke’s
“Useless,” also an Asian preem, and Lee Chang Dong’s “Secret Sunshine” from
Korea. Ang Lee will be on hand during the fest to talk to new directors from
China, Taiwan and Hong Kong as part of a New Directors Forum. Joining him will
be Jia, Jiang Wen (“The Sun Also Rises”), Feng Xiaogang (“Assembly”) and Pang
Ho-Cheung (“Exodus”), among others. All of their respective films will be shown
as part of the fest. New categories this year will include Chinese Cinema: A New
Generation, Asian Classic, Midnite Craze and Festival Gala. There will also be a
New Talent Award to help discover and promote new Asian directors. Seven pics
will be shown in the latter category, including Adam Wong’s “Magic Boy” from
Hong Kong. Pics are from all over Asia: Iraq, Iran, India, Sri Lanka, the
Philippines, Macau, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Korea,
China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This will be the fest’s fourth year running.
The Hospital
Authority has unveiled a HK$355 million deal reached with doctors to reduce
disparities in salary scales and to encourage specialists to remain in the
public sector. "Eighteen months ago, when I came to Hong Kong, I heard about the
concept of equal work, unequal pay. It was very strange to me," Hospital
Authority chief executive Shane Solomon said yesterday. "After many months of
negotiation and discussions, we are in a position to at least take a significant
step forward in making our system fairer than what it is now." Under the deal,
the salaries of about 2,000 doctors who joined the authority after April 2000
will be increased by between 15 and 38 percent from October 1. The authority
will also introduce a nine-year contract to replace the current three-year one
to keep doctors undergoing specialist training. 
Workers were
racing against the clock yesterday to repair a road cave-in caused by a burst
water pipe in Kwun Tong and avoid a repeat of the morning's traffic chaos in
Kowloon East.
China:
China's Lenovo has found itself seemingly outmaneuvered by Taiwanese rival Acer
in a global game strategic acquisitions. The news came this week that Acer
succeeded in its US$710 million acquisition bid for American PC maker Gateway,
catapulting it past Lenovo as the world's third-largest computer maker. Not only
does Acer now command 8.8% of the global market to Lenovo's 7.9%, it can also
now block a deal Lenovo had been working on. Lenovo has said it wants to buy
Packard Bell, the No. 4 computer maker in Europe, to help its position in the
desktop market there. But Packard Bell has an agreement that gives Gateway the
right of first refusal over any sale (we're simplifying it a little - there's an
excellent full explanation here). Gateway plans to exercise its right and snatch
Packard Bell from Lenovo - a close call, because Lenovo had already signed a
memorandum of understanding with Packard Bell earlier this month. Lenovo
probably won't get Packard Bell now, although it bravely said it remains
"hopeful." Briefly, there was a rumor that a Chinese buyer (Lenovo, perhaps?)
was in the market for US disk drive maker Seagate. But Seagate's chief executive
dismissed the speculation, saying that there is no Chinese buyer.
Chinese
Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan (L) shakes hands with a Japanese officer after
his arrival of Tokyo, capital of Japan, Aug. 29, 2007. At the invitation of
Japanese Defense Minister Koike Yuriko, Cao arrived in Tokyo Wednesday, starting
his official good-will visit to Japan.
Rescue work is
under way after a section of the Dayang Bridge is rammed down by a cargo boat in
Kunshan, East China’s Jiangsu Province Wednesday, August 29, 2007. One was
injured and two remained missing. 
A plane of Air
China is taking off in Beijing. The carrier says it will not rule out the
possibility of merging with rivals.
Top managers of the country's leading
State-owned enterprise (SOE) risk losing promotion opportunities or even jobs if
their companies fail to meet energy-saving and pollutant-reduction targets. An
accountability system will be implemented for the managers of the 154
enterprises directly under the supervision of the central government starting
September. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC)
urged all its enterprises to draw up detailed steps to help achieve the national
green goal. "The SOEs, which are the pillars of China's economy, should not only
do well in profit-making, but also become role models in shouldering corporate
responsibility," SASAC head Li Rongrong told a news briefing yesterday.
The opening yesterday of the US$2.4
billion (HK$18.72 billion) Venetian Macao complex - which houses the world's
second-largest building - is expected to hurt Hong Kong's tourism industry in
the short term as the Venetian's convention and exhibition facilities draw more
business visitors to Macau. Las Vegas Sands Corp chairman and chief executive
Sheldon Adelson plans to turn the Venetian Macao on the Cotai Strip into a major
international convention hub. In addition to the world's largest casino at
51,000 square meters and a 3,000-suite hotel, the complex offers about 111,500
sqm of meeting, convention and exhibition space - big enough to accommodate 90
Boeing 747 jumbo jets. The center has already booked 44 events that will be
hosted there over the next two years. "The opening of the Venetian Macao will
inevitably bring novelty," said a spokesperson for the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
"We expect that there will be a certain impact on incentive travel and corporate
meetings from some short-haul markets in the near future." The Hong Kong
Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai has net space of 49,000 sqm - less
than half of what the Venetian Macao offers. However, the HKCEC's size will
expand to 60,000 sqm in 2009 after the completion of the Atrium Link Extension.
"The Venetian may create a little competition," HKCEC managing director Cliff
Wallace told The Standard. "[But] I don't think it's going to be competition we
have to be concerned about." AsiaWorld-Expo at Hong Kong International Airport
has about 66,000 sqm of ground-floor hall space. The HKTB said it will reinforce
overseas promotions, including targeting corporate decision-makers. It also
plans to encourage business travelers to make side trips to Hong Kong during
their meetings in nearby destinations.
Nearly 300
people were stranded in midair yesterday when a cable car at Ocean Park broke
down for about eight minutes due to a faulty belt. No one was injured in the
incident - the first since the theme park opened in 1977. 
China’s NBA draft pick Yi Jianlian (L)
meets the press during a conference to announce his signing with the NBA
franchise in Hong Kong August 29, 2007. Yi signed a three-year deal after a
two-month stalemate with the Bucks as he refused to embrace the team after the
Draft late in June.
Jiang
Dezhang kisses his bride Tie Guangju during their special mid-air wedding
ceremony in Kunming, West China's Yunnan Province Tuesday, August 28, 2007. Both
Jiang and Tie have been working as high-rise cleaners with a local company for
years.
A white-flag dolphin has been seen
in Yangtze River in east China, just days after a leading Chinese scientist said
the animal was likely extinct. A man with a decoration company in east China's
Anhui Province spotted a "big white animal" in the river at Xuba ferry in
Tongling, Anhui, at 3:10 to 3:20 pm August 19, and filmed it with a digital
camera, said Dr. Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences. Judged from its appearance and living environment, the
animal in the footage was confirmed by the institute to be a white-flag dolphin,
known in Chinese as "baiji", Wang said. "We are very glad to see baiji still
exist in the world," Wang said. "Many people have believed that baiji is extinct
and this finding brings us a sliver of hope," said Wang Ding, a leading expert
on the species from the hydrobiology institute of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences. But he noted that it is still quite difficult to protect the
endangered animal. Because few of this species still live in the Yangtze River,
their chance of mating is slim, said Wang Ding, who added that a measure is to
gather these animals in one section of the river for breeding. "This is no easy
task. But if we don't do that, white-flag dolphins are doomed to go extinct," he
said. Zeng Yujiang, the man who spotted the dolphin, told Xinhua, "I never saw
such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it. It was about 1,000 meters
away and jumped out of water for several times." The footages were sent to the
Tongling freshwater dolphin nature reserve to determine what the animal was. A
staff with the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who
happened to be in the nature reserve, then brought the footages to the institute
based in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, which was well-known
for research on baiji. The white-flag dolphin, unique to China's Yangtze River,
is listed as one of the 12 most endangered species in the world. Its population
dropped to below 150 in the early 1990s from around 400 a decade earlier.
The third batch
of Chinese peacekeeping troops for Lebanon receive intensive training in Chengdu
Military Command on Aug 28, 2007. The engineering battalion will leave for
Lebanon in early Sept.
A fighter jet
developed by China Aviation Industry Corp I, China's major supplier of fighter
jets and bombers. The aircraft maker plans to build a marketing platform for its
commercial aircraft.
China, the world's
largest tobacco producer and consumer, will ban all forms of tobacco promotion
by January 2011.
Finance Minister Jin Renqing has been
transferred to a government think-tank and will be replaced by the country's top
tax collector, Reuters reported yesterday citing government sources. Jin, 63,
will be replaced by Xie Xuren, director of the State Administration of Taxation,
the sources said, citing an announcement by the Communist Party's organization
department. Jin's transfer is related to the corruption case involving Chen
Tonghai, former chairman of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp or Sinopec (0386), a
source told The Standard, confirming the news.
Hang Cheung Hong was established in
1971 by chairman Tony Ip Chi-shing as an inconspicuous retail shop in Western
district of Hong Kong, selling raw solvents, lubricants and mixed solvents,
commonly known as thinner. Today, it has transformed into Yip's Chemical
Holdings (0408), a small mid-cap company, which is one of the largest
petrochemical manufacturers in the mainland. Its core business is solvents. Over
the years, it has grown through strategic acquisitions and sharpened its
competitive advantage. 
Three lesser panda cubs held by their caretakers meet the public at the Giant
Panda Research Center in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, August 27, 2007. This is the
second triplet in the center.
The launch of
Beijing's Malaysian Food Festival brought an exotic twist to a perfectly sultry
evening.
Tucked away on the
secluded shore of Xihai, newly opened Club Obiwan offers a sleek reward for
savvy nightlife seekers.
As global
financial markets are entangled with worries about growing liquidity squeeze and
risk aversion among investors, mainland authorities are grappling with a
complete opposite set of problems: excessive liquidity and liquidity-driven
asset price bubble. Faced with heightening concerns that China's soaring trade
surplus is putting pressure on the yuan to appreciate faster, as well as fueling
inflation and the asset price bubble, the central government has announced a
series of measures to slow expansion of its current account surplus and to
encourage capital outflows. Beijing, in its latest move, kicked off a pilot
program last Monday allowing mainland individuals to invest directly in Hong
Kong-listed securities - a move some see as China's biggest step yet towards
making the yuan a free and fully convertible currency. The move was swiftly
followed the next day by the fourth interest rate hike for this year, signaling
that the authorities' concern over the country's rising inflation and roaring
stock market has further intensified. "At this stage, you can already see a
price bubble in China's assets market," says Po Mak-hung, associate professor of
economics at Hong Kong Baptist University. "A limited amount of assets is being
pursued by a lot of liquid money and speculation, and this cannot be sustained
in the long run. So the government has to do something to tackle the excess
liquidity problem." One way to tackle the problem is to encourage capital
outflow, by allowing private and public sectors to purchase assets around the
world. That is what China is doing now, using a gradualist and experimental
approach, Po says. Under the pilot scheme, residents from all over the mainland
will be allowed to invest in Hong Kong-listed equities via the Bank of China
(3988) branch in Tianjin, near Beijing. Mainland investors will be permitted to
use not only their existing foreign exchange deposits, but also to covert yuan
into foreign currencies in order to invest in Hong Kong-listed assets. There is
no official ceiling imposed on the amount of each individual's investment. Bank
of China executives said last Thursday that the bank will start accepting
investors' applications to open foreign currency accounts and to invest in Hong
Kong-listed securities from this week.
Overshadowed by its parent HSBC (0005),
Hang Seng Bank (0011) has always been seen as the Hong Kong satellite arm of the
transcontinental banking giant, receiving orders and implementing strategies
handed down by HSBC. But change seems to be in the air. Recent moves by Hang
Seng, which is 62 percent owned by HSBC, to buy out life insurer Hang Seng Life,
and the appointment of MTR chairman Raymond Chien Kuo-fung as the bank's
chairman were viewed as indicators that Hang Seng is moving away from the
dominance of its parent. "The appointment of Raymond Chien certainly points to
the fact that Hang Seng is moving to become more independent," said Ivan Li,
analyst at Kim Eng Securities. Over the past decade, the chairman of the HSBC
subsidiary, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp, has simultaneously held the
position of Hang Seng Bank chairman. This tradition ended with Michael Smith's
departure in June. Hang Seng remained quiet over who would take up the role
until Chien was named chairman early this month.
The new casinos
popping up in Macau in the past three years have helped the Chinese territory
surpass the Las Vegas Strip as the world's most lucrative gambling center. This
week, the city begins its most ambitious - and perhaps riskiest - phase of
development with tomorrow's opening of the US$2.4 billion (HK$18.72 billion)
Venetian Macao Resort Hotel. It is the latest mega project from American
billionaire Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. The big bet is
that Macau can be much more than a playground for day- tripping gamblers -
mostly from the mainland - who spend most of their time in the casinos.
Developers are hoping the tiny city on the southern Chinese coast will also be
able to attract shoppers, conventioneers and tourists hungry for gourmet
dinners, pool-side sun-tanning and glitzy shows. The Venetian Macao is the first
mega resort that will try to bring in the new crowds of visitors willing to
spend two or three days in the city. With gondoliers sailing down canals, the
3,000-room Venetian tries to recreate the beauty of Venice. The complex also
boasts a 15,000-seat sports arena, retail space for 350 stores, 1.2 million
square feet of convention space, fine dining, and a Cirque du Soleil- produced
show. Everything will be housed in what will be the largest building in Asia and
the second largest in the world, just behind a Boeing plant in Washington.
JPMorgan Securities analyst Billy Ng said the Venetian's plan makes sense. The
mega resort "will broaden the customer base," he said. "In theory, it should
bring in a lot of customers who had never thought of going to Macau." Ng and
some other observers are also bullish that Las Vegas Sands can capitalize on its
expertise in running trade shows at casinos in Vegas and replicate that success
in Macau. The Venetian's convention facilities will help fill up the thousands
of rooms and boost weekday traffic, they say. Business travelers to conventions
have a larger budget to spend on hotels and the Venetian will probably be
attractive to this segment, said Jonathan Galaviz, a partner at Globalysis, a
Las Vegas-based consultancy. "Asia has yet to see a multibillion dollar
integrated resort with a strong convention center component to it like the scale
that the Venetian Macau will provide," he said. William Weidner, president of
Las Vegas Sands Corp, has said 44 major conventions have already been scheduled
at the Venetian for the next two years. He also said he expects the average
guest to stay at the Venetian for three to four days, compared to the current
average of just 1.2 days in other Macau hotels. Some analysts are not as
optimistic. The Venetian cannot transform deep- seated Chinese attitudes to
gambling overnight, they say, and whether mainland gamblers will be as generous
at the restaurant and at the shows as they are at the casino is still a big
question. "We go to Las Vegas prepared to splurge. [Mainland gamblers] come to
Macau for reckless gambling. We expect to give but they expect to take," said
Gabriel Chan, an analyst with Credit Suisse Hong Kong. "There aren't shows on
yet," he added. "And you can't shop all day every day. The Venetian is a big
property, but it's not enough to create a critical mass for everyone to stay at
least two nights." The lack of alternative entertainment and transport support
in the area will also pose problems in the short term, analysts say. The
Venetian is just the first property to kick-start mega-tourism plans for the
Cotai Strip, a reclaimed area that, according to Adelson, will mimic the heart
of the Las Vegas Strip upon completion. The Sands is set to open more hotels
under brands such as the Four Seasons, Sheraton and St Regis next door. In all,
the company plans to invest up to US$12 billion and build 20,000 hotel rooms on
the strip. 
ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng
Yong (L) and China's Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai chat following a news
conference at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic
Ministers meeting at a hotel in Manila August 26, 2007.
People walk around the
Sinopec exhibition booth at a chemical fair in March. Sinopec announced Sunday
that its net profit rose by 65.3 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2007.
Child prodigy March Tian Boedihardjo was yesterday
launched on a course to become the youngest holder of a master's degree. But
hours after Baptist University announced it had accepted the nine- year-old for
a five-year course, March admitted to reporters he had trouble communicating
academically with children of his own age. March, an Indonesian-Chinese boy
resident in Hong Kong, will be studying for a bachelor's degree and master's
degree in a five-year course specially designed by the university. March was
presented to the media along with his father Tony yesterday and spoke in both
Cantonese and English. He toyed with the microphone and yawned as the
photographers' flashbulbs went off around him. But March appeared relaxed and
cheerful at the press conference. Asked what he does in his spare time, March
said: "Most of the time, I like to read books, but on the weekends I like to go
out to play with my kindergarten friends," adding they play chess, Monopoly and
cards. "We can play games together but, academically, we can't communicate."
March had obtained two As and a B in the British A-level examinations, but he
refused to disclose his results in the British General Certificate of Secondary
Education exams. As a young boy, March behaved his age and always showed the V
victory sign to attract photographers. 
Mainland banks are the
biggest subprime mortgage casualties in Asia, it emerged yesterday, as at least
five lenders and related entities revealed that their combined exposure to US
subprime-backed assets amount to US$19.59 billion (HK$152.8 billion), with Bank
of China (3988) holding the heaviest chunk. Two of the five mainland commercial
banks, BOC and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1398), unveiled the
value of their US holdings yesterday. Bank of China, the nation's largest
foreign-exchange lender, said at its interim results announcement that it has
almost US$9.7 billion of securities with exposure to US subprime mortgages, of
which US$6.82 billion are collateral debt obligations. The collapse in
asset-backed securities in the United States has caused losses for lenders
worldwide, triggering worries that mainland banks may not be immune. BOC, which
accounts for more than two-fifths of forex advances among its mainland peers,
said it set aside 1.15 billion yuan (HK$1.18 billion), or about 1.58 percent of
the total exposure, as provision for any possible losses. "The securities in
subprime assets was pretty small. It only accounts for about 3.78 percent of our
portfolio, or 1.58 percent of our total assets," the bank's executive vice
president Zhu Min said via video-conference yesterday. "More than 75 percent of
them are highly rated, in triple-A, with the rest rated either in A or double-A
grades; default rates would be low." Zhu was referring to investment ratings.
Zhu said the negative impact on BOC would be small, and provisions had been made
in the interest of prudent management. Executive vice president Wang Yongli said
whether the bank needs to make further provisions in the second half would
depend on the situation in financial markets. Beijing-based ICBC, the nation's
largest lender in terms of assets, trailed BOC as the second-biggest casualty.
Hutchison Whampoa
(0013), the ports- to-telecoms conglomerate controlled by Li Ka-shing, beat
expectations as first- half net profit soared 53 percent to HK$28.76 billion
with dividends from the sale of the Hutchison Essar stake helping to offset
continuing losses in Hutchison's 3G businesses. "Hutchison results continued to
indicate betterment in the underlying operations, including 3G," said Calyon
analyst Dilip Parameswaran. "We believe that the overall direction for 3G
remains positive, although not at a great pace." The results included a profit
on revaluation of investment properties of HK$767 million and HK$35.02 billion
earned from disposal of the India mobile business. Earnings per share were
HK$6.75, up from HK$4.41 in the first half last year. Hutchison declared an
interim dividend of 51 HK cents per share, unchanged from a year ago. "Hutchison
Whampoa needs capital to develop its businesses, but if 3G turns profitable, it
is possible that we increase the dividend payment," chairman Li Ka-shing said
yesterday.
Industrial and
Commercial Bank of China (1398), the world's largest bank by market
capitalization, reported first- half net profit surged 61.56 percent, driven by
robust interest and fee and commission-based income growth. For the six months
ended June 30, the Beijing-based lender posted net profit of 41 billion yuan
(HK$42.1 billion), up from 25.4 billion yuan the previous year. Earnings per
share were 12 fen, compared with 10 fen. ICBC's after-tax profit of 41.4 billion
yuan represented a year-over-year jump of 61.4 percent - exceeding the compound
annual growth of 30.2 percent between 2003 and 2006. Bullish stock market
conditions provided a strong boost to the bank's net interest and net fee and
commission income for the first half. Net interest income totaled 102.2 billion
yuan, up 33.3 percent from 76.65 billion yuan a year ago. Net fee and commission
income soared 89 percent to 14.87 billion yuan from 7.87 billion yuan. Net
interest margin was 2.65 percent, rising 0.28 percentage points. "The bank
realized good fee-based income growth in the first half. This is certainly
related to the active capital market," ICBC president Yang Kaisheng told a news
conference via videolink from Beijing. "But the upward growth trend in this
segment had been happening for many years." Yang said the bank's strong customer
base and distribution channels, coupled with innovative capacity, are the main
reasons behind the growth. The bank intends to expand the profit contribution
from fee-based income up to as much as 30 percent, bringing it in line with
international commercial banking standards. As at June 30, fee- based income
represented 12.7 percent of ICBC's total net income.
China's captain Zhou
Suhong celebrates a point during her side's second round game against Poland at
the FIVB World Grand Prix in Beilun of Ningbo, east China August 23, 2007. China
edged Poland 21-25, 25-15, 25-16, 22-25 and 15-9.
Although autumn has
arrived according to Chinese lunar calendar, which began on August 8, we can
still feel summer's presence. The hot and damp weather doesn't motivate people
to leave an air-conditioned room even for a minute. It's cool indeed, but how
can you fill your stomach by staying indoors? There is a solution-takeout with a
delivery service. Here are some options.
The Industrial and
Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC) on Thursday reported a 61.4 percent
year-on-year increase in its first-half profit after tax. For the Jan-June
period, ICBC's profit after tax rose to 41.4 billion yuan (5.45 billion U.S.
dollars) under international accounting rules. Higher net interest margin and
rising fee and commission income were the main reason for ICBC's strong
performance, according to the bank's half-year report. By the end of June, the
bank's capital adequacy ratio, the ratio of its own capital to its outstanding
loans, was 13.7 percent, and its non-performing loan ratio was 3.29 percent,
down from 3.79 percent at the end of last year. The bank had 8,301.2 billion
yuan in total assets, up 10.6 percent from the end of last year. Earnings per
share stood at 0.12 yuan. ICBC was simultaneously listed in Shanghai and Hong
Kong in October last year, raising 21.9 billion U.S. dollars, exceeding the
previous record of 18.4 billion U.S. dollars by Japan's NTT DoCoMo in 1998.
China Netcom (0906), the
mainland's largest fixed-line operator, reported lower-than-expected net profit
in the first half, which it blamed on intense competition. Net profit for the
six months ended June 30 fell 5.4 percent to 6.71 billion yuan (HK$6.91
billion), or 1.01 yuan per share, down from 7.1 billion yuan, or 1.07 yuan per
share, the previous year. No dividend was declared. Excluding upfront connection
fees and the disposal of its Guangdong and Shanghai branches back to its parent
company in February, interim net profit plunged 11 percent from a year ago.
"Netcom reported very disappointing results, even as the company strives to
improve business by offloading its assets in Guangdong and Shanghai," said CLSA
analyst Francis Cheung. Revenues from continuing operations rose slightly by
0.43 percent to 40.7 billion yuan.
Queen's Pier began
its final journey into history yesterday as workers moved in to dismantle the
first parts of the Central landmark, subject of a failed legal and direct action
battle by conservation activists earlier this month. Heavy rain lashed the
harborfront throughout the afternoon as the plaque bearing the Chinese name of
the 53-year-old colonial structure was removed by forklift.
Leaders of staff associations of various disciplined services have pledged full
support for their former boss, Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, in her bid to win the
Legislative Council seat vacated by the death of Democratic Alliance for the
Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong chairman Ma Lik.
Minister stands by quality of exports - safety concerns 'a pretext for trade
barriers' - Commerce Minister Bo Xilai has again defended the quality of
mainland exports and urged foreign countries not to use safety concerns as a
pretext for trade barriers. Mr Bo told former US secretary of state Madeleine
Albright on Tuesday that he trusted the "Made-in-China" label, and product
quality had made great strides in the past few years. "We are against the
protectionist trends in the US, where some people deliberately exaggerate and
play up a few isolated product-safety cases to advocate mercantile trade
policies," the China News Service quoted Mr Bo as saying. He said there were
"strong and clear signs" of rising trade protectionism in the US, such as recent
American investigations into mainland-made steel nails, pipes and woven sacks,
which Washington said were unfairly priced. Mr Bo told Ms Albright that the
central government would take serious measures to improve the mainland's product
safety standards, but he said other countries should co-operate with the
mainland, not simply criticise it. "We are a responsible government and we will
treat the safety issue very seriously. The two sides should strengthen
communication and tackle this problem rationally and objectively," he said. This
came after a new wave of global recalls of mainland-made products in recent
weeks. American toy giant Mattel recalled a total of 19 million items around the
world this month, including dolls, cars and action figures, because some were
contaminated with excessive lead paint. Others were said to have small magnets
that children might swallow. The owner of a toy factory in Guangdong, Cheung Shu-hung,
50, committed suicide after a recall of Fisher-Price products including Big Bird
and Elmo toys with excessive amounts of lead. Li Zhouming, executive
vice-chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Toy Industry Association, was quoted
yesterday as saying mainland manufacturers and Mattel, which owns Fisher-Price,
should both take blame for the recalls. "The producers are responsible because
they do not have tight controls over purchasing and production," Guangzhou Daily
quoted Mr Li as saying. "But the buyer, Mattel, cannot evade responsibility." Mr
Li said Mattel neglected to "do its job well in quality inspections". He said
profit margins in the toy industry on the mainland were low and "it's hard to
make money" because of the cost of labor and materials. He warned that foreign
companies ran the risk of getting shoddy products if they demanded too low a
price from mainland manufacturers. "If you pay a high price, the factories will
use high quality raw materials to produce. But if the price is low, they can
only use inferior raw materials," Mr Li said. A Guangzhou official in charge of
an annual international gift-and-toy trade fair said yesterday that the recalls
had only "limited" impact on business. "We have always set a strict
qualification standard for our exhibitors. They must provide their licences,
certificates and related documents in order to apply for a booth." He said
foreign buyers had not made any special requests regarding product safety this
year. "They mostly care about what kinds of items are on display. They seldom
ask about qualifications."
A worker shows
the flower-shaped gold and jade, gold and silver commemorative medal in Beijing
Aug. 21, 2007. The flower-shaped gold and jade, gold and silver commemorative
medals, also known as "Olympic Moon Cakes", under the authorization of the
Organizing Committee of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, have been issued. The
issuance of the gold and jade medals was limited to 3,400 pieces, gold and
silver medals at 16,680 pieces.
Chinese home appliance
maker Qingdao Haier on Thursday announced first-half net profits were up 36.9
percent from the same period last year as the company tried to expand on the
international high-end market. Qingdao Haier, one of the two listed subsidiaries
of the Haier Group, notched up net profits of 364 million yuan (47.9 million
U.S. dollars) in the first six months of this year, on revenues of 17.1 billion
yuan. At April's China Import and Export Fair, the Shanghai-listed company won
big orders for its side-by-side refrigerators from the United States and Europe,
at a price 20 times higher than the average price of China's exported
refrigerators. The rise in profits was also attributed to Qingdao Haier's
acquisition of Haier Group's four other subsidiaries, which were more
profitable. In the first six months, Qingdao Haier held a 26.6-percent share in
the home market for refrigerators and 16.3-percent share in the air conditioner
market, reported Thursday's Shanghai Securities News.
Children
celebrate "Kaibi" Festival in the Confucius Temple in Harbin, capital city of
northern China's Heilonjiang Province on August 22, 2007. Traditionally,
children begin to study characters after the festival.
Plans by activists to sail to the disputed Diaoyu islands
were thrown into disarray yesterday when the Marine Department suspended the
license of their vessel - only to give it the all-clear after a second
inspection. However, the clearance came too late for several activists as some
had returned to their homes and others were planning to leave the territory. The
vessel, Diaoyu Island II, was due to leave at noon from the Tsim Sha Tsui Public
Pier, Action Committee for Defending Diaoyu Islands chairman Raymond Chan To-wai
said. However, the Marine Department notified the committee at 6pm Monday that
the ship's certificate had been suspended as an inspection showed there had been
alterations to the vessel. "We reversed the so-called alterations, which were
wooden pedals stuffed inside tires around the vessel to facilitate boarding,"
the ship's commander and veteran activist Lo Chau said. "We seem to be under
stricter requirements this year and ... wonder whether the SAR government is
deliberately trying to prevent the voyage." Lo said an inspector from the
department inspected the vessel yesterday morning after the alterations had been
reversed and told members they were cleared to sail. However, since there was no
written document to confirm the decision, the activists had no choice but to
cancel the voyage, he said. The sailing date has been rescheduled twice due to a
typhoon and the certificate problem, and a new date has not been decided. Lo
said some activists from the mainland and Taiwan were due to leave Hong Kong
soon as they were running out of holidays.
Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen said
on Wednesday it was “healthy” for different groups in Hong Kong to have diverse
views on the pace of constitutional reform.
Hong Kong director Fruit Chan plans to make
a film about Bruce Lee’s early years — the latest in several projects about the
kung fu film icon, a news report said on Wednesday. Chan told Chinese news
website Sina.com that the Chinese-language film, Kowloon City, will be produced
by John Woo’s producer Terence Chang. Chan said he hasn’t yet cast an actor to
play Lee, according to Sina.com. The film will be set in 1950s Hong Kong,
revolving around the fortunes of Lee and another young kung fu student, Sina.com
cited Chan as saying. The report did not say who will fund Kowloon City. Chang
didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment, and Chan didn’t
immediately return a call. Chan, whose credits include Made in Hong Kong,
Hollywood Hong Kong and Durian Durian, is known for his films portraying Hong
Kong’s working class. Another Hong Kong director, Stanley Kwan, said earlier he
was negotiating with Lee’s family for approval to shoot a film about the late
action star. Kwan said his film, backed by Chinese funding, will explore how Lee
was influenced by the absence of his father, and how he brought up his own son,
Brandon Lee. In April, Chinese state media reported that the country’s national
broadcaster has started filming a 40-part TV series on Bruce Lee in an apparent
bid to promote Chinese culture ahead of next year’s Beijing Summer Olympics.
Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco but his family returned to Hong Kong, where
he grew up. He went back to the United States to study philosophy at the
University of Washington and married in 1964 in Seattle, where he opened his
first martial arts school. He later opened a school in Los Angeles where a
producer saw him in a kung fu demonstration and cast him as Kato in the Green
Hornet TV show. Lee is known for films in which he portrayed characters that
defended the Chinese and the working classes from oppressors. The best-known
biographical film on Lee is Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, starring Jason Scott
Lee, which was released in 1993. Jason Scott Lee is not related to Bruce Lee.
An emerald
pendant is displayed at a jewelry shop in Ningbo, East China’s Zhejiang Province
on August 21, 2007. The pendant, weighing 27.7 grams, and 221 diamonds
encircling the emerald, is valued at 28,508, 8 80 yuan (US$3.75 million).
Among China's three most powerful directors, Feng Xiaogang
is perhaps the only grassroots hero. People often refer to Zhang Yimou and Chen
Kaige as masters, but when talking about Feng, they smile as if he is a sweet
neighbor who always invites you to share his dumplings. Strangers will approach
Feng and tell him which of his films is their favorite. Such interest in his
work shows that while he isn't the most internationally acclaimed Chinese
director, he is one of the most popular with Chinese audiences. His popularity
is largely built on hesuipian, a word specially created for his early films
screened during December and next February, roughly the time between New Year's
Day and the Spring Festival, when people tend to spend more time in cinemas.
Feng's smash comedies on ordinary urbanites' lives topped the domestic box
office from 1997 to 99. His films also raked in most money from mainland
theaters in 2001 and 2003. In 2006, his first attempt at a costume epic, The
Banquet (Ye Yan), won $19.7 million despite savage reviews. Feng did not grow up
in a film studio, or have a director father as Chen does; neither did he have
Zhang's chance to work on a film soon after graduation. The painting-lover from
a single-parent family never got a chance to enter any academy, which sets him
apart from most mainland directors. If there is a secret recipe, he says, it is
the passion and courage to try. "To me, turning something impossible into
possible is really tempting and exciting," says the 49-year-old in black polo
shirt with purple logo, blue denim and black sneakers sitting leisurely in the
sofa in his lofty studio. While most of his films feature hilarious puns and
jokes, Feng is surprisingly serious. "Every important step is made out of such a
belief: I can do it."
How many
of you have ever felt bored by your current job and thought it was time for a
change? Just remember you are not alone. Here in China, there’s a group of
people who call themselves as "freeters". Not only do they feel bored and think
about a change, but also put their thinking into practice. These freeters quit
their jobs and start living on temporary jobs or off their savings.
Chinese singer Wei Wei,
the image ambassador for China women's soccer, joined Barcalona FC stars Lionel
Messi, Deco, Carles Puyol to finish the shooting of this music video in Spain.
Wei's three sons also participated in the performance. Wei is to sing the theme
song for the 2007 Women's World Cup in China.
The key word is
lobster at East 33's dinner buffet. The high-end seafood is made into a variety
of different dishes, with an Italian tint.
Shanghai-based economy hotel chain Home Inns & Hotels Management should announce
solid second-quarter earnings this week, as the company's business has picked up
after the lull in the first quarter due to Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is
especially hard on Home Inns, as it is with other travel- oriented companies
such as travel agents Ctrip.com International and eLong, as people heading home
for the holidays means fewer hotel bookings for several weeks. Home Inns new
hotel openings also slow during the first quarter as business in the mainland
can grind to a halt for almost a month during the holiday. Home Inns opened only
11 hotels in the first quarter, down from 27 hotels in the previous quarter.
Openings picked back up again to over 20 hotels in the second quarter. Home Inns
had 145 hotels at the end of the first quarter and is expanding rapidly into
second- and third-tier cities. Investors will be looking at how the company is
able to maintain prices and occupancy rates as it moves into smaller markets
where demand from business travelers will be lower. Home Inns occupancy rate
fell to 86 percent in the first quarter from over 90 percent for all of 2006,
but there should was likely some recovery in the occupancy rate for the second
quarter. Chief executive David Sun said recently that with hotels under
development included, Home Inns has 242 hotels, with a total target of 1,000
hotels. Near-term catalysts for Home Inns include likely acquisitions of smaller
hotel chains or properties from China Post Group. Home Inns reports its
quarterly results today.
The pilot scheme announced by China's
State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) for mainland individuals to
invest directly in securities in Hong Kong has met with warm welcome in Hong
Kong. The pilot scheme was in line with the Mainland's policy objective of
allowing orderly outflows of funds, said John Tsang, financial secretary of the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. "The use of Hong Kong's
financial platform for mainland individuals to invest in securities offshore is
a clear demonstration of the mutually-assisting, complementary and inter- active
relationship between the financial systems of the mainland and Hong Kong," he
said, noting such move will help enhance the status of Hong Kong as an
international financial center. Under the scheme, resident individuals in the
Binhai New Area of northern China's port city of Tianjin can use foreign
currency funds of their own or those converted from renminbi to invest in
securities listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. SAFE officials said that the
scheme will be expanded to other cities if it works well in Tianjin. Buoyed by
the news and a strong rebound in neighboring markets, Hong Kong stocks surged
more than 1200 points, or 5.93 percent, Monday, representing the biggest
single-day rise since October 1998. Also welcoming the news, Chief Executive of
the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Joseph Yam said the pilot scheme was conducive
to the interaction and the mutual development of the financial markets in Hong
Kong and the mainland, He said that the authority will work with mainland's
relative departments to strengthen the links and interaction of the financial
markets of the two places, increasing their overall size and efficiency. In a
statement, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) said Hong Kong is an
open and free market where securities trading is fair and orderly, adding it
welcomes investors from all over the world as long as they comply with the rules
of their place of residence for overseas trading before investing in Hong Kong.
HKEx said the quality investment instruments in its market are attractive to
mainland investors, whose investments in the Hong Kong market will help narrow
the price gap between Hong Kong- listed H shares and the mainland-listed A
shares, and will help foster the healthy development of both markets. 
Wai Fu-yip may have served in the United States Navy for two years, but he still
regards himself as a "typical Hongkonger". Petty Officer Wai came home yesterday
aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the Nimitz, which is on a visit with
its battle group of six ships, 87 aircraft and 5,000 crew members. "I am happy
to see Hong Kong again," said the 26-year-old aircraft technician, who is one of
two Chinese in the crew. The other is Kim Wong, 24, from Guangzhou. Born and
raised in Hong Kong, Petty Officer Wai went to the US in his teens and joined
the navy, hoping to broaden his horizons. "The kind of scenes that occur on
board can only be seen in movies," he said. "I would like to be a commander, if
there's a chance in the future." But he said it would be very difficult for a
Chinese to be a commander in the US Navy, and did not rule out the possibility
of joining the People's Liberation Army. For the time being, however, he plans
to resume his studies after his four-year stint in the navy. He said life on
board the carrier is routine and a bit boring, but the toughest thing for him is
having no friends that speak his mother tongue. Petty Officer Wai will visit his
two sisters during this trip to Hong Kong. He will also go to Lan Kwai Fong and
Disneyland and plans to spend several hundred dollars a day. Kim Wong moved to
the US when she was seven and joined the US Navy a year ago after graduating
from university, hoping for an unforgettable experience. Seaman Kim said that,
as there was no Chinese food on board, she would try a lot of it in Hong Kong.
She also plans to buy some high-tech gadgets, including an iPod and laptop. This
is the Nimitz's eighth visit to the city. It will leave Hong Kong on Thursday. 
Peng Qinghua looks set to become Beijing's chief
representative in Hong Kong following his appointment as the party secretary of
the central government liaison office, mainland sources said yesterday. Mr Peng,
50, a deputy director of the office, is expected to replace Gao Siren, 63, as
the director after the Communist Party's 17th congress, scheduled for October.
Mr Peng's elevation as party secretary of the liaison office comes as the
mainland leadership is accelerating the reshuffle of party positions of key
officials in the run-up to the congress before a sweeping reshuffle of their
government positions. The leadership has also decided to appoint Wang Yi, the
ambassador to Japan, as the party secretary of the Foreign Ministry and transfer
him to the Beijing headquarters soon to become the executive vice-minister,
replacing Dai Bingguo. Mr Dai is widely expected to replace Tang Jiaxuan as the
state councillor in charge of foreign, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan affairs next
March. Mr Peng's elevation should come as little surprise, because of his strong
central government connections and close links with the leadership. Since his
appointment as a deputy director of the liaison office in 2003, he has been
widely viewed as a rising political star and has been groomed for higher
position. He was once principal secretary to Song Ping, one of the party elders
who headed the powerful Organization Department in the late 1980s and early
1990s and responsible for reviewing and recommending appointments of senior
party officials to the leadership. Most of the current leaders, including
President Hu Jintao , partly owe their rise to Mr Song. Officials at the liaison
office have recently been told of Mr Peng's appointment as the party secretary,
and he is also virtually assured of a much-coveted place at the party's powerful
Central Committee, because of the important role at the liaison office. Sources
said Mr Peng, who has a business doctorate, had proved capable of handling Hong
Kong affairs in the four years in his current position despite the fact that he
spent much of his career in handling personnel appointments in Beijing. More
importantly, he is believed to have earned the trust and confidence of Mr Hu and
Vice-President Zeng Qinghong , who has the ultimate responsibility for Hong Kong
affairs. Mr Wang's rise is also expected, because of his smooth diplomatic
skills. Well-versed in Asian affairs - North Korea and Japan in particular - he
was once Beijing's principal official in organizing and hosting the six-party
talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program. The
leadership approached Mr Wang to become ambassador to Japan in 2004 when
Sino-Japanese relations plunged to a new low, partly because of former Japanese
prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors
convicted war criminals.
Girls holding lotus lamp pray in Hefei,
capital of east China’s Anhui Province, August 19, 2007. Over 40 Chinese
traditional clothes lovers gathered here to hold activities on Sunday for the
Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, on the seventh day of the seventh
month of the Chinese lunar calendar. 
Two girls sew in Hefei,
capital of east China’s Anhui Province, August 19, 2007. Over 40 Chinese
traditional clothes lovers gathered here to hold activities on Sunday for the
Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, on the seventh day of the seventh
month of the Chinese lunar calendar. 
A girl is combed at her
adulthood ceremony in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, August 19,
2007. Over 40 Chinese traditional clothes lovers gathered here to hold
activities on Sunday for the Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, on the
seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
A giant moon cake
is on display at a food market in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province
August 21, 2007. The enormous moon cake weighs 12.9 tons and measures 8,1 meters
in diameter. The moon cake is a traditional Chinese food people enjoy on the
Mid-autumn Festival (the 15th day of the eigth month in lunar calendar), which
falls on Sep 25 this year.
A
Nike brand advertisement. A Shanghai court has ordered two Chinese shoe makers
and a French supermarket to pay Nike $46,000 compensation for copyright
infringement.
Jet Li is frustrated that
his Hollywood-made films have not been able to clear Chinese censors. The
Chinese native said on his official website on Monday that his 2000 movie Romeo
Must Die wasn’t shown in China because it involved Chinese gangsters; his 2001
film Kiss of the Dragon was banned because it featured Chinese police killing on
foreign soil. Li said filmmakers were careful in handling his 2003 film Cradle 2
the Grave. Wary of a Chinese backlash, they changed the character of a Chinese
police officer, who steals nuclear material, to that of a Taiwanese police
officer, but the movie still didn’t clear the censors. Li said Chinese censors
objected because Li, a Chinese martial arts champion, had played a Taiwanese
person. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing still views
the self-ruled island as its territory and has threatened to retake it by force.
With his 2005 movie, Danny the Dog, also known as Unleashed, Li said he tried to
convey an anti-violence message but still couldn’t win over Chinese censors who
raised concerns about racism. Li plays an animal-like assassin who tries to
break away from his criminal life. “Many foreign filmmakers wonder how you can
make an action movie that can show in China,” the actor said. China carefully
controls media content and only allows in about 20 foreign film a year. The
Chinese government often edits or bans foreign films it considers insulting to
China’s reputation. In a recent example, censors cut scenes of Chow Yun-fat
depicted as a bald, scarred pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,
saying the images insulted Chinese people, state media reported. Li said he
respects Chinese movie regulations, but added “films don’t always have to be
realistic. In films there are many unrealistic things ... It is my hope that
audiences can mature and develop to see the difference between a movie and real
life.” Li, a former national kung fu champion in China, made his name in Hong
Kong film with films like the Once Upon a Time in China series before moving on
to Hollywood. He continues to make Chinese-language films, recently shooting the
Chinese historical epic The Warlords. He is currently shooting the Hollywood
film The Forbidden Kingdom, which marks his first pairing with Jackie Chan. The
movie is about an American teenager’s fantasy journey to ancient China to rescue
a mythological monkey king.
The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was
scheduled to be in Hong Kong on Monday for a port call, the local US Consulate
General said. The consulate general issued a statement inviting journalists to
visit the ship on Monday but did not give details about the duration of its port
call or its previous or next destinations. A spokesman at the consulate general
did not immediately return a reporter’s call seeking details on the USS Nimitz’
itinerary. San Diego-based USS Nimitz was scheduled to take part in a military
exercise off the coast of Guam starting August 7.
China
Airlines plane from Taiwan lie on the tarmac on Japan’s southern island of
Okinawa August 20, 2007. A plane belonging to China Airlines Ltd caught fire
soon after landing on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa on Monday, but
officials said all 165 people on board had escaped safely.
China’s Lin Dan
celebrates by showing the national flag and his gold medal during the awarding
ceremony for the men’s singles at the 2007 World Badminton Championships in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Aug. 19, 2007. Lin won the gold after beating
Indonesia’s Sony Dwi Kuncoro 2-0. 
Single Chinese
men and women take part in a mass matchmaking event in a stadium in Wuhan,
Central China's Hubei Province, August 19, 2007.
When
Zhou Haijiang, a 22-year-old graduate, quit his job as a university lecturer and
returned in 1987 to his then-obscure family factory, life did not seem rosy at
all - his mother cried, his girlfriend left him and neighbors suspected that the
boy was fired because of some "serious mistakes". Today, as chairman of Hongdou
Group, one of China's largest textile companies, Zhou said he is most happy that
he had made the choice. "I knew teaching wasn't my dream," he says. "I wanted to
go out and create something." He did. His company now employs over 20,000
workers - among the largest employers in privately owned companies in the
nation. Sales revenue of Hongdou reached 14.3 billion yuan (US$1.88 billion) in
2006 and he was recently elected a delegate to the 17th National Congress of the
Communist Party of China scheduled for this autumn. And before all that
happened, his college sweetheart became his wife and gave birth to two children.
Competition first - Unlike many private businessmen in China who barely have a
formal education, 41-year-old Zhou holds a doctorate degree in business
administration and has had a wide-ranging education, ranging from a Party school
to overseas studies. He enrolled in a university in Shenzhen in 1984, a city
that later became famous for Deng Xiaoping's "southern tour" and a long-time
testing field for China's reform and opening up policy. "Once an economist from
Beijing came to our school and predicted that the liangpiao will finally be
cancelled," Zhou recalls, "We all laughed because we had stopped using it in
Shenzhen for quite a while." (more go to Biz-China)
China mainland's safety chief vowed yesterday to conduct a
thorough investigation into the bridge collapse that killed at least 41 people
in Fenghuang county, Hunan province, on Monday. In a high-profile meeting that
marked the official establishment of the investigation taskforce, Li Yizhong ,
of the State Administration of Work Safety, said the team's primary concern was
to determine the cause of the accident and identify those responsible. "The
accident caused massive losses, and the lessons gained from lives and blood must
be remembered deeply," Mr Li said. "If the investigation fails to reveal the
true problem, identifies only those with minor responsibility, or even covers up
the truth to protect [the culprits], it would be ... a blasphemy against the law
and a crime on the people." Mr Li, who arrived at the scene a day after the
328-metre arched stone bridge was reduced to rubble, heads the taskforce. It
comprises members of the ministries of transport, construction and public
security, Mr Li's administration and the Hunan government, according to a
statement on the administration's website. In a rare move, officials of the
Supreme People's Procuratorate will also be included in the inquiry. "Getting
the Supreme Procuratorate involved ... is a very important measure to
investigate crimes of dereliction of duty," Mr Li said. The design of the
Tuojiang bridge was finalized in 2003 and construction started a year later. Its
official opening was planned in two weeks. Mr Li demanded that every link of the
long project chain be thoroughly investigated. "The situation is very
complicated as the project has gone through many phases and involved many
departments ... but every link should be investigated carefully and thoroughly.
[We must] find out what happened, by checking the original documents, conducting
site tests and interviewing those directly involved." He said the taskforce
would identify those responsible for the incident and propose punishment,
including party disciplinary and administrative penalties. Those believed to
have broken the law would be prosecuted. Without giving a deadline for
completion of the investigation, Mr Li said the taskforce would submit a report
to the State Council that would "stand the test of history". Explosives teams
had been summoned to the site to blow up the bridge's piers, which were
hindering bulldozers. A Xinhua report said it would take days to clear the site.
Mr Li has vowed to find every missing person, alive or dead. 
Novel design
turns Kai Tak nullah into river haven - An 800-meter nullah to be turned into a
river will become the focal point of the new Kai Tak City Centre, according to
the latest amendment on the Kai Tak outline zoning plan approved by the Town
Planning Board. The plan also features a curvilinear landscaped elevated walkway
and a height limit to buildings to ensure an unrestricted view of the
123-hectare city center. The response by board members was overwhelmingly
positive, with some calling the suggestion a novelty and an encouraging
direction for future town planning in Hong Kong. The core of the amendment came
from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, along
with 46 other representations made during the plan's consultation process last
year. The existing nullah, which has been used as a drainage channel, will be
widened to become a river and its banks will be dotted with shops and cafe
patios. To allow high-rise buildings a full view of the river, a staggered
height limitation will be imposed on riverside buildings. They will have to
cascade downward from 40 meters to 15 meters. Engineer and board member Edmund
Leung Kwong-ho called the nullah-turned-river idea "striking," a novelty in the
city's town planning. "It is about time we had more novel designs in Hong Kong,"
he said. The board last June made a self-paid study tour to South Korea's
redesigned Cheonggyecheon stream from a polluted underground nullah as well as
to the aerial garden between two towers in Osaka, Japan. However, board member
To Pun- man feared the water level of the river could vary according to
different seasons and the time of day. He said during dry season the drainage
channel could be extremely shallow and the water quality may not be up to par.
Another board member, architect Bernard Lim Wan-fung, said if successful the Kai
Tak river could be even better than the Cheonggyecheon stream. The stream has to
rely on water pumped from the Han River whereas the nullah is provided with
treated water from Sha Tin. Whether the nullah will become another green miracle
in Asia will depend on the feasibility study being conducted by the Civil
Engineering and Development Department. The tallest building from afar will be a
175-meter high commercial office landmark next to the Sha Tin-Central Kai Tak
Station. Another outstanding feature of the amended plan is a 400-meter-long
curvilinear landscape elevated walkway which will link the newly developed
district to Kowloon City and San Po Kong. It is not the usual elevated walkway,
the board was told. It will become a 12-meter wide leisure walkway dotted with
design landscapes, retail booths and sitting areas, turning it into a corridor
from which people can view Lion Rock, the river and the park at the city center.
Leung also had high praise for the walkway, saying it will be a sight for sore
eyes as more greenery is needed in a cramped city like Hong Kong. In addition,
there will be an iconic gateway to the 80-meter twin towers at Station Square.
The other buildings in the area will have height restrictions ranging from 15 to
60 meters. Lim called the plan a milestone in town planning. The amended plan
will be gazetted in about one to two weeks' time, followed by a three-week
public consultation period. Kelvin Chan Kwok-wing, senior town planner (Kowloon)
of the Planning Department, estimated the complete Kai Tak outline zoning plan
will cost HK$9.8 billion. He said the project's first phase will begin with the
new cruise terminal at the former Kai Tak runway. It will be followed by public
housing and a government office at runway north. The city center plan is still
at the study and design stage and further details will come later, he said. The
Tourism Commission had earlier announced that bids to build the terminal will be
taken before the end of this year.
Chinese President
Hu Jintao (L3), together with leaders of other Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) members, listen to the introduction prior to a joint anti-terrorism drill,
dubbed "Peace Mission 2007", staged by the six member states of SCO, in
Chelyabinsk of Russia, August 17, 2007. Strike against terrorism is an important
mission of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China and Russia,
Chinese President Hu Jintao said here Friday.
A shopping
guide promotes food safety in a supermarket in Xiamen in East China's Fujian
Province. By the end of June 2007, a total of 16,030 food-safety supervision
regions had been set up. By the end of June 2007, a total of 16,030 food-safety
supervision regions had been set up, 25,346 full-time food-safety inspectors had
been put to work, 72,474 local government coordinators had been appointed, and
106,573 food-safety reporters had been recruited in 31 provinces, autonomous
regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government. In 2006, the
quality supervision and inspection departments at various levels made 900,000
inspections of food producing and processing enterprises.
Thai film industry
scopes HK's animation success - New perceptions for better animation. Hong
Kong's Centro Digital Pictures Ltd was both the producer and developer of
striking animation on the Disney China Film Group's foray into Chinese-language
movie-making in May 2007 - and the popularity of the result, The Secret of the
Magic Gourd co-venture, is making itself felt in Thailand. Apparently so much
so, that Thailand's Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA) and the Ministry
of Information and Communication Technology are making moves to support local
digital companies. Official weight is being put behind the Thai Animation and
Computer Graphics Association (TACGA). Four cartoon movies, Spooky Imaginary
Friend, Bloody Bunny, Fuzzy Adventure and Fruity Town are in production for
showing on local TV channel MCOT from September 2007. Concentrating their minds
is the fact that the Thai animation market generates revenues of US$129 million
at present, of which 90% was raised by Thai firms and 10% by foreign companies.
There's a strategy in place to push revenues to US$194 million in 2008,
promoting local digital content in overseas markets. Khan Kluay was the first
computer graphics animated feature made in Thailand by Kantana Animation company
- receiving the country's highest box office take of 2005. There've been quite a
number of Thai animation series produced since then, including Pang Pond: 3D
Animation, The Adventures of Mistress Kaew and Zon 100%. These animated series
are broadcast via local TV channels, with the prospect that they will resonate
with overseas viewers. But Hong Kong's Centro Digital Pictures has seen a new
higher level of success with its Gourd movie. The film is based on a novel by
Zhang Tianyi, abut a boy who discovers a gourd that grants him several wishes.
The story has already been adapted for TV on the Chinese mainland. Thai
producers recognise that a similar set of effects as in the Gourd movie can be
brought about by outsourcing digital imagery with huge advantages as to cost,
consistency, quality and efficiency by using Hong Kong-based units such as
Centro. To achieve "Hollywood success", regional film makers are increasingly
expecting to draw on the expertise of companies that can deliver the latest and
best, or suffer at the box office.
For tourists, Hong
Kong is best known as a shopping and gourmet paradise. This meeting place of
East and West has everything in abundance to satisfy different fashion needs and
taste buds from all around the world. But few people know that this "Pearl of
the Orient" has a natural beauty to offer too, a picturesque countryside that is
just as charming as its urban landscape. When the British first came to Hong
Kong one-and-a-half centuries ago, it was the deep-water harbor they most
admired. They were less impressed by the scenery on the island, which they
disdainfully called a "barren rock". Why the place was so barren at that time is
not clear. One theory is that the notorious 19th-century pirate Cheung Po Tsai,
who featured in a recent Hollywood movie, chopped down most of the trees on the
island to build his enormous fleet. Thousands more trees were cut down for
firewood during the 1942-45 Japanese occupation of the territory when everything
was in short supply. By the time the Japanese left, only a small fraction of the
land remained forested. Woodlands re-emerged after the war, thanks to the
government's systemic forestation program that started in the 1950s. To better
protect the ecology of the countryside, the government enacted a law in 1976 for
the establishment of country parks. There are now 23 of them covering 410 sq km,
about 40 percent of the total area of Hong Kong. There are spectacular beaches
on the Sai Kung Peninsula and healthy coral reefs in marine parks that are
paradise for divers. Hong Kong is also known for the lushness and great
diversity of its flora and fauna, featuring many tropical as well as temperate
species. This well-preserved ecology is certainly a valuable asset of the city,
which is far from just a concrete jungle. What is unique about Hong Kong's
countryside is its proximity to the town. It is not easy to find another place
in the world where the wilderness is so close to urban areas.
The recent
recalls have swung a spotlight on Francis Choi Chee-ming, the Hong Kong tycoon
whose factories made hundreds of thousands of the lead-tainted toy cars. Widely
known in Hong Kong as the "Toy King," the 61-year-old has been one of the city's
most successful manufacturers. Born in Guangdong, Choi started out as a toy
salesman. He founded toy maker Early Light Industrial at age 25. Choi
successfully negotiated a deal to make Snoopy products in his company's early
days before becoming a regular supplier to Mattel, now a client for nearly 20
years. Early Light, a private company, employs more than 50,000 people in plants
in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Choi's wealth is estimated at US$1 billion (HK$7.8
billion). Much of his fortune reportedly goes to his large collection of sports
cars. His mansion's parking lot reportedly holds more than 30 luxury cars worth
more than HK$26 million. But much of Choi's money came not from his toy business
but from property, and he has branched out into the health business. He recently
bought into Town Health International Holdings, a health service provider.
Still, Choi's claim to fame is toys and Mattel's recall threatens his
reputation. But for now, Mattel has not blamed Choi for its recall of 436,000
tainted die-cast "Sarge" cars. One of Early Light's subcontractors used the lead
paint that showed up on the cars. Mattel said Early Light followed procedures
and supplied subcontractor Hong Li Da with safe paint but Hong Li Da chose to
use cheaper, unapproved paint from an unknown party.
A model shows a
Benz SLR roadster at the 12th Dalian Int’l Auto Expo in Dalian, China, Aug 16,
2007. More than 300 companies will show their cars during the four-day expo.
China World Hotel
Beijing, Garden Hotel GuangZhou, and Portman Ritz Carlton Shanghai were recently
approved as China's first batch of "platinum five-star hotels". Shao Qiwei, head
of the State Tourism Administration, awarded certificates and plates to the
three hotels at a ceremony held in Beijing, August 16. Hotels can apply for the
title in future, but only a limited number of them would get approved.
A worker loads
aid donated by China to Sudan into containers at Tianjin port in North China,
August 16. These goods, worth 20 million yuan, are the fourth of five batches of
aid that China promised to give Sudan to relieve the crisis there.
The Shanghai
Municipal People's Procuratorate has charged property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi with
misappropriation of funds, bribery and forging VAT receipts, a procuratorate
source said on Friday. Zhou, former president of Shanghai-based property firm
Nongkai Development Group, was released from prison in May 2006 after completing
a three-year sentence for fraud and manipulating the stock market. But five
months later, in October, Zhou was detained as prosecutors investigated the
Shanghai social security fund scandal. Shanghai courts began to hear cases of
officials involved in the Shanghai social security fund scandal in June. The
second division of Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate charged Zhou at the
Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, the procuratorate source said.
However, the source did not give further details on the charges. Zhou, 45, also
known as Chau Ching-ngai, started business as a teenager in a wonton noodle
shop. In 2002, Forbes estimated Zhou's wealth at about US$320 million. Earlier
this month, four prison officials in Shanghai were jailed for taking bribes and
providing preferential treatment to Zhou during his incarceration.
Hong Kong Disneyland is unlikely to see much improvement
in its fortunes in the next few years, observers say, although management denies
an urgent need for the government to sell down or offload its stake. "In the
short term, I don't think attendance will increase much, so the only way to
improve financial performance is to boost visitor spending," Chinese University
economist Terence Chong Tai-leung said. The theme park had announced that its
first-year attendance was 5.2 million, below the target of 5.6 million. 
The government will investigate and take tough measures against makers involved
in the recent recalls of potentially unsafe toys in the United States and other
countries, the Commerce Ministry said yesterday. Toy producers' self-regulatory
mechanisms will also be improved to ensure quality, spokesman Wang Xinpei said.
"We really care about toy safety, not only in exports but also in our country,"
Wang told a press conference in Beijing. "China is a responsible country. We'll
investigate the cases and deal with offenders according to the law." On Tuesday,
Mattel Inc - the world's largest toy company - issued a global recall of 19
million made-in-China toys either with lead-tainted paint or containing small
magnets that could be swallowed by children. The action came nearly two weeks
after Mattel ordered a recall of 1.5 million Chinese toys because their paint
contained too much lead. In June, about 1.5 million wooden railway toys,
exported from China and distributed by RC2 Corp, were also recalled because of
lead paint. Two Chinese toymakers involved in the earlier two recalls have been
banned from exporting, the General Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said last week. However, Wang reiterated that
toys from China, the exporter of 70 percent of the world's toys, were safe.
"We'll train the manufacturers to raise their self-discipline. We'll tighten
supervision," he said. Experts said US manufacturers and importers should also
be blamed for putting "relentless" pressure on Chinese suppliers. "Everybody is
pushing, pushing, pushing for lower and lower prices. The vendors are squeezed
to the point where they aren't making a profit anymore. So they are looking to
cut corners," Peter Dean, a former US toy company executive, was quoted as
saying by US-based McClatchy Newspapers yesterday. The China Chamber of Commerce
for Import and Export of Light Industrial Products and Arts and Crafts, a group
which represents toymakers, also appealed to manufacturers yesterday not to take
orders that are "too big, too urgent or too cheap". Wang called for more
international cooperation and less finger pointing. According to the Chinese
Embassy in Washington, Beijing will send senior-level delegations to the US
later this month and next month to discuss food and product safety. The AQSIQ
yesterday confirmed to China Daily that the two countries will hold their third
food safety conference and their second consumer product safety meetings in the
US soon. China and the US will also start a vice-ministerial level meeting on
food and feed safety next Tuesday in Beijing, according to the AQSIQ.
Participants in the Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member
states pose for a family photo in Bishkek, August 16, 2007. 
USCGC Boutwell's sailors of the California-based Coast
Guard Cutter are seen on the ship's deck at Gaoyang Lu Wharf in Shanghai August
16, 2007. During Boutwell's six-day visit in Shanghai, the two sides will
conduct professional law enforcement exchanges to enhance international
cooperation in law enforcement at sea, Xinhua News Agency reported.
It was "all
systems go" yesterday as the much- awaited HK$10 billion Lok Ma Chau spur line
went into service, with the operator - the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp - upbeat
about its future operations. KCRC officials described the debut run as smooth as
thousands of people packed the first train on the 7.4-kilometer line to Lok Ma
Chau Station, although some commuters bound for Lo Wu said they had boarded the
wrong train. The line, which branches off at Sheung Shui, is the second rail
link between Hong Kong and the mainland. It is expected to relieve traffic and
passenger congestion at the busy Lo Wu checkpoint significantly. "It strengthens
the link between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and caters for the increasing cross-
boundary traffic demand. It's a successful example of a balance between
conservation and development," Acting Chief Executive Henry Tang Ying- yen said
at the commissioning ceremony at Lok Ma Chau. The ceremony began as a special
train, with Hong Kong officiating guests witnessing the historic moment from the
station's control room, drove through a ceremonial red ribbon strung across the
rail track. The Hong Kong officials were joined at the covered pedestrian
footbridge linking Lok Ma Chau by top provincial officials, led by Guangdong
province executive vice governor Tang Bingqian, who walked over from the Futian
control point in Shenzhen. "It's another fruition between Hong Kong and China
after the opening of the Shenzhen Bay bridge and port on July 1," Tang said at
the ceremony. KCRC chairman Michael Tien Puk-sun said he was optimistic about
the line's operations, saying KCRC expects 60,000 commuters to use the new rail
link in its first year of operation. "We're expecting something like HK$150
million a year in transport revenue. Our commercial revenue is about HK$300
million, and that gives us about HK$450 million," Tien said, adding that these
were conservative estimates. "We're actually expecting a slightly better than
break-even situation," he said, adding that possible losses arising from stiff
competition from franchised bus and taxi services have already been taken into
consideration. Asked whether the operating hours will be extended to facilitate
passenger flow, Tien said it will depend mainly on the services provided by the
Shenzhen Metro, and a decision will be made after a three-month review of the
operations.
Hong Kong
Disneyland is expected to struggle to achieve an attendance of 4 million in its
second year of business, well below its first-year performance of 5.2 million,
say sources familiar with the theme park's operation.
This means a daily average of less than 11,000, or about one-third of the park's
capacity of 34,000. The newest Disney park, which will celebrate its second
anniversary in less than four weeks, has so far experienced a
lower-than-forecast attendance. Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California,
gave a second-year attendance target for Hong Kong of 5.7 million about 16
months ago. When the deal to build Hong Kong Disneyland was sealed in 1999, the
government projected an attendance of 5.47 million in the second year, up from
5.21 in the opening year. The theme park did not plan to reveal attendance
figures annually except for milestone years such as the first, fifth and 10th
anniversaries, the sources said. In a report to the Legislative Council, the
park reported figures of 5.2 million visitors in its first 12 months of
operation. "While we don't comment on business-sensitive information, Hong Kong
Disneyland recognizes that it is a new business ramping up at expected levels,"
a park spokesman said. Disney was committed to the park, which remained focused
on improving business through marketing initiatives and new offers, the
spokesman said.
Two visitors look
at a sand sculpture in the Kumtag Desert in Turpan, a stop along the ancient
Silk Road, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, August 15, 2007.
These sand sculptures were created by local artisans to attract tourists before
the start of the Turpan Grape Festival. 
A Kodak billboard
in Shanghai. Chinese consumers won't stop fighting against Eastman Kodak over
its "defective" cameras, say aggrieved buyers.
It was a
tough assignment but someone had to do it: stay in three of Beijing's five-star
hotels over three weekends. Here's what you can expect if you decide to splash
out and treat your better half to a night at one of the capital's premier
hotels: Raffles with updated colonial charm, its younger and brasher rival the
Regent and the Kerry Center with its high-flyers' bar.
The Westernization
of weddings is becoming a "pop" phenomenon. With Chinese Valentine's Day on Aug.
19, it seems that more and more Chinese people are giving their wedding
ceremonies a Western face.
Former Kuomintang (KMT) party chairman,
Ma Ying-jeou, was found not guilty of misusing funds by a court in Taipei. Ma
was accused of misusing more than NT$11 million ($330,000) in expense funds
during his tenure as mayor of Taipei. Ma resigned as chairman of the KMT,
Taiwan's leading opposition party, after being indicted on February 13, but
declared that he would run in the 2008 Taiwan leadership election. The expense
funds, also known as special allowance funds, are given to executive officers.
Official receipts are required for half of the funds. The other half only
requires the signature of the official. "My supporters finally witnessed
justice," Ma told a crowded news conference after the verdict was announced. "I
will continue to fight for the values of honesty." Ma, 57, had consistently
professed his innocence, saying Taiwanese law recognized that the money was an
official subsidy, and the three-judge panel in Taipei District Court agreed. Ma
"did not intend to take the money illegally, nor did he intend to take it for
his own benefit," the judges said. "Ma's clean-cut image has been resurrected,"
Ho Han-chun, a political science professor at Taipei University, said. "The
(ruling) Democratic Progressive Party had pinned high hopes on using this case
to crush Ma's popularity." DPP "presidential" candidate Frank Hsieh is also
facing legal problems of his own. KMT supporters allege that he received
kickbacks in connection with the construction of a subway in Kaohsiung when he
was mayor there from 1998 to 2005. Hsieh has denied the charges and prosecutors
have not yet indicted him, despite conducting an investigation into the matter.
Australia's Shane Rose
rides "Statford Novalis" during the equestrian dressage test of the eventing
competition at the Hong Kong Olympic Equestrian Venue in Sha Tin, Hong Kong
August 11, 2007. Hong Kong, famed for its world-class horse racing culture, will
host Olympic equestrian events in the August 2008 Games. When the Hong Kong
Observatory issued cyclone warning No 8 as tropical storm Pabuk bore down on the
city last Friday, no group was more nervous than organizers of next year's
Olympic equestrian events. Locals and visitors alike were frightened when shops
shut around 3pm and people rushed headlong into traffic jams pelted by
torrential rain during the mad dash for home. International equestrian
competitors were caught up in the chaos after marshalling for the Good Luck
Beijing-Hong Kong 10th Anniversary Cup, the first international eventing
competition ever held in Hong Kong and a test event for the newly built Olympic
sites in Sha Tin and Beas River. A field of riders and observers from leading
equestrian nations including Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland,
the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States attended the CCI2* event of the
International Equestrian Federation last weekend.
Strong growth in
domestic consumption in Asian countries helps to mitigate the effects of the US
subprime blowout, and lenders say there are no plans to reduce credit to
customers. Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp said it does not intend to
tighten credit. The bank said it would be too early to judge whether interest
rates will rise in Hong Kong. Although there is speculation that the US Federal
Reserve may cut the benchmark interest rate at the Federal Open Market
Committee's next meeting on September 18, Margaret Leung Ko May-yee, HSBC (0005)
group general manager and global co-head commercial banking, said there are no
easy guesses about the Fed's next move. "The situation is quite complicated
since US economic indicators are on two extremes. On the one hand, the US
economy is troubled by the subprime fiasco. We do not yet know whether the
bottom has been reached. On the other hand, July consumer confidence rebounded,
implying that people are not discouraged from spending," Leung said. She said it
would not be easy predicting the direction of local interest rates. Leung said
that while the overnight Hong Kong interbank offered rate fell to five percent
on Monday and further slipped to four percent yesterday, the banking system has
held steady.
Smoke billows out of a high floor on the Shanghai World Financial Centre, which
is under construction, in Shanghai August 14, 2007. There were no immediate
reports of casualties and what caused the fire. 
Japanese
women lay flowers in front of a monument for war victims during a gathering in
memory of the end of the World War II, in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province August 15,
2007.
A woman plays a
Founder Group game at a show in Shanghai. Beijing Founder said yesterday it has
sued US Blizzard Entertainment over alleged copyright infringement.
Lu Jun has resigned as
chief investment officer of JPMorgan's China fund management joint venture. Lu
quit for "personal reasons", China International Fund Management Co said in a
statement. Lu is widely known in China's 1.8 trillion yuan (US$237.33 billion)
mutual fund sector for his stock-picking skills and aggressive trading style. In
an apparent bid to soothe investors holding fund units issued by China
International Fund Management Co, the company's chief executive Mandy Wang said
the performance of a mutual fund depended more on teamwork, although Lu's
departure was a loss.
Under proposed
new regulations Beijing authorities will offer rewards to people who provide
tip-offs that lead to the prosecution of those who put public health at risk. It
comes a day after a Chinese TV reporter, who fabricated a story about how
Beijing dumpling makers used cardboard as a filling, was sentenced to one-year
in jail. "Main government officials or managers will be warned, demoted or
sacked if food safety accidents which cause a serious social impact happen
frequently in their administered districts," the Beijing Youth Daily said.
"One-third of the new regulation details punishments," said one senior official
who declined to be named. "Such a comprehensive local regulation shows Beijing's
strong resolve in dealing with food safety issues."
China has
launched a coalbed methane liquefaction project that boasts the country's
largest daily production capacity, company sources confirmed Saturday. Mattel,
the world's largest toy company, recalled millions more of its products
yesterday, including 436,000 Chinese-made die-cast cars featuring the popular "Sarge"
character from the movie Cars. The California-based company said the cars had
"impermissible levels of lead." Yesterday's recall marked the second time Mattel
has pulled its products from store shelves. On August 2, it recalled 1.5 million
toys - including Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer products made in China by
Mattel's Fisher-Price unit - because they were contaminated with excessive
levels of lead paint. If ingested, this could pose health hazards to children.
Mattel said in a statement that the "Sarge" toy was produced by Hong Kong-based
Early Light Industrial Co, one of Mattel's contract manufacturing facilities in
China, which subcontracted the painting of parts of the toy to another company,
Hong Li Da. "While the painting subcontractor, HLD, was required to utilize
paint supplied directly from Early Light, it instead violated Mattel's standards
and utilized paint from a non-authorized third-party supplier," Mattel said.
Mattel also announced the voluntary recall of 18.2 million magnetic toys
globally, with 9.5 million of them in the United States. It did not specify
where the magnetic toys were made. Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the US
Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in Washington yesterday that no
injuries have been reported with any of the products involved in the recall. She
hoped the US Congress would give her agency more power to safeguard imports of
toys for the American market. "What I would like to see at the end of the day is
a program where all toys made in China are tested before they are imported
here," she said. Cheung Shu-hung, a co-owner of Hong Kong-based Lee Der
Industrial, which made the toys involved in Mattel's first recall earlier this
month, committed suicide on Saturday. It is not clear whether his death was
directly linked to the case. Lee Der Industrial suffered a loss of up to HK$230
million due to the recall. There are about 80 local manufacturers supplying toys
to Mattel, said Lawrence Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong Toy Association. Chan
called on the manufacturers to draw more samples of paints to ensure their
safety level, as the paints in the mainland lack a standardized meter for lead
levels. Twenty local toy makers, who have their factories set up in the
mainland, gathered in Dongguan yesterday to propose a list of measures to
prevent any loss in future if their toys are recalled. This included a 50
percent deposit from clients when they ordered. They would also allow clients or
an authorized third party to check the quality of their products. After they
make sure the goods are safe, clients need to pay in full once products are
shipped. Jeffrey Lam Kin-fung, chairman of the Toys Advisory Committee of the
Trade Development Council, said Lee Der was only an individual case and did not
reflect the overall safety standard of the local toy industry. Although product
safety in China has "substantial" room to improve, foreign firms are unlikely to
shift their production base to other countries, said Mo Pak-hung, associate
professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. 
Mainland retail
sales last month grew at the fastest pace in more than three years, surpassing
expectations, as fast- rising incomes and the wealth effect from the share
market rally boosted consumer spending. Value of sales surged 16.4 percent to
699.8 billion yuan (HK$722.1 billion) in July from a year earlier, the National
Bureau of Statistics said. The July increase marked the fastest growth since May
2004, and beat the 16.2 percent median estimate of 18 economists surveyed by
Bloomberg News. In June, retail sales jumped 16 percent year-on-year. The rising
trend in consumer spending came with increasing household incomes and government
initiatives such as tax cuts to boost domestic consumption and reduce
over-reliance on exports and investment. In the first seven months, retail sales
jumped 15.2 percent from the same period last year to 4.9 trillion yuan.
The integration of
Hong Kong and Shenzhen to form a metropolis could make it the third-strongest
city economically in the world by 2020, a pro- government think-tank said
yesterday. Zhu Wenhui, a consultant at the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre's
Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis Study Group, said should the proposed metropolis
keep an 8 percent gross domestic product growth per annum, its GDP would reach
US$1.11 trillion (HK$8.66 trillion) by 2020. That would make the metropolis the
third-largest economy, after Tokyo and New York, in the world, surpassing major
cities like London, Paris and Los Angeles. If a 6 percent projection is adopted,
the megacity would still rank fourth in the world. The foundation proposed 10
recommendations to achieve that status, one of which involves the building of a
high- speed railway connecting the airports of the two cities forming a super
air hub. "With the direct express link, the journey time between the Shenzhen
Bao'an Airport and Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok International Airport will just be
17 minutes, with trains presumably running at 140 kilometers an hour," Zhu said.
But he admitted the financial and technical feasibility of the rail link is for
the two governments to analyze. Hung Wing-tat, a Polytechnic University
associate professor from the civil and structural engineering department, said
the proposed railway would not be feasible, given it covers major existing
navigation routes.
Bids to build the new cruise terminal at Kai Tak will be taken before the end of
this year, the Tourism Commission said yesterday. The first of two berths must
be ready by February 2012. Commissioner for Tourism Au King-chi said the Town
Planning Board is expected to approve the use of the 7.6-hectare project site
around October after which bids will be called for. She said potential bidders
will need a proven track record of successfully running a cruise terminal for at
least three years, with a minimum annual throughput of 200,000 homeport
passengers, adding that 40 terminals in the world fit this description.
Successful bidders will have to enter into a service pledge with the government,
in addition to a 50-year land lease, on the operation, management and
maintenance of the new cruise terminal. The company must release nonsensitive
information such as the parking arrangement and fees involved. Under the
commission's regulations, any violation of the pledge may result in legal action
and the eventual revoking of the land lease. Also bidders will be required to
set aside 22,000 square meters at the site for a landscaped deck atop the
50,000-square-meter commercial area. The commercial area and the landscape must
be finished in three stages by 2020. To avoid blocking the seaview the height of
the terminal should not exceed 35 meters, which is about four stories. Thirty
percent of the tender assessment will be based on financial criteria, while 70
percent will be on qualitative aspects such as baggage handling, operation
deployment and industry communication. The commission will set up an independent
steering committee to monitor the project after the award of the tender. The
commission has put a price tag of HK$3.2 billion on the project, from building
the apron facilities to the terminal. The commission has also met with the three
main cruise companies that account for 80 percent of the world's cruise market.
IOC President
Jacques Rogge (C) poses for a photo with Shi Yongxin (R), the top monk of
Shaolin Temple at Shaolin Temple in Central China’s Henan Province, August 9,
2007. 
Want to pamper yourself with the most luxurious things from around the
world? A high-end fashion capital offering everything for the discerning
shopper, Beijing will never disappoint. Just stepping into the following
five-star hotels located in the city, you will find yourself spoilt for choice
from world-famous brands like Louise Vuitton and Gianni Versace to exquisite
limousines and valueless jewelries.
Beijing yesterday announced a drill to test the effectiveness of the Olympic
host city's efforts to improve air quality and ease traffic congestion. From
August 17 to 20, about 1.3 million vehicles - nearly half of the total 3 million
in the city - will be ordered off the roads as part of pre-Olympic tests,
according to the capital city's environmental and traffic authorities. On August
17 and 19 (Friday and Sunday), only vehicles with the license plate number
ending with the odd numeral will be allowed on the roads. On August 18 and
August 20 (Saturday and Monday), it's plates ending with an even number. The
rule applies to Beijing-registered vehicles as well as those from outside the
city.
Hong Kong landlords
are introducing big-spending promotions to entice shoppers through their
shopping centres as they compete for business for their retail tenants this
summer. "We have to provide new events to attract shoppers," said Maureen Fung
Sau-yim, the general manager of Sun Hung Kai Real Estate Agency. Sun Hung Kai
would spend HK$7 million to hold events and promotional campaigns in its 11
shopping centres this summer - up 30 per cent on last year's budget, Ms Fung
said. That message was echoed in interviews with Wharf (Holdings) (SEHK: 0004),
Kerry Properties (SEHK: 0683), Swire Properties and Sino Land. In its Kwun Tong
shopping centre, Ms Fung said Sun Hung Kai had planned 600 promotional events
for July and August and would provide free entertainment such as gymnastics
displays by a Canadian team, as well as gymnastics instructions for young
visitors, and a book fair. Summer holidays were not traditionally a peak retail
season, but Hong Kong lifestyles were undergoing a change, she said. "Visiting
shopping malls has become more of a habit and shoppers now have higher
expectations," she said. Ronnie Chan Yam-ling, the general manager of Sino
Land's Tuen Mun Town Plaza, said the company would spend HK$5 million on
displays and events during the summer holiday - a 25 per cent increase on last
year's budget. The number of shoppers visiting the centre was up 10 per cent to
340,000 last month versus the same month last year, Mr Chan said. Kerry
Properties' MegaBox in Kowloon Bay had invested millions of dollars in
promotions during the summer holiday, said Czarina Man, the general manager of
marketing at MegaBox Development. The budget was spent to stage Harry Potter
exhibitions, magic shows, and various other attractions. Wharf's Times Square in
Causeway Bay and Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui - both key tourist destinations -
have teamed up with the Hong Kong Tourism Board to hold exhibitions of watches
and diamonds during the summer. Vernon Ma Wai-lock, the promotion and marketing
manager at Wharf subsidiary Times Square, said the centre's budget was up 10 to
15 per cent this year and it had seen an increase of 5 to 10 per cent in
shopping traffic. Karen Tam, a promotion and advertising senior manager at
Harbour City Estates, said the complex's summer promotional budget was up 10 per
cent and the number of weekday visitors had increased 15 to 20 per cent to
almost 200,000, thanks to an increase of overseas tourists and the strong
economy. Swire Properties, meanwhile, has been featuring "xtreme sports" in its
Cityplaza centre in Taikoo Shing since the end of last month and is offering
shoppers the thrill of an artificial ski-slope. 
Wu
Bangguo (L), chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s
Congress (NPC), meets with the visiting International Olympic Committee (IOC)
President Jacques Rogge, who was invited to attend celebrating activities of the
one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, in the Great Hall of the
People, Beijing, China, Aug. 8, 2007.
Man passes a
billboard in Shanghai. The Chinese advertising market is forecast to grow to
200b yuan in 2008 because of the boost from the Olympic Games, from 160b yuan
last year. The country is expected to be world's second largest ad market in
2010.
Want to pamper
yourself with the most luxurious things from around the world? A high-end
fashion capital offering everything for the discerning shopper, Beijing will
never disappoint. Just stepping into the following five-star hotels located in
the city, you will find yourself spoilt for choice from world-famous brands like
Louise Vuitton and Gianni Versace to exquisite limousines and valueless
jewelries.
Tributes poured in yesterday for Ma Lik, leader of the Democratic Alliance for
the Progress and Betterment of Hong Kong, who died in a Guangzhou hospital. He
was 55. Ma was the first Legislative Council member since the handover in 1997
to die during his term. DAB vice chairman Tam Yiu-chung made the announcement at
the Sun Yat Sen University Cancer Center where Ma was receiving treatment for
colon cancer. "Our chairman, Mr Ma Lik, left us at 2pm on August 8," Tam said
solemnly. "His loss has brought us deep sorrow but we are determined to continue
the work he began." He said the DAB was seeking the assistance of the Guangzhou
office of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions to bring Ma's body back to
Hong Kong for a funeral service.
The move by Cathay Pacific Airways (0293) to take over Dragonair in September
has paid off, with first-half profits soaring 54.7 percent to a record HK$2.581
billion on turnover of HK$34.63 billion. The forecast-beating results - the
first to include full figures from Dragonair - was also driven by strong
passenger demand and higher average fares, particularly in first and business
class. Analysts had forecast net profit of between HK$2.05 billion and HK$2.4
billion. The blue-chip stock jumped 3.06 percent to close at HK$21.90 yesterday
following the results announcement. "The results beat everyone's expectations,"
said Adrian Lowe at CLSA. "The strong passenger yield had offset the declining
yield in cargo business." Passenger revenues surged 31.6 percent year on year to
HK$20.98 billion, helped by the inclusion of Dragonair's operations. The figure
represents 60.6 percent of the group's total turnover. Passenger yield per
kilometer - a key gauge for measuring profitability - climbed 17.2 percent to
53.7 HK cents, largely underpinned by strong demand for premium services on
long- haul routes. Cargo revenues were disappointing despite a 16.8 percent rise
to HK$7.38 billion, chairman Christopher Pratt said. The Cathay group posted
combined cargo throughput of 758,000 tonnes, a 32.3 percent rise over last year,
but the overall load factor slipped 2.4 percentage points to 65.3 percent, while
the yield fell 3.6 percent to HK$1.63. The drop in yield was even worse, at 8.3
percent, when Dragonair figures were excluded.
A girl rejected by the Diocesan Girls'
School four years ago has become the youngest person ever to score nine As in
the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. The girl wonder, Ho Hoi-lam,
had skipped three grades, yet managed to come out on top of her class each year.
Now 14, Hoi-lam scored eight As, one 5* and one 5 in this year's exams, the
results of which were announced yesterday. Under a new marking system, Level 5
candidates with the best performance are awarded Level 5*, the equivalent of an
A. The Secondary Five student at TWGH Lo Kon Ting Memorial College in Yuen Long
studied English, Chinese, mathematics, additional mathematics, physics,
chemistry, biology and Putonghua. Hoi-lam also took exams in world history and
principles of accounting by studying on her own with help from teachers. She
achieved a 5* in Chinese, a 5 in English and As in all her other subjects.
Changes to the
English paper in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination have helped
English- medium schools and adversely affected students in Chinese-medium
institutions, it was claimed yesterday. Chan Ming-wah, principal of
Chinese-medium Kowloon Tong School, said yesterday only 62 percent of his
students attained Level 2 or above in the English paper compared with last
year's pass rate of 73 percent. "Students in Chinese-medium schools whose
language ability is not good enough are at a disadvantage with the combined
English paper," Chan said. Previously, students could opt for the easier
syllabus A or the more difficult syllabus B. However, Chan said the change was
now a reality and his students would just have to face up to it. "Our students
are hard-working but their foundation in the English language is not good." One
of his students, Wong Sai-wa, got 18 points in the exam but only Level 1 in
English, meaning he cannot go on to Secondary Six. The minimum requirement for
students hoping to get a Secondary Six place is Level 2.
Rush Hour 3 debuts
in US movie theaters tomorrow, packing one of the most potent trios in a single
movie of recent years. And get this - they aren't even superheroes. In an era of
filmmaking defined by blockbuster movies based on comic book characters like
Spider- Man and Superman, actors Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker and director Brett
Ratner have defied Hollywood's lust for comic books by staying human, offering a
mix of martial arts, mayhem and mirth. The first two Rush Hour movies, directed
by Ratner, featured the two actors playing fish out-of- water cops paired to
solve a crime. The films were a huge hit at box offices around the world,
success they talked up to one basic element: personal chemistry.
Emerging markets focused lender
Standard Chartered (2888) beat market expectations, reporting first-half net
profit rising 26 percent to US$1.37 billion (HK$10.7 billion), driven by solid
consumer and wholesale banking growth. Analysts had expected the London- based
bank to generate median net profit of US$1.3 billion for the six months ended
June 30. Standard Chartered group executive director Kai Nargolwala told
reporters yesterday that the major drivers were consumer and wholesale banking,
and said the group will continue to grow organically. "We have been accelerating
organic growth. We grew by 13 percent in 2004 ... to 21 percent in the first
half of this year," Nargolwala said. The group will also look to acquisitions,
he said, adding that it has the internal resources to finance small acquisition
deals of less than US$1 billion.
Fears that changes in the English and
Chinese papers and the marking system in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education
Examination would have a negative effect have proved unfounded. In a briefing
yesterday, one day before the results were to be announced, the Hong Kong
Examinations and Assessment Authority said 68.2 percent of day school candidates
had attained Level 2 or above in the English language paper, the minimum
requirement for Secondary Six admission. If Level 2 is viewed as the cut-off
point, then this year's pass rate was 9.4 percentage points higher than those
who passed Syllabus A (58.8 percent), or 10 percentage points lower than the
78.2 percent who passed the tougher Syllabus B last year. Overall, more
candidates received Level 2 to Level 5 passes in English compared with last
year's equivalent of Grade B to Grade E. However, 31.8 percent of the students
failed the English test, attaining Level 1 or "Unclassified." Last year, the
fail rate was 41.2 percent in Syllabus A and 21.8 percent in Syllabus B. With
regard to the best of the best, 1.5 percent of all students obtained the highest
possible park of 5* (five-star), while 5.3 percent attained Level 5. For
Chinese, 2.9 percent and 6.1 percent students attained Level 5* and Level 5
respectively. Authority secretary-general Peter Hill stressed the introduction
of new curricula and the new standards-referenced method of reporting results
made it difficult to directly compare the grades awarded in previous years for
the two language subjects. Authority deputy secretary-general Cheung Wing-ming
said the scheme provided a better recognition of the candidate's language
abilities. This year, 69 percent (72,380) day school candidates met the minimum
requirements of Secondary Six admission. This was 5 percent more than last year.
To obtain the minimum requirements, candidates should get at least four points
in four subjects other than Chinese and English, or at least five points in
three subjects other than Chinese and English languages. For English and Chinese
languages, candidates must attain Level 2 or above.
Liu Xiang (R),
world record holder in the men’s 110-meter hurdles, and NBA star Yao Ming (L)
attend a ceremony for one-year countdown to Beijing Olympics in Beijing, Aug 8,
2007.
Chery Automobile, the
No 7 local auto group by first-half sales, said yesterday it had signed a
memorandum of understanding with Italy's Fiat to
form a joint venture to make cars under both badges for the local market. The
50-50 venture, to be located in the eastern city of Wuhu, Chery's home base,
will start building and marketing cars under the Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Chery
badges in 2009, with an annual production of 175,000 units, the Chinese carmaker
said. 
Let the party begin. The Beijing
Olympics are just a year away. Sprawling Tiananmen Square was the center of
celebrations for thousands of ordinary Chinese and hundreds of Olympic officials
as countdown clocks across Beijing reach the one-year mark. Performers hold
banners during the one-year countdown celebrations for the 29th Olympic Games in
Tiananmen Square in Beijing August 8, 2007. The magic moment was to come at 8:08
pm and 8 seconds marking one year until next year's opening ceremony on August
8, 2008.
Hu Xing is hand-cuffed
after the verdict was read out in court in Yunnan August 8, 2007. Hu was
sentenced to life in prison for corruption. A former transport official in
southwest China's Yunnan Province, who fled to Singapore and was extradited back
to China, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for corruption.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of
Coca-Cola's entry into China, now its fourth largest market after the US, Mexico
and Brazil. The world's largest beverage company, which recently launched an $80
million global research center and new China headquarters in Shanghai, is
planning to boost investment in sales infrastructure and product range in the
country, a market that could become Coca-Cola's largest, the company says. Doug
Jackson, who became president of Coca-Cola China in April, talks with China
Daily reporter Zheng Lifei about his company's goals and strategy in China.
Some investors mindful of the global market sell-off sidestepped the share sale
by Franshion Properties (China), which opened for public subscription yesterday.
The Shanghai-based property developer received HK$1.14 billion worth of orders
through margin financing, according to five local brokerages polled by The
Standard. Although the amount represents 3.5 times the shares allotted in the
retail tranche, the response went contrary to expectations of a clamor for the
issue. "Franshion's fundamentals are not bad, but market volatility kept
investors on the sidelines," said Horace Kwan, director at Celestial Asia
Securities. The Hang Seng Index plunged 601.71 points yesterday, off the boil
again after the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 281.42 points on Friday,
capping a volatile week.
Hong Kong
will be without fresh beef for at least three days following a decision by
traders to boycott the sole supplier of cattle from the mainland, Ng Fung Hong.
The three-day boycott began yesterday and traders said the action could be
stepped up if Ng Fung Hong does not solve the problems of rising costs and a
supply shortage.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has paid home
visits to three senior scientists and an author who played important roles in
China's scientific development and literature cause. Zhu Guangya, the
83-year-old famous physicist, received the Premier at home on Friday afternoon.
Zhu had been one of the leading scientists who took part in developing China's
first A-bomb, H-bomb and satellite in the 1960s and 1970s. "The Chinese People's
Liberation Army has just celebrated its 80th founding anniversary. Although you
did not attend the conference the Party held to mark the achievements, including
the A-bomb, H-bomb and satellite, everybody keeps you in mind. We all remember
the great contribution you have made to the projects," Wen said. The old man
shook hands with the Premier with tears in his eyes and handed in proposals on
how to coordinate development of military and civilian technologies and to set
up a human resources framework encouraging creativity. When the premier visited
the house of Qian Xuesen, the 96-year-old renowned scientist and founder of
China's space technology told the Premier his opinions on training more young
talents and on combining science with literature and art in education. "Proper
handling of relationship between science and literature and art will help
students in school of science improve creativity, " Qian said. The Premier has
also visited He Zehui, renowned nuclear physicist and wife of late physicist
Qian Sanqiang, known as Father of China's A-bomb, as well as Ji Xianlin, a
well-known Chinese author and translator. 
NBA star center
Yao Ming is getting married to his long-term girlfriend Ye Li in their hometown
Shanghai on Monday. A wedding ceremony will be held in the five-star Shangri-La
Hotel in Shanghai, and only family members and relatives will be present, no
teammates, coaches or basketball officials, local media reported. Yao and his
agent have both turned off their mobile phones, but Xinhua's Shanghai
correspondent was told there would be an official announcement about the wedding
later Monday night. About 100 security guards will work for the nuptial in which
only 10 dinner tables will be arranged with each costing 12,300 yuan (1,618 U.S
dollars), media reports said. Yao, the 27-year-old, 2.26-meter-tall Houston
Rockets star, and his bride Ye, a 26-year-old, 1.9-meter-tall player on China's
national women's basketball team, received their official marriage certificate
in Shanghai's Xuhui District on Friday.
Rising global oil prices are straining
relations between economic policymakers in Beijing and the nation's largest
state-owned oil and gas companies as long queues for gasoline begin forming
around the country. The National Development and Reform Commission - the
economic planning agency that sets energy policy - issued a notice on Saturday
ordering PetroChina (0857) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (0386), otherwise
known as Sinopec, to refrain from withholding oil supplies to distributors.
Tighter
measures have been imposed on importing fresh fish to Hong Kong and food safety
laws will be enacted to regulate food importers and distributors, Chief
Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen said yesterday. Speaking after the signing
ceremony of the 10th plenary meeting of the Hong Kong-Guangdong Co-operation
Joint Conference, Mr Tsang said the new measures on fresh fish imports would
start this month. Under the changes, vehicles transporting fish would be sealed
to prevent bogus products being mixed with the approved cargo. Guangdong is a
huge supplier of fresh fish to Hong Kong. "During the meeting today we also
discussed how we would step up our efforts on deploying the new technology, RFID
[radio-frequency identification], to enhance source-tracing of the food imported
to the city," Mr Tsang said. He said legislation would be enacted to regulate
food importers and distributors to ensure the safety of food consumed in Hong
Kong. Mr Tsang said the government was still considering the options of either
adopting a "step-by-step, item-by-item" approach in the legislative process or
tabling a "comprehensive" bill in the Legislative Council. The chief executive
also said the notification system between both sides had been enhanced following
the signing of a framework agreement on food safety in April. A series of food
scares on the mainland has raised international concerns. Hong Kong officials
have long held meetings with mainland counterparts to curb unscrupulous food
importers and distributors. Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua said the province
attached "huge importance" to ensuring the safety of food exports to Hong Kong
by adopting stringent inspection and quarantine measures. Both sides had
frequent communications on the safety of food products. "Until now, there have
already been over 120 officials and experts come to Guangdong province to
inspect facilities like food-processing factories," Mr Huang said. Democratic
Party legislator Fred Li Wah-ming, deputy chairman of Legco's food safety and
environmental hygiene panel, said the government had previously told the panel
the bill on food safety would be tabled in Legco next year. While saying he
believed the RFID technique, if adopted, would help track the source of imported
products, Mr Li said the government had yet to discuss the issue with Legco.
Moving ahead are Progress made at the Hong Kong-Guangdong Co-operation Joint
Conference: 1) Dedicated corridor to be built for Hong Kong section of
Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Link; 2) Lok Ma Chau Spur Line to open on
August 15; 3) Seals to be added to vehicles or vessels transporting live
mainland fish to Hong Kong, starting this month; 4) Hong Kong and Guangdong to
set up joint taskforce to study how to help Hong Kong-invested factories in
Guangdong cope with economic restructuring and technological advances; 5)
Taskforce to be set up under joint conference to make cross-border co-operation
on social welfare easier; 6) Feasibility study on proposed bridge linking Hong
Kong with Zhuhai and Macau nearing completion. Three governments still
discussing two remaining issues of financing and location of checkpoints.
The increasingly
important role the film industry played in promoting Hong Kong was stressed by
Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah on Friday. Mr Tsang was speaking to the
Hong Kong Cinema Reception of the Brisbane International Film Festival in
Australia. He said the government wanted to promote Hong Kong films more. “Ours
is an industry that has gained a global reputation with many Hong Kong actors,
directors, cinematographers and producers becoming household names,” the
financial secretary said. In the past 20 years, Hong Kong films like In the Mood
for Love, Infernal Affairs, Chungking Express , Days of Being Wild and A Better
Tomorrow have achieved international acclaim as well as commercial success. Hong
Kong film stars such as Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Leslie
Cheung Kwok-wing, Jackie Chan and others have also become well-known abroad. Mr
Tsang noted that the government had established a Film Services Office with
streamlined procedures for location shooting. The office promotes Hong Kong as a
leading film production service centre of the Asia-Pacific region. “In April
this year, we formed a Film Development Council to advise us on the policy and
strategy for the promotion and development of the film industry, as well as the
use of public funds to support the industry, he said. The government is
investing more in the Hong Kong film industry. “We have also injected HK$300
million into the Film Development Fund and expanded its scope to finance the
production of small-to-medium budget films,” added Mr Tsang. The Brisbane
International Film Festival started in 1992 and showcased a broad range of local
and international films. Famous filmmakers including Agnès Varda who directed
Jacquot and Australian actor Jack Thompson have visited the festival. Hong Kong
film The Banquet was the premier event at the festival this year.
A vendor sells
vegetables at a Beijing market Aug 2. The vegetables grown in China are fine and
there's nothing to worry about their quality, said a senior official of the
country's leading vegetable testing center. Most of the made-in-China products
are absolutely safe, and the steady increase in exports despite the recent
widespread criticism reflects their safety standards, a Ministry of Commerce
official said yesterday. China's exports rose 27.5 percent in the first half of
the year to $546.7 billion, said Vice-Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng. The
export of some products including food, drugs and toys, which have been
criticized for their standards, have increased, too. The export of food products
was up 22.2 percent, drugs 41 percent and toys 27.7 percent, according to
Ministry of Commerce figures. The increase shows "the majority of importers,
retailers and consumers (across the world) are reasonable," Gao said. The
"problem products" comprise a miniscule percentage of the overall exports from
China. For instance, toothpaste accounted for just $80 million of the total
export of $970 billion in 2006. In fact, the value of the toothpaste brand,
allegedly containing diethylene glycolis, exported to the US was only $3.3
million. Hence, doubting the quality of all made-in-China products is not a
"scientific" way of looking at things, said Gao, citing a figure released by
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare that showed 99.42 percent of food
products from China to Japan were safe, compared to the 98.69 percent of those
from the US and 99.38 percent from the European Union. The quality of Chinese
products has improved greatly in recent years, he said. For instance, about 94
percent of the vegetables grown in the country passed the pesticide residue
tests in the first half of 2007, 12 percentage points more than in 2003. Gao
gave an assurance that the overall quality of exports is safe, and reminded
domestic enterprises that improving the quality further is the only way of
winning over the international market. The problems relating to product quality
and food safety are hard to avoid totally because some enterprises are not aware
of their social responsibility, Gao said. The problem of product safety is much
of their doing. Government bodies are trying to minimize the effect of negative
reports, and 429 enterprises have already been punished. Some other companies
have been told to stop exporting their products. Gao called for international
cooperation to deal with food safety problems. "Rebuking each other is not going
to solve the problem. Strengthening international cooperation is the only
effective way to solve the problem. "The Ministry of Commerce suggested
cooperation with APEC members as early as in 2005, and helped set up the APEC
food safety cooperation forum with Australia in 2006. Gao suggested improving
legal and law enforcement through international cooperation, as well as setting
up of an emergency system to deal with quality problems.
Chinese
models from the New Silk Road Company give a preview performance in the Mexico
City Theater in Mexico, Aug. 2, 2007. They will give a show of traditional
Chinese costumes in the city on Aug. 3 as a part of cultral exchange activities
to introduce China to Mexicans.
The past seven
months have witnessed increased coverage of China in the international media,
thanks to the bulging resident foreign correspondents corps, overseas media
field trips and most importantly, a fitting legal framework governing their work
in the country. "We are encouraged to see an increasing number of reports by
foreign journalists, which now cover every aspect of our society," Liu Jianchao,
director-general of the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, told
China Daily in an exclusive interview yesterday. "We are also encouraged to see
that the new regulations have been widely welcomed and followed by foreign
journalists, either staying in, or just making a brief visit to, China." He was
referring to the Regulations on Reporting Activities in China by Foreign
Journalists during the Beijing Olympic Games and the Preparatory Period, which
took effect on January 1. According to the regulations, foreign media
professionals enjoy wide and free access to report from China. "China has
followed up on its pledge to facilitate the work of foreign journalists in
China," he said. "They can do interviews as long as they get the permission of
interviewees.
Customers
shop for pork during a sales promotion at a supermarket in Suzhou, East China's
Jiangsu Province August 3, 2007. Pork prices have risen sharply in a number of
cities across the country.
A man adjusts a
replica of the National Olympic Stadium, also known as the "Bird's Nest", during
a photocall in Beijing August 3, 2007. The replica, which took the local
residents three months to build, is made of waste plastic strips, straw and
trashed foam to celebrate "Green Olympics", which is one of the key themes
promoted by China's Olympic organizers.
Bank of East Asia (0023) chairman and chief executive David Li Kwok-po yesterday
reported first-half net profit that fell short of analysts' expectations - but
said he was not disappointed. BEA shares dropped 4.32 percent after the results
announcement. Analysts widely expected the lender to post a net profit increase
of 21 to 30 percent for the six months ended June 30. Instead, the bank
announced a year- on-year rise of only 20.1 percent to HK$1.9 billion. After
rosy interim results from HSBC Holdings (0005) and Hang Seng Bank (0011) earlier
this week, many expected BEA earnings would also benefit from the robust equity
markets and strong China loan growth. "[Profit booking for] many items will not
be done until July, which will be reflected in the latter half," Li said as he
delivered the results. "Besides, the bank is expanding at a record pace."
Earnings per share rose to HK$1.20, up from HK$1.03 for the first half last
year. Return on equity - a measure of profitability - was 13.8 percent for the
first six months of 2007. A dividend of 48 HK cents per share was declared.
With a total area of merely 28.6 square kilometers, Macau astonished the world
last year when it overtook Las Vegas to become the world's largest single gaming
center. This followed the move by the Macau government to terminate the monopoly
status of Sociedade de Jogos de Macau in 2002. Even though the move was not
applauded by Stanley Ho Hung-sun, who owns the gaming conglomerate SJM, it was
good news for other gaming players, including Macau Success (0487). Riding on
the opportunities offered by market liberalization, Macau Success went for a
back-door listing on the Hong Kong bourse in 2003 by acquiring stakes in a
loss-making company called China Development Corp, executive director Hoffman Ma
Ho-man recalled. Despite having "Macau" as part of the company's name, it did
not have direct exposure to the fast-growing Macau gaming market. But this will
change when Ponte 16, a flagship project it owns and operates, is launched. It
beat other competitors to become SJM's partner in the world's largest gaming
center. Back in the 1990s, Sonny Yeung Hoi-sing, chairman of Macau Success, was
already involved in the gaming business in Macau. He was the operator of Golden
Palace, a VIP room, in SJM's Casino Lisboa, Ma said. "As one of the top three
VIP room operators and having a good business relationship with SJM, Yeung was
invited to be a partner," he added. Ponte 16 then became the core business for
Macau Success. Initially, it only held 10 percent shares in Ponte 16, but
gradually lifted its stake to 49 percent by December 2006 after several share
placements, including a HK$370 million share placement in November 2004; selling
5.6 percent of shares to Joy Idea Investments, a VIP room operator in Macau, as
strategic investors in 2006. With the shareholders' structure settled, Ponte 16
is ready to launch its operations. But the competition is severe. There are 26
casinos operating in Macau, more than double the 11 casinos in 2002. There are a
total of 3,102 gaming tables and 8,234 slot machines, eight times and nine times
more than 2002, respectively, according to data from Macau's Gaming Inspection
and Coordination Bureau. While more casinos are in the pipeline, including The
Venetian, the second project for Las Vegas Sands, and the MGM Grand Paradise,
both of which will both this year, market competition is intensifying. Analysts
generally believe the average net revenue per table will continue to decline in
2007 and 2008. Morgan Stanley believes a recovery in revenue per table will not
happen until 2011, after hitting bottom at US$2,000 (HK$15,600) per table per
day, because of the increase in casinos. Nevertheless, Ma believes their network
and know-how in the city is their advantage over the overseas giants. "The needs
and habits of mainland customers is different from that in Las Vegas," Ma said.
He believes simply copying the model from Las Vegas will not be successful.
"Gamblers in Macau tend to have a larger bet and show more passion in gaming
than those in Las Vegas, which leads to a smaller demand for entertainment shows
or quality meals." Rather than adopting the international Las Vegas style, Ponte
16 will make use of its geographic location to distinguish itself from
competitors, Ma added. Located at the Inner Harbor in the old town, the HK$2.4
billion integrated casino resort will feature a European Riviera theme, building
on the atmosphere of the former Portuguese colony. Ma believes the casino will
benefit from the new pier to be built at Inner Harbor, which will have ferry
services connected to Zhuhai and two other places in Guangdong. This would help
bring in customers as the Gongbei immigration gate, which is connected to Zhuhai,
is heavily congested. "Cotai Strip will develop towards the Las Vegas style,
while those casinos on the Macau Peninsula will focus on gamblers or visitors
looking for the real Macau experience," he said. The casino, which will house
150 mass-market gaming tables, 24 VIP tables and 300 slot machines, the 423-room
five-star hotel Sofitel Macau@Ponte 16 and a shopping arcade will open in
phases. Dates are yet to be announced. Looking ahead, Ma is optimistic.
"Underpinned by the robust economic growth of China and Asia, the prospects of
Macau's gaming market will definitely outpace Las Vegas," he said. "In a market
growing at over 20 percent per annum, I am very optimistic about the future."
Eyeing a 6 percent to 10 percent market share in Macau's gaming market by
revenue, Ma hopes to recoup the investment on Ponte 16 within three years. He is
hoping for an opportunity to develop a second casino project. Sharon Wong of
Standard & Poor's expects net profit of Macau Success to be HK$12 million for
the year ended September 30, 2007, the lowest since it listed in 2003, because
of the absence of interest income from the King Seiner Palace Promotor loan.
However, she expects its net profit to surge to HK$205 million in fiscal 2008
once the Ponte 16 comes onstream.
Miss Mongolia wins
the title of Best in Asia Queen. Contestants from 108 countries and regions
attend the final competition held in Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan Province
on July 31, 2007.
Miss China
wins the title of Best Smile. Contestants from 108 countries and regions attend
the final competition held in Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan Province on July
31, 2007.
A gymnast from
the Anhui provincial team practises at a training center in Hefei, east China's
Anhui province August 2, 2007. About 30 gymnasts, aged from 4 to 19, undergo
training at the center, according to local media.
102008, the
first zip code for the Olympic Games in history, was introduced at the
headquarters of The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX
Olympiad (BOCOG) on Wednesday. The zip code will help letters for Olympic venues
arrive in a safe, fast and smooth way. Following its launch at the Beijing
Olympic Tower, the code will be used in future for all mailing services at the
Olympic Family Hotel, Paralympic Family Hotel, Olympic Village and the main
Olympic venues. The venues will include the National Stadium, National Indoor
Stadium, the Olympic Village, the Main Press Center, National Aquatics Center,
Digital Beijing Building, Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, Olympic Sports Center
Stadium, Ying Tung Natatorium, North Star Media Village, Huiyuan Media Village,
etc. The code will be in use from August 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008. 
In a show of unity, retired and current mainland leaders
made a rare joint public appearance yesterday amid rampant speculation over the
leadership reshuffle to be decided at the Communist Party congress to be held in
the autumn. President Hu Jintao joined former top leaders, including former
party chief Jiang Zemin , at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to
celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
Mr Hu used the occasion to rally support for greater unity, both nationally and
within the party, ahead of the key decisions to be made at the congress. 
A Chinese man was detained by Shanghai
police in the early hours of Wednesday after he climbed the tallest building in
China, just two months after a French "spiderman" pulled the same stunt. A
28-year-old man surnamed Zou, from Suining County in central China's Hunan
Province, began to climb up the side of the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai, home to
the Grand Hyatt Hotel, at about 6 p.m. on Tuesday, police said. He reached the
halfway point of the 88-storey building within an hour and arrived at his
destination at 11 p.m., the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a
statement posted on its website. 
Chinese Consul General Zhang Yun of Los Angels Office and his delegation of the People Republic of China
visited Hawaii on July 31st, before his assignment to their Los Angeles office,
Consul General Zhang had served as Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives,
Director General, Protocol Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
Ambassador to Singapore
A parcel of
residential land in Wong Tai Sin was secured by mid-tier developer Kerry
Properties (0683) at yesterday's auction for HK$3.98 billion in a final bid that
fell below market estimates. Developers and surveyors, however, said the outcome
was not correlated to certain adverse consequences of high- density development
on the site, as highlighted by an environmental concern group. Charles Chan
Chiu-kwok, managing director of valuation and professional services at property
consultant Savills, said the market had been over- optimistic with estimates
before the auction. Industry analysts expected the 102,280-square-foot site on
Chun Yan Street, which previously housed police quarters, to fetch between HK$4
billion and HK$5 billion.
Hong Kong yesterday took
a major step forward towards becoming a wireless city with the official launch
of the GovWiFi system. In addition, the government is offering public facilities
such as flyovers and lamp posts at a nominal rent for network operators to
install wireless access points to extend the wireless network's coverage,
Permanent Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan
said at the launch ceremony. Lau said the success of the new WiFi facility
required the cooperation of the information and communications technology
industry. "Industry players can participate in this program as contractors of
the WiFi program. They could also explore new business opportunities by
providing more wireless applications, mobile products and supporting services to
the citizens," she said.
The eight top
Chinese leaders, Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong,
Wu Guanzheng, Li Changchun and Luo Gan attend the reception for PLA’s 80th
birthday in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, July 31, 2007. The Chinese
army marked its 80th birthday with a high-profile reception.
China will never pose an economic threat to any
country nor does it have the ability to do so, Vice-Premier Wu Yi told visiting
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday. She also suggested that the
United States have a better grasp of China's economic situation and the
challenges it poses. Following a 30-minute private meeting with Paulson, Wu told
the US delegation that she is happy to see her counterpart in the strategic
economic dialogue (SED) be able to tell the great difference between Beijing or
Shanghai and backward areas like Qinghai Province. Paulson visited the poor and
remote Northwest China province on Monday, the first stop on his fourth visit to
the country since taking up the post in July last year.
If you've got the
looks, the talent, and the Mandarin, forget Hollywood - the Chinese
entertainment industry wants you. And even if you're a foreigner in China who
doesn't have any of those things, don't worry. You've got a decent chance of
getting on television, anyway. In cities nationwide, recruiters are prowling
university campuses and expatriate hangouts in search of aspiring variety show
performers, game show contestants, and film extras. Pretty much any kind of
foreigner will do, with one exception: "They definitely prefer people that don't
look Asian," says American expatriate Ben Ross. Westerners are cropping up on
all kinds of television shows - literally plucked from the street. Some foreign
entertainers see their moment in the sun as an opportunity to help Chinese
people better understand the West. But their Chinese audience is just as
interested in how the outside world views the rapid economic advances of their
homeland. "We like watching these shows because they have foreigners speaking
Chinese," says Beijing retiree Wu Yuqing. "They show us that the world is
getting smaller." And China's television and movie producers are eager to cater
to this desire. "Chinese people really want to know what foreigners here are
thinking," says Beijing casting agent Li Erwei. "They want to know what
foreigners think of China and how they view our culture." And sometimes, the
appeal of a foreigner on television in a homogenous society is more basic. "On
my first show, the idea was basically to get laughs out of foreigners doing
silly things," says Mr. Ross, a blogger and former English teacher who has
appeared on Chinese television with a spiky wig and fake guitar while singing
well-known Chinese pop songs. Amateur actors also learn that an amusing accent
here is sometimes better than absolute fluency. "They told me: start speaking
Chinese, but then start messing up and ask if you can speak in English," says
Ross. "It's pretty funny to see foreigners with an accent." Television producers
offer between 400 and 1,000 RMB ($50 to $125) per episode, but money is not the
only motivation for some Western actors. "A lot of these shows I would have done
for free, just to have fun," says Wily Boyle, a Canadian who appeared on some of
the same shows as Ross. For a select group of foreign professionals, however,
Chinese television is serious business. The pioneer in this field was Canadian
Mark Rowswell - better known as Da Shan, or Big Mountain - whose pitch-perfect
Mandarin and comedic skill catapulted him to national celebrity in the late
1980s. Since then, several successors have emerged on the talk show circuit.
Frenchman Julien Gaudefroy, whose unaccented Chinese got him his first gig in an
instructional language video, now hosts several talk shows across China. Mr.
Gaudefroy's programs, which include "Foreigners' Viewpoints" and "Foreigners
Watching China," feature guests opining on topics ranging from China's one-child
policy to the relative merits of traditional Tang Dynasty clothing. Richard
Doran, a professional radio host in China and an occasional guest on Gaudefroy's
programs, remains skeptical that such shows are actually improving mutual
understanding. "They still ask if we know how to use chopsticks," he says. "Can
you imagine a European television station putting a Pakistani immigrant family
on television and asking if they'd learned to use a knife and fork yet?"
Regardless of the content, a host's foreignness can be enough of a draw in
itself. "Foreign hosts who speak Chinese have a special appeal for Chinese
audiences," says Liu Yongli, a director for state-owned China Central
Television. "When Chinese people see a foreigner who speaks good Chinese and has
gotten to know Chinese culture well, we get a very warm feeling, seeing that
someone respects China so much." The film world is somewhat less welcoming.
Westerners interested primarily in acting work face all sorts of special
challenges, not least of which is the expectation of fluent Mandarin. To make
matters worse, Westerners in China simply don't have that many parts available
to them. And the roles they do get often reflect hackneyed stereotypes. "People
in general have some strange ideas about America," says Jonathan Kos-Read, one
of the few full-time Western actors in China. "For instance, Americans don't
love their parents and vice versa. Or, if you walk out of your front door (in
the US), 9 times out of 10 you'll see a huge gun battle. That kind of thing."
Mr. Kos-Read, who trained at the New York University film school, often plays "a
rich American businessman who comes to China and falls in love with a Chinese
girl. She's torn for 10 episodes or so, but in the end, she always makes the
right choice and sticks with her Chinese boyfriend." Film director Gu Rong
agrees that foreign actors tend to get pigeonholed. "They're often the
antagonist, the central point of conflict," he says. American actress Kerry
Berry Brogan, who had extensive acting experience before coming to China, sees
it as her responsibility to give Chinese audiences a more balanced view of
foreigners. "I'm trying to make the depiction of foreigners more real, more
dynamic, more three-dimensional. ... If there's something wrong, I let the
director know," she says. "I would say 70 percent of the time they listen." Ms.
Brogan, Kos-Read, and other Western actors in China often find themselves in the
role of cultural ambassador, helping directors, screenwriters, and audiences
come to a fuller understanding of Westerners in general. Kos-Read says their
efforts are paying off. "It's getting better fast. The scripts are improving."
Unfortunately for Western newcomers, the acting scene is becoming more
competitive. The growing population of foreigners in China has professionalized
the film industry, creating higher entry barriers for anyone without formal
training. And for those aspiring television celebrities planning to sign up for
Mandarin classes, you'd better hurry. "Maybe in 50 years, we'll have 100,000
foreigners speaking such excellent Chinese ... they won't be that interesting
anymore," says Mr. Liu. "But for now, they're very unusual." 
An Oracle booth
at a software exhibition in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.
The business software maker announced that it has established a research center
in Shanghai and plans to open more offices in China.
In summer,
Chinese people tend to take short walks after dinner when the hot weather cools
down. This after-dinner walk not only allows people to enjoy the relaxing breeze
in the evening, but also helps with digestion and promotes body health. So let's
take a stroll together to drive summer heat away and to embrace a healthy
lifestyle.
Singer and
actor Jay Chou of Taiwan speaks next to actress Kwai Lun-mei of Taiwan during a
news conference for his new film "Secret" in Singapore July 30, 2007. The movie
is Chou's debut as a film director.
Hang Seng Bank
(0011), Hong Kong's third-largest lender by assets, said yesterday that interim
profit surged 43.2 percent to HK$8.86 billion, exceeding market expectations.
The lender said robust growth in fee-based income and interest income helped
drive earnings. A Reuters poll of five analysts had forecast earnings in the
range of HK$7.6 billion to HK$8.35 billion. The lender, 62 percent owned by HSBC
(0005), said revenue from investment-related services increased substantially.
Chief executive Raymond Or Ching-fai said: "The active investment market helped
drive revenue from stockbroking and related services to HK$738 million, a jump
of 85.4 percent." Overall net fee-based income surged 60.6 percent to HK$2.86
billion. Net interest income also increased 20.8 percent to HK$6.69 billion from
a year earlier, mainly due to a rise in customer deposits and growth in average
customer advances. The A-share initial public offering of Fuzhou-based
Industrial Bank in February also provided Hang Seng Bank an unrealized gain of
HK$1.465 billion on dilution. Hang Seng Bank owns a 12.78 percent stake in the
midsized lender. Operating profit soared to a record HK$7.77 billion. "Operating
profit was up HK$1.42 billion, or 22.4 percent. It is the highest rate of growth
for 11 years," Or said. Loan impairment charges and other credit provisions
surged from HK$34 million in the first half of last year to HK$280 million in
the first six months. "The numbers here are a little misleading, since last year
in the first half we benefited from a substantial recovery from a commercial
banking account," Or said. The bank's costs grew as it expanded in the mainland.
Operating expenses increased 24.6 percent to HK$576 million. "Profit from the
mainland business is small due to the cost of initial setup of branches, and
also exchange losses given the revaluation of Hang Seng assets held in US
dollars in the face of the appreciating yuan," Or said. 
Activists have raised the stakes in their tussle with the
government over Queen's Pier by taking legal action in a last-ditch attempt to
halt the Central landmark's demolition. Two members of Local Action - Chu
Hoi-dick and Ho Loi - who have been occupying the historic pier with other
protesters since Friday - applied to the High Court for a judicial review
yesterday after they were ordered to vacate the pier by midnight tonight or face
eviction. The court, however, is not expected to rule on the application within
a week, meaning the pier could still be pulled down during the period. The
action challenges a decision in May by former secretary for home affairs Patrick
Ho Chi-ping not to list the pier as a statutory monument. The activists are also
seeking a court injunction to stop the 53-year-old pier from being dismantled
until their application is heard. According to the writ, Ho's decision not to
grant the pier monument status was "unreasonable, irrational and arbitrary." "As
secretary for home affairs, he did not possess the expertise in assessing
whether Queen's Pier was of historical value ... he must rely on the advice
given by the Antiquities Advisory Board. But the secretary's decision had
gravely drifted away from the board's professional advice," the two activists
said in their writ. The board had granted the pier a Grade One status of
historical value, but the move does not protect it from being demolished. High
Court judge Johnny Lam Man- hon will begin hearing the activists' application at
9.30am today to determine whether to accept it.
Queen's Pier current and past pictures
Barbecued meat
buns, fishballs dripping with curry and stir-fried noodles, or lo mein, are all
popular foods in Hong Kong. But this could all change if health authorities
succeed in persuading people to give them up - for the sake of reducing their
waistlines. The Department of Health has started the "Eatsmart@restaurant.hk"
campaign in an attempt to change people's tastes by weaning them off foods with
very high salt, oil and sugar content and enticing them to healthier
alternatives and more vegetables. 
To fight pollution, China takes capitalist route - The Chinese environmental
agency is working with the banking authorities to identify companies that fail
pollution checks or bypass environmental assessments for new projects and to
restrict their access to fresh credit. Pan Yue, the deputy chief of SEPA, the
State Environmental Protection Administration, said the country should use more
economic muscle to fight air and water polluters as he listed some polluting
companies that would be barred from borrowing money from banks. The credit
blacklist was the most forceful measure the environment agency could impose to
clean up rivers in China, Pan said in comments posted on the SEPA Web site. But,
he added: "It cannot fundamentally contain the trend of worsening pollution, and
we need the force of even more combined economic levers." The World Bank
estimates that about 460,000 Chinese die prematurely each year from ailments
related to water and air pollution and that about 300,000 others die from indoor
toxins. "The severe state of China's environment shows that the
emissions-reduction measures of a few specialized agencies are limited and we
must unite with more macroeconomic departments," Pan said. One of the factories
on the blacklist, an agricultural chemical plant in Bengbu, Anhui Province,
dumped ink-black waste into a river, the Xinhua news agency reported. The plant
was part of an industrial cluster that villagers said had contributed to a
sudden increase in cancer and other illnesses in the area, the report said. Pan,
an ambitious advocate of tougher environmental controls, has seized an
opportunity opened by broader government efforts to punish errant factories,
even if punishment leads to slower economic growth. But local banks and many
officials who are eager to encourage economic growth appear unlikely to embrace
Pan's plea for "green credit." The central bank, the People's Bank of China,
recently asked commercial banks to stop lending to those who pollute and to call
in loans to projects banned by the government. But at the end of May, the major
Chinese banks had 1.5 trillion yuan, or US$198 billion, in medium- and long-term
loans outstanding to energy-intensive and polluting sectors, up 21.8 percent
from a year earlier. Pan said that he expected the People's Bank of China and
the China Banking Regulatory Commission to restrict credit to the companies
identified on the blacklist. And he promised additional measures to come. "Green
credit is just a start," Pan said in an earlier version of his comments sent to
reporters in an e-mail message. Officials will also consider incorporating
environmental standards in tax, insurance and stock market regulations, he said.
A customer chooses milk in a supermarket
in Beijing. China's milk output in 2006 amounted to 30 million tons, making the
country the world's third largest milk producer, following India and America.
Germany's BMW has a reputation for
producing cars that offer driving pleasure and luxury. But in recent years that
reputation has been sullied in China, with BMW owners tagged nouveau riche and a
series of scandals including a lottery fraud in the northwestern city of Xi'an
and a fatal accident in northeastern Harbin making headlines in local
newspapers. Although BMW was cleared of responsibility in all cases, the brand's
image has taken a knock. Christoph Stark, president and CEO of the Munich-based
company's China operations, says the carmaker is working on revitalizing its
brand in the world's second-biggest and fastest growing vehicle market. It's
introduced several initiatives since it kicked off production in China in 2004
such as price cuts and donations to education, environmental protection and
cultural programs. Stark says the initiatives aim to "convert part of the
success we are having in our own core business as a corporate citizen and to
give something back to the society, together with our customers and dealers".
And the activities help BMW understand "what's required in China at the moment,
what people are thinking and what they are concerned with". "We are still a very
young company in China. We are gradually finding the right way to become more
accepted." He stresses that BMW is no longer seen as just for "the super rich
and super wealthy". "We have a lot of hard-working people who buy our cars. We
have a lot of journalists, economists, professors, doctors ... Our customer base
is growing much bigger and wider," he tells China Business Weekly. "We could not
survive or grow on a very small customer base."
