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Sept 29 - 30, 2007
Foreign investment fund ‘to launch on Saturday - A government fund that is to invest part of China’s US$1.3 trillion (HK$10 trillion) in foreign currency reserves is due to be officially launched on Saturday, according to news reports. Financial analysts are watching the agency closely to see where it invests and its possible impact on financial markets. It is expected to be entrusted with US$200 billion, which would make it one of the world’s richest investment funds. The agency was likely to be called the China Investment Corp, Dow Jones Newswires and the mainland’s Securities Journal reported on Thursday. Both quoted unidentified sources. A mainland official who was involved in setting up the fund said he could not confirm the reports. Foreign reporters would be barred from the official opening ceremony, said Jesse Wang, chairman of state-owned Jianyin Investment. The central government created the fund in an effort to earn higher returns on its currency reserves, which have soared amid a boom in export revenues. A large portion of the reserves have been invested in safe but low-yielding United States Treasuries. Its creation comes at a time of tensions with the US over China’s swelling trade surplus and unease in the United States and elsewhere over Beijing’s growing economic and military might. Authorities said the agency would be modelled in part on Singapore’s government-owned Temasek Holdings, which invests in banks, real estate and other industries in China, India and elsewhere. A key question has been the possible impact of the new strategy on the market for US Treasury securities. The central government is a big buyer of Treasuries, helping to finance the American government budget deficit. Mainland officials have given no details of how much money might be diverted to other assets. The Chinese agency agreed in May to pay US$3 billion for just under 10 per cent of American investment firm Blackstone Group. Mr Wang, who was involved in negotiating the Blackstone purchase, told The Associated Press in May that the mainland agency was expected to try to avoid political strains abroad by purchasing minority stakes in companies rather than pursuing corporate takeovers. Chinese companies have been uneasy about foreign acquisitions since the uproar in 2005 over state-owned oil company CNOOC (SEHK: 0883)’s attempt to acquire US oil and gas producer Unocal CNOOC dropped its bid after American critics said it might endanger energy security. China Asset Management, the country’s largest fund house, said it raised the targeted US$4 billion (HK$31 billion) for its first global stock investment fund on the day of its launch for sale on Thursday, reflecting rising mainland interest in overseas markets. “The sale has been successfully completed. It’s oversubscribed in just one day,” the company, which has hired Baltimore-based T Rowe Price Group as its overseas investment adviser, said in a statement. The fund is the second overseas stock fund launched by a Chinese fund house under the country’s Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme, which is partly aimed at easing upward pressure on the yuan. China Asset Management did not indicate when it would start investing.
The value of Hong Kong’s exports increased by 7.5 per cent to HK$243.2 billion year-on-year in August, latest statistics released by the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) showed on Thursday.
Several United States carriers have won permission by the U.S. Department of Transportation to start new flights to China after the two countries signed an agreement to open up the skies, the companies said yesterday. Continental Airlines will fly between Newark, New Jersey, and Shanghai starting in March 2009. AMR Corp's American Airlines will fly between Chicago and Beijing, while Northwest will begin a service between Detroit and Shanghai at the same time. "We're obviously delighted with DOT's decision today," said Will Ris, American Airlines' senior vice president of government affairs. "We said in our application that America's Chicago gateway will provide increased network competition and customer choice in the growing China market." Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines Inc and U.S. Airways Group Inc - the only major U.S. carriers that operate globally without flights to China - were also awarded flights to China by the transportation department. Delta plans a daily flight starting on March 30, 2009 between Atlanta and Shanghai. U.S. Airways' daily service will begin on March 25, 2009, and will be between Philadelphia and Beijing. A bilateral aviation agreement reached by the two countries in May granted U.S. carriers more access to China, an aviation market expanding by 15 percent in recent years. Under the pact, U.S. carriers will more than double their round-trip flights to 23 by 2012. The rapidly growing Chinese aviation market has lured overseas carriers to bid for a stake in domestic counterparts. Singapore Airlines Ltd and parent Temasek Holdings Pte have signed to pay about 918 million U.S. dollars for a combined 24 percent stake in China Eastern Airlines Corp, the companies announced early this month. The deal still needs approval by the company board. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Hong Kong's biggest carrier, paid 4.07 billion HK dollars(524 million U.S. dollars) in June last year to double its stake in Air China to 20 percent for more access to the Chinese market.
Sept 28, 2007
Hong Kong improves, mainland China slips back in global war on corruption - Hong Kong has been ranked 14th on a global list of least corrupt places in the world, one place better than last year and its highest position since the handover. The mainland was ranked 72nd in Berlin-based Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index covering 180 countries, compared to 70th last year. ransparency International said some of the world's poorest nations were seen as having the most dishonest political and business chiefs. Iraq, Somalia and Myanmar were perceived to be the most corrupt countries. More than two-thirds of the 180 countries scored less than five out of 10, indicating serious corruption. Hong Kong scored 8.3, the same as last year. In the Asia-Pacific region, Hong Kong was ranked fourth least corrupt behind New Zealand, Singapore and Australia. New Zealand, Denmark and Finland were the least corrupt. They each scored 9.4 but the anti-graft watchdog noted that even these countries needed to do more to combat corporate graft. "Despite some gains, corruption remains an enormous drain on resources sorely needed for education, health and infrastructure," Transparency International's chairwoman Huguette Labelle said when releasing the findings yesterday. Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption welcomed the index results. "It shows that corruption in Hong Kong is under effective control," a spokeswoman said. Regarding Transparency International's concerns about graft in the corporate sector, she said Hong Kong treated such crimes seriously and her organisation was organising seminars for corporate directors to educate them about corruption. The index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by businesspeople and country analysts. It ranges between zero, which is highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
The central government may be building a stake in Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (SEHK: 0388), helping to fuel the rapid rise of the stock-market operator's share price, a British newspaper reported. The mainland's new foreign exchange reserve fund, which will manage US$200 billion, or the National Social Security Fund, which manages US$53 billion, could be buying shares, the Times of London said, citing sources close to the exchange. HKEx shares have soared 122 per cent since August 17, when the Hang Seng Index hit bottom amid fears of a meltdown in financial markets in the wake of the subprime crisis. The Hang Seng Index has risen 30 per cent over the same period. HKEx, which operates Asia's third-largest stock market, said in a statement that it had no explanation for the rise in its share price.
A former Hong Kong Monetary Authority official - who was also one of the original architects of the city's linked- exchange rate system - rounded on the administration yesterday, characterizing it as "complacent" and "inactive," suggesting the government lacks the energy to develop innovative policies to deal with key social and economic issues. The investment management arm of Dutch financial services group ING Groep is set to launch a new China fund it hopes will raise at least US$250 million (HK$1.95 billion) and round out its product offerings in the region. Bill Clinton will bring his philanthropic summit to Hong Kong next year, hoping that Asians will keep issues such as poverty, health and climate change on the agenda as the Indian and mainland economies grow rapidly. The former US president launched his third annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York yesterday, welcoming more than 1,200 people from 72 countries - among them 52 current and former heads of state, aid workers, company chiefs and celebrities including actress Angelina Jolie - to three days of brainstorming. At a meeting that rates action over talk, he will push those attending to commit to do good, hoping to build on US$10 billion of pledges made in the first two years of his summit. Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for Mr Clinton, said the Hong Kong summit aimed "to spark the same spirit of philanthropy and engagement in the business community in Asia".
People's Bank of China may raise home-loan rates by as much as 10 percent this week as the central bank seeks to further tighten the screws on speculators and hold down residential prices, China Daily said, citing an unidentified source. China Shenhua Energy (1088) has announced it will sell 1.8 billion A shares at the final offer price of 36.99 yuan per share - raising 66.6 billion yuan (HK$68.9 billion) and making it the largest domestic stock offering, surpassing the 58.05 billion yuan float of China Construction Bank (0939). Mainland courts have jailed six former officials, including a former secretary to Shanghai's one-time Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu, as authorities wrap up a massive corruption scandal, state media reports said yesterday.
Citic Securities, founded 12 years
ago, is the world's fastest-growing brokerage. The Beijing-based company has a
market capitalization of US$40.7 billion - US$8.8 billion more than Lehman
Brothers Holdings, US$24.4 billion more than Bear Stearns and US$16.4 billion
more than Charles Schwab Corp. Haitong Securities, the mainland's No2, also
eclipsed Bear Stearns as the seven largest United States brokers have lost US$37
billion in value this year. A year ago, Wall Street firms occupied the top five
slots while the mainland had none among the first 10. Citic has now claimed the
No4 position while Haitong, at US$22.1 billion, is eighth. Only Goldman Sachs
Group, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch remain larger than Citic. When global
banks with securities arms are added, Citic ranks No8 on a list that includes
Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, UBS and Credit Suisse Group. Citigroup, the largest
US bank, has a capitalisation of US$230 billion, while Goldman has a value of
US$91.2 billion. Citic's rise is reminiscent of that achieved by Japan's Nomura
Holdings in the late 1980s when the firm became the world's largest securities
firm. Nomura's shares have plunged 86 per cent since Japan's bubble economy
burst in 1987. Sixty-two percent of Chinese suppliers are increasing spending on quality control, according to a recent survey of more than 200 manufacturers by Global Sources, a global business-to-business (B2B) media company. New Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is planning to make his first state visit to Beijing in November as part of a drive to take ties with China to a new level. RIA Novosti of Russia, Sipa Press of France and Gamma of Eyede, also a French company, have been authorized to release financial information or photos in China.
French chain hotel giant to expand presence in China - Accor (worldwide) group, the world's leading hotel and tourism company, has announced its target to more than triple the total number of its chain hotels in China to 180 in the next three years. By 2010, Accor's network will include about 40 five-star Sofitel hotels and 100 economical ibis hotels in China. The French group has signed for 62 hotels in China in 2007 and has more than 20 hotels becoming operational so far this year. "We believe that the continuous growth of tourism in and out ofChina and the upcoming Olympic Games will create huge demand in hotel services," said Robert Murray, vice president for Accor China at a press conference in Beijing. Accor will also open three more hotels in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics, bringing the number of its hotels in the Chinese capital to seven. "There could be a drop in demand right after the Olympics but we are confident in China's booming economy," said Ray Stone, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Accor Asia Pacific. Since its entry into China in 1985, Accor has opened 50 hotels in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Chengdu and other major Chinese cities. The company operates more than 4,000 hotels in nearly 100 countries with 170,000 employees. With scores of corrupt officials fleeing to the United States, Canada and Australia, China needs to pace up negotiations with those countries to conclude extradition treaties, officials have said. "Besides, a number of officials have fled to European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands," Gao Yuntao, deputy head of the international cooperation bureau of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), told China Daily. The country has so far signed extradition agreements with 29 nations but only three - Spain, Portugal and France - are developed nations. Returned professionals help drive economy - In 1992, 29-year-old Peking University professor Yu Kongjian was accepted as a doctoral candidate at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. "I've got to come back," Yu told himself. He set off for the United States carrying a spoonful of home soil his mother gave him on leaving Dongyu Village, Zhejiang Province. He did return, after three years at Harvard and two at the SWA Group, a global leader in landscape architecture. Yu opened his own company to put into practice what he had learned overseas. He chose the name "Turen", or Earth-man/natives. But the company's registration was turned down by officials because the name sounded "too earthy". "It was staff at Haidian Science Park's business incubator who spent a huge amount of time to help me finally register my company," Yu said. Still located in the park, Turenscape as it is known today, has gained world recognition, winning the American Society of Landscape Architects' award, the Oscar of the industry, for five consecutive years. Yu is among an increasing number of returned overseas students who have set up about 500 companies in Haidian Park, the earliest of its kind in the country. A total of 2,135 returned students, more than 90 percent of whom received at least a master's education, and the 1,641 companies they started up, are located in these special parks in Beijing. The parks claim to be a nationwide leader in providing services to emerging social groups. "The parks are like a greenhouse for us," Yu said. According to the Ministry of Education, China's overseas students totaled 1.067 million between 1978 and 2006. Today, 275,000 have returned, 42,000 in the past year alone. The students have contributed significantly to the economic development; in return, central and local governments have provided favorable conditions and services for them. Construction has begun on a freeway that will form a key part of a Central Asia highway network between Korla and Kuqa, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The section of China's No. 314 national trunk road was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, said an official from Xinjing Uygur Autonomous Regional Bureau of Communications. The four-lane freeway would cover 296.5 km at a budgeted cost of 4.02 billion yuan (503 million U.S. dollars). The Asian Development Bank will lend 150 million dollars and the central government will pay 1.5 billion yuan (187 million U.S. dollars), while the rest is met by local governments. Construction would take three years to complete and the road would be open by 2010, said the official.
Sept 27, 2007
Warner Bros. has applied for local permits to shoot a portion of Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" in Hong Kong this fall. In director Christopher Nolan's follow-up to "Batman Begins," the caped crusader will leave Gotham for the first time in the history of the film franchise to fight evil in another city -- or cities -- although it's unclear whether Hong Kong will be called Hong Kong or a fictional metropolis. As it stands, the Warner Bros. project is hoping to touch down in the former British colony for a skedded nine days of shooting in November. Warners wouldn't confirm the reports. Pic, whose plotline is being kept under tight wraps, also is lensing in Chicago and London. "Dark Knight" returns Christian Bale to the bigscreen as Batman. Heath Ledger and Michael Caine also star. Hong Kong production services companies have been abuzz for months with talk of what may be the highest profile foreign shoot for several years. Warner has apparently applied for permits to shoot in the glossy business district of Central and neighboring Western. And one sequence could include the nightly Symphony of Lights laser show, a key tourist trademark for the city. Local politicos have suggested that helicopters and night shooting could cause traffic chaos and noise pollution. "We welcome the movie but want to ensure arrangements are hassle free," said Kwok Ka-ki, a local legislator. It is not clear whether the Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures production will make use of the new Shaw Studios. State-of-the-art facility has lain unused for best part of the two years since its skedded completion, though it has recently been home to some commercials, including one shot by Ridley Scott's RSA, and is hosting Josh Hartnett-starring movie "I Come With the Rain" by helmer Tran Anh Hung.
Johnnie To-helmed crimer "Exiled"
has been selected to represent Hong Kong in the foreign language Oscar category.
Selection was announced Monday by the Motion Picture Industry Association. Pic
preemed in Venice 2006 and was widely sold in int'l territories by Media Asia.
Magnolia Pictures released it in North America.
Despite the strong economic rebound, the number of people earning less than HK$5,000 a month has shot up drastically by 87 percent in the past 10 years to almost 419,000 according to an Oxfam study. Former security chief Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee will formally announce her candidacy for the Hong Kong Island by- election on Thursday. CITIC International Financial Holdings (0183) - the offshore financial flagship of Beijing-backed conglomerate CITIC Group - can use its mainland connections to help it grow into the premier offshore center for mainland companies. And a recent tie-up with one of Spain's largest banks will transform it into a regional player in the wholesale banking space. CIFH chairman Kong Dan is also chairman of CITIC Group. CIFH is the holding company for mid- sized Hong Kong lender CITIC Ka Wah Bank and asset management firm CITIC International Assets Management.
The central government said on Tuesday it has revoked the food production licences of hundreds of companies, including producers of rice and monosodium glutamate, in its latest crackdown on unclean or unsafe manufacturing practices. Mainland food, drug and other exports ranging from toothpaste to seafood are under intense scrutiny because they have been found to contain potentially deadly substances. Domestically, the problem occurs regularly. One of China’s major product safety watchdogs said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that it had recently revoked the food production licences of 564 Chinese companies. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the decision was part of a “special campaign to ensure product quality and food safety and strengthen food safety supervision.” It didn’t say specifically when the licences were cancelled. It named the three worst offenders, but did not give details of their violations. They were the Shijiazhuang Good Cook Food Factory, a monosodium glutamate factory in Hebei province, the Hefei Wanmaomao Quick-frozen Food Company in Anhui province, and Kaiping Shagang District Xinfengsheng Rice Factory in the Guangdong province. The other companies had their food production licences revoked because they were found to be manufacturing goods they weren’t licensed to make, or because they had moved or were being renovated, it said. After an initial reluctance, the government has launched an aggressive campaign to win back consumer confidence by issuing new regulations, cracking down on violators and setting up a cabinet-level panel to monitor quality. Olympics a chance to build brand loyalty - What is in a brand? Until the past decade, it probably meant little for the average mainland consumer. Now, millions are bombarded with the biggest offensive yet by domestic and foreign companies ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But qualifying for Olympic official sponsorship requires deep pockets that not many can afford. The Beijing Olympic Committee sets sponsorship at various levels – worldwide partner, Beijing 2008 partner, Beijing sponsor and Beijing supplier. Adidas reportedly paid a lofty US$100 million to secure its Beijing partner crown, elbowing out Nike and Mizuno, as well as the Li Ning (SEHK: 2331) company, a home-grown sports goods producer established by former Olympic gymnast Li Ning. Li Ning chief financial officer Tan Wee Seng says the company realised it would have been unfeasible to make a bid after taking into account the entrance fee and the returns. “Know yourself, know your rivals,” he said. “We are a very small company. When we invest $1, we want a $10 return ... we need speedy returns on investments.” The Li Ning company opted for a different route, one that has been the subject of contention in the mainland, with critics questioning whether it breached Olympic sponsorship regulations. Early this year, the company signed a two-year agreement with China Central TV (CCTV) for its sports journalists and anchors to don Li Ning sportswear until the end of 2008 in all programs aired on CCTV National Sports TV channel, as well as programs aired on the “Olympic Channel” during the Games. Mr Tan stressed it was a deal between two commercial entities and the company had adhered to regulations. “This is a good opportunity and we seized the opportunity.” Li Ning’s brand management effort reflects its knack for moving tactically instead of competing head on with international giants. It has also signed on various teams, including the Spanish and Argentinian basketball teams, and tied up with others in archery, athletics, ping pong and diving – events that Mr Tan says have accounted for 42 per cent of the country’s gold medal count. According to a recent CLSA survey on middle-class spending, Li Ning ranked as one of the top consumer choices because of its “innovative and imaginative marketing”. Branding efforts lately by mainland companies have hinged on the Olympics, though they will not be limited to the Games, as firms attempt to shake off their long-standing image as cheap manufacturers. Branding strategists say mainlanders’ increasing pride in their country is a boon to domestic companies in gaining market share. The Olympics will only rekindle more of the nationalist spark and confer status and credibility to home-grown brands. With less than a year before the Games open next summer, Olympic marketing is all the rage. This very development is also turning mainlanders into more sophisticated consumers and consciously or not, introducing them to brand loyalty. Chan Wai-chan, who heads McKinsey’s Greater China Consumer Practice, says the Olympics are only another channel for mainland companies to market themselves to the rest of the world, but does not change their overall branding strategy. Olympic marketing does not come cheap. After securing the rights, insiders estimate an additional minimal US$320 million is needed for the campaign. Li Ning’s Mr Tan says the company’s Olympic-related programs this year will account for half of its total marketing expenditure, rising from 10 per cent.
Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp (SEHK: 0763), the
mainland's two largest makers of wireless equipment, said they aimed to launch
new products with ultra mobile broadband (UMB) technology which allows video and
other data to be transferred to mobile devices 10 to 100 times faster than by
third-generation mobile telephones. Sept 26, 2007
A survey released here on Monday found that the deposit scheme enhanced public confidence in Hong Kong's banking system. The survey, conducted by Hong Kong Deposit Protection Board, showed that 67 percent of respondents were aware of the scheme, and among them, 76 percent knew the maximum protection limit is 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (about 12,800 U.S. dollars). With the exception of a few overseas-incorporated banks which are covered by a similar scheme in their country of incorporation, all licensed banks in Hong Kong are members of the scheme. The scheme protects customers' eligible deposits held with banks in Hong Kong which are members of the scheme. It will pay the customers compensation up to a limit of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars if the bank with which the customers hold their eligible deposits fails. Positive responses were gathered in areas including the perceived level of security of deposits at banks, and confidence in small to medium-sized banks. "The successful launch of the scheme last year marked an important milestone in the development of the financial safety net in Hong Kong. Building on a strong foundation established in the past year, we will continue to refine and enhance the functioning of the scheme to contribute to the well-being of depositors and the financial stability of Hong Kong," Chairman of the Board Andrew Chan said. Board's Chief Executive Office Raymond Li said that apart from maintaining the scheme's efficient operation, the board will work on strengthening public understanding of it. The board will also seek to enhance the campaign's effectiveness by diversifying the channels and means for disseminating the board's messages. Hong Kong recorded a 10 billion Hong Kong dollars (1.29 billion U.S. dollars) surplus in its balance of payment account in the second quarter, Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department said on Monday. The figure accounts for 2.7 percent of Hong Kong's gross domestic product (GDP), compared to a surplus of 12.4 billion Hong Kong dollars (1.60 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, the department said. Of the major balance of payments components, there was a current account surplus of 26.2 billion Hong Kong dollars (3.37 billion U.S. dollars), compared to 62.8 billion Hong Kong dollars (8.08 billion U.S. dollars) in the previous quarter. With goods imports increasing faster than goods exports, the visible trade deficit rose to 46.2 billion Hong Kong dollars (5.95 billion U.S. dollars), from 35.4 billion Hong Kong dollars (4.56 billion U.S. dollars) in the same quarter last year. Overall, a combined visible and invisible trade surplus of 24.7 billion Hong Kong dollars (3.18 billion U.S. dollars) was recorded, smaller than that of 26.1 billion Hong Kong dollars (3.36 billion U.S. dollars) in the same period last year, the department said.
A thirst for quality stocks among mainland investors has allowed the A shares of several Hong Kong-listed mainland companies to command high offering prices.
People whose fingers are too dry, wet or unclean are likely to encounter difficulties with fingerprint verification when using the e-channels, the Immigration Department said yesterday. "To avoid delay, they should moisten, wipe or clean their fingers before entering the e-channels," a department spokesman said. The appeal was made as more than 9.8 million people are expected to cross the border by land, sea and air during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Golden Week holiday period. Commenting on the coming week's cross-border traffic, the spokesman said about 16.6 percent more passengers than last year will cross the border, either entering or leaving the SAR, during the period. Of the estimated 9.8 million people, 7.6 million - or 18.6 percent more than last year - will pass through land control points. The peak period of cross-boundary traffic will fall between today and October 8 when about 4.14 million passengers - an average of 276,000 daily - will pass through the Lo Wu control point. This represents 55 percent of the total estimated cross-boundary passenger traffic and an increase of 3.7 percent over the same period last year. The number of departing passengers at the Lo Wu control point is expected to reach a peak of 200,000 on Saturday, while the peak for arrivals will be October 1, with 213,000 people returning to Hong Kong. Saturday will also see the total daily traffic reach 350,000. Lok Ma Chau passenger traffic will also be heavy with a forecast of about 2.1 million passengers, a daily average of 141,000 and an increase of 4.8 percent over last year. The two new control points at Shenzhen Bay and the Lok Ma Chau Spur Line will give more choice. Cathay Pacific (SEHK: 0293) and Air China (SEHK: 0753, announcements, news) are teaming up to block Singapore Airlines' bid to buy a stake in China Eastern (SEHK: 0670), as consolidation in China's airline industry heats up, market sources said last night. Shares of Cathay Pacific rose 10.7 per cent yesterday to a record HK$22.70 before trading was suspended pending an announcement of a price-sensitive proposed transaction. Shares in China Eastern closed at a record HK$9.72, up 12.4 per cent. Sources said Cathay Pacific was trying to acquire a stake in China Eastern. The holding, along with Air China's 11 per cent stake in the Shanghai-based carrier, could allow the two airlines to vote down Singapore's bid for China Eastern at a shareholder meeting in December. The deal requires the support of two-thirds of minority shareholders. The lure is China Eastern's Hong Kong-Shanghai services and Shanghai's possible role as an important international aviation hub for the mainland. China Eastern said it had no comment on the speculation about Cathay Pacific and that its transaction with Singapore Airlines would proceed. Cathay and Singapore Airlines have long been intense competitors.
Applications closed for the 44th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards on Thursday, and this year's blockbusters, "Lust, Caution", "Sun Also Rises" and "Secret" were among the entrants. Following their clash at the Venice Film Festival, directors Ang Lee and Jiang Wen will again compete, this time for the so-called Chinese Oscars, according to the Huashang Morning Post. New director, Jay Chou, reportedly applied for several awards for his directorial debut, "Secret", including the best-film, best-actor, and best-actress awards. The nominees for this year's awards will be announced October 27. The awards ceremony will take place on December 8. Ang Lee's Golden Lion winner "Lust, Caution" has been approved for release in China at the end of October after being shorn of some of its sexual content. Friday's Beijing News reported that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said the movie "was cut but not by much". "The shortened version will debut in late October," the SARFT source was quoted as saying. Earlier reports said that only seven minutes of the film, all deemed too sexually explicit, were cut by Lee himself and all four main sex scenes remained almost intact. It has been previously suggested the film could be cut by as much as 30 minutes. The movie's distributor in the Chinese mainland also confirmed the news but said it did not know the details. "Lust, Caution" won the top Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, Lee's second win in Venice following "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005.
A state-run cafe has opened in Beijing’s Forbidden City on the premises where Starbucks closed down earlier this year amid charges the US chain sullied the site, state media said. The “Forbidden City Cafe,” managed by the authorities that oversee the historic imperial quarters, serves both coffee and traditional Chinese tea, the Xinhua news agency reported late on Sunday. “We want to provide tourists with a package of products relating to the imperial palace and Chinese culture,” Li Wenru, deputy curator of the Forbidden City, was quoted as saying. In July, Starbucks closed its coffee shop, which it had operated in the Forbidden City since 2000, after declining to offer other brands for sale to customers. Sept 25, 2007
HSBC Holdings (0005) announced on Friday it will close its subprime mortgage subsidiary in the United States, saying it is "no longer sustainable." Independence not at risk: HKEx boss - The Hong Kong government's move to increase its stake in the local bourse will not hurt its independence - rather it could enhance its flexibility and smooth future development, said Ronald Arculli, chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (0388). There is a good chance the United States economy will fall into a recession within the next 12 months which would cause a ripple effect slowing down China's rate of growth, said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
A showdown between Anson Chan Fang On-sang and Regina Ip Lau Suk- yee in the Legislative Council by- election in December will definitely create headlines and boost voter turnout, Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong founding chairman Jasper Tsang Yok- sing said on Friday. Cathay Pacific and Air China are teaming up to block Singapore Airlines' bid to buy a stake in China Eastern, as consolidation in China's airline industry heats up.
The ICAC has arrested four people, including two executive directors and a senior accountant of a listed company, for alleged bribery in relation to the acquisition of a bio-engineering company. A director of the bio-engineering company was also arrested during an anti-graft officers' operation, code-named "Wise Man", which started on Wednesday. In a statement released last night, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said the investigation arose from a complaint that alleged two of the listed company's executive directors offered "advantages" to the director of the bio-engineering company. The ICAC did not reveal the name of the listed company, but a commission source revealed the company was Extrawell Group. Extrawell's principal business is marketing and distributing pharmaceutical products on the mainland. Stock trading in the company has been suspended since Wednesday, following the arrest of the two directors. "The alleged advantages were said to be rewards for facilitating the acquisition of the bio-engineering company by the listed company at an inflated price," an ICAC spokesman said. "The acquisition was made through another firm that was allegedly controlled by one of the executive directors." The listed company's executive directors also allegedly offered advantages to an independent non-executive director of the company in return for the independent director's resignation to facilitate the acquisition of the bio-engineering company, the ICAC added. "It was also alleged that the listed company's executive directors and senior accountant conspired to use false documents in relation to the acquisition, with intent to deceive the board of directors and minority shareholders," the spokesman said. The Tourism Board will probably not need as much additional government funding for promotions in the next financial year as it has in the past, board chairman James Tien Pei-chun said yesterday. Henry Tang Ying-yen, then financial secretary, announced in March 2005 that HK$500 million in additional funding would be provided to support the board's new promotional activities in 2005 and last year. A total of HK$470 million was allocated for the 2006 Discover Hong Kong Year campaign, the further development of the family and business visitor sectors and promotion of the Quality Tourism Services scheme. Some HK$70 million was left over from the Discover Hong Kong campaign and was carried over to the current financial year. The government did not grant any additional funding this year. Under the Discover Hong Kong campaign, which ran until the Lunar New Year holiday this year, the board invited about 5,000 travel agents and 1,500 journalists to experience the city's top tourist attractions. The publicity would be worth about HK$1.36 billion, the board had argued. Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee, then board chairman, said the board had forecast the campaign would help boost total visitor arrivals last year to 27.14 million. However, last year's total was 25.25 million.
Sept 24, 2007
Mainland property developer Sino-Ocean Land (SEHK: 3377) Holdings raised HK$11.9 billion after pricing its Hong Kong initial public offering at the top of an indicated range, a source familiar with the deal said on Friday, when the market hit record highs. Investors have been crowding into mainland property stocks despite worries of a bubble, and Sino-Ocean Land’s top-end pricing bodes well for other mainland developers in the initial public offering pipeline, including Soho China and China Aoyuan Property Group, which are raising as much as US$2.1 billion (HK$16.4 billion) combined. Sino-Ocean Land sold 1.551 billion shares, or 36.6 per cent of its enlarged share capital, at HK$7.70 apiece in the third-largest Hong Kong IPO this year. The shares were scheduled to begin trading on September 28. Sino-Ocean, owned by China’s largest shipping firm, Cosco International, and state-run conglomerate Sinochem, focuses on mid- to high-end residential property in Beijing and plans to expand in northern China’s Bohai Bay region. Shares in developer Country Garden Holdings, which raised US$1.66 billion in an April IPO, have more than doubled from their listing price. Top-end pricing would value Sino-Ocean at 22 times forecast this year earnings and 15.5 times prospective next year earnings, a source said previously. Rival Beijing Capital Land, with 85 per cent of its land bank in the Bohai Bay region, trades at 17.3 times forecast earnings for this year, while Guangzhou R&F Properties (SEHK: 2777), with 48 per cent of its land in that region, trades at 36 times. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were the underwriters of the Sino-Ocean deal.
The United States will keep trying to override calls for protectionism and promote better mutual understanding with China, a senior official of the US Department of Treasury said in Beijing yesterday. Under-Secretary for International Affairs David McCormick warned that the talk of protectionism could easily invoke national passions, hence it is important for both the US and China to keep in mind the tremendous benefits arising out of openness in foreign investment. "When China succeeds, the United States succeeds," said McCormick in his speech, "Rebalancing the US and China Economic Relationship" at Peking University. The US must not sacrifice long-term gains of openness by pursuing short-term and misguided responses to the challenges presented by global international markets, he said. IOC cancels plan of Olympic torch relay passing through Chinese Taipei - The International Olympic Committee has cancelled the plan of the Olympic torch relay passing through Chinese Taipei, a BOCOG spokesman announced Friday.
China launched the third earth resources satellite co-developed with Brazil on Wednesday morning and the two nations will jointly develop two more satellites. The satellite, named 02B, was launched on a Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket which blasted off at 11:26 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province. The satellite separated from the rocket 12 minutes after lift-off, entering its preset sun-synchronous orbit, at a perigee of 738 kilometers and an apogee of 750 kilometers. The 1,452-kilogram satellite with a designed lifespan of two years, will gather resources information and send images to China, Brazil and other countries, for use in agricultural production, environmental protection, city planning and land resources surveys. This is the third earth resources satellite jointly developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE). The previous two satellites were launched in 1999 and 2003 respectively. They are remote sensing satellites that can collect information through high definition cameras.
Sept 21 - 23, 2007
Born to spend - Waiting for a friend in Shenzhen's plush Kingglory Plaza, Chen Jing, 25, admires her new red Nokia mobile phone. Complete with 3G and MP3 features, the phone cost just over 3,000 yuan (US$400) -- Chen's entire monthly wage. But she's more than pleased with her purchase. "It looks really good," she says. Extravagant spending perhaps, but female consumers like Chen are spurring much-needed growth in Chinese consumption and helping offset the country's high savings rate, a source of tension with its trading partners. "Urban women consumers will be spending much of their hard-earned cash on personal travel and related cultural and recreational activities, dining out, shopping, as well as buying cars and pursuing urban leisure lifestyles," Yuwa Heidrick-Wong, economic adviser to MasterCard International, said. Their spending will help determine which foreign brands succeed in China. Credit Suisse cites luxury goods firms LVMH , Christian Dior and Valentino among its top picks along with watch maker Swatch Group as well as Nokia and Coca-Cola Co. China's retail sales rose 15.7 percent in the first eight months of this year, reflecting rising incomes and urbanisation. Household consumption, however, is the lowest of any major economy. It fell to 36.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2006 from 37.7 percent in 2005, when the comparable figures for the United States and India were 70 percent and 61 percent. The downtrend is now new: in 1990 China's ratio was 49 percent. That makes China too dependent on investment, which risks overheating, and exports, whose share of GDP has doubled in the past decade to 40 percent -- more than twice that of the United States and Japan. If China consumed more, imports would rise, narrowing a ballooning trade surplus. Reduced reliance on exports, moreover, would make the economy less vulnerable to global economic shocks. "Exports depend on the health of your trading partners: if your trading partners go down, you go down," said Chris Leung, China economist at DBS Bank in Hong Kong.
A government lot in New Territories was sold for 4.55 billion HK dollars (584 million U.S. dollars) Monday at the year's fifth land auction held by Lands Department of Hong Kong. The lot in Tai Po of New Territories was sold to Pacific Bond Ltd, with the opening bid standing at 3.08 billion HK dollars (395 million U.S. dollars). Tai Po Lot has a site area of about 22,126 square meters and is designated for private residential purposes. A minimum gross floor area of 39,827 square meters must be completed. Analysts said the final sale price is reasonable as the winning consortium will be able to derive synergistic benefits by combining the site's development with two other nearby sites which were secured in March.
China's currency strengthened against the US dollar on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut the prime interest rate by 50 basis points.
Sept 18 - 20, 2007
Sept 15 - 17, 2007
Hong Kong is to strengthen its role as a regional technology servicing hub, said John Tsang Chun-wah, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Friday on the opening ceremony of the 'Innovation Expo 07' showcasing the latest achievements of Hong Kong in innovation, technology and design. He said the government had been actively promoting innovation and technology by putting in place funding programs and infrastructural support, including the establishment of the Innovation and Technology Fund, the Hong Kong Science Park, Cyberport and five Research and Development Centers. The "Innovation Expo 07" features more than 100 exhibitors from local universities, research and development organizations, industry support organizations, technology and design enterprises and technology education organizations. There will also be more than 20 informative seminars on various topics related to innovation and technology, 50 Design Tech Workshops targeted at youngsters, and attempts to set two world records, the highest number of Lego robots in a Tug-of-War and the highest number of students making Lego robots together. A large-scale model of the Three Gorges Dam, a major engineering project in the Chinese mainland, is presented at the expo. The nine provinces in the Pan-Pearl River Delta and the Macao Special Administrative Region will also showcase their technology achievements. Visitors to the expo are invited to vote for their "Most Wanted Technology Breakthrough" from a list of 10 technology breakthroughs identified from almost 300 wishes collected during the Innovation Festival's opening road show held last month. The "Innovation Expo 07" is one of the major celebration programs of the 10th anniversary of establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and also a part of the ten-week " Innovation Festival 07".
PCCW (0008) chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai denied rumors he has committed any funding for Anson Chan Fang On-sang's campaign for a Legislative Council seat in a by-election to be held in December.
A senior Chinese official saidon Thursday that Mattel has admitted it took full responsibility for design errors which led to the recalls of millions of Chinese toys. "In a letter to Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, an executive from Mattel admitted the company should take full responsibility for the recalls," said Wei Chuanzhong, vice minister of AQSIQ, referring to the design faults in toys with tiny magnets that could be swallowed. The company also admitted that there were nothing wrong with Chinese manufacturers over the recalls, said Wei at a press conference held in the Chinese embassy here, adding some 85 percent of the Chinese toys recalled in the past weeks were due to the design problems. A Chinese investigation into the latest recall has found that the toys were produced according to Mattel's specifications, he said. Only 15 percent of the toys targeted in earlier recalls contained excessive amounts of lead, said the Chinese official, noting several Chinese manufacturers involved in the scandal have been harshly punished. A report released by two Canadian business professors days ago also concluded that most of the recalls of toys made in China are because of design errors, not manufacturing problems or the lead paint issue. The report, which analyzed Chinese-made toy recalls by going through recalls issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1988 to August, 2007, found of the 550 toy recall,76.4 percent were due to problems that could be attributed to design flaws. Of the 20 million toys recalled by Mattel in the past month, 80 percent were because they contained small magnets, which is a design flaw, said the report.
Sept 12 - 14, 2007
Hong Kong offers the Chinese mainland companies a range of financial services and capital-raising options, Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang said in Xiamen, according to news from the Information Services Department of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. Speaking at the Hong Kong - Your Platform to Go Global forum in Xiamen of Fujian province, Tsang said that Hong Kong has a solid track record of companies, large and small, benefiting from our financial services, the news said. Director-General of Investment Promotion Mike Rowse said his department has helped 28 mainland companies to establish or expand operations in Hong Kong this year. "And by year's end, we expect to top the record of 41 achieved in 2006," he added. More than 60 companies from Fujian are already using Hong Kong to raise capital, identify international business partners, upgrade their management skills and test their products and services in a fully-blown market economy and cosmopolitan environment. During the past decades, interest in Hong Kong from Fujian has risen considerably. According to local government statistics, investment from the 105 Fujian firms with a presence in Hong Kong totaled 253 million U.S. dollars, or 33 percent of the province's total foreign direct investment as of June.
China prepares for residents' direct investment in HK shares - China has finished at least half of the preparations for the local residents' direct investment in Hong Kong stock market, Zhu Min, vice president of Bank of China (BOC), said Saturday. "The preparations go on smoothly, but there are still many technical problems yet to be addressed," Zhu said on the sidelines of the Inaugural Annual Meeting of the New Champions hosted by the World Economic Forum in China's northeastern coastal city of Dalian. It takes a lot of time to prepare new softwares and investors education and train staff members. However, we have no plan to delay it," he told Xinhua. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange announced On August 20 the Chinese mainland individuals would be able to directly buy HK shares through BOC's Tianjin branch amid efforts to cut the country's huge forex reserve and excessive liquidity. "Tianjin is the only pilot city. It's hard to say if the program will expand to other cities in the future," Zhu noted in response to earlier media reports saying the program would be expanded to many other cities and be launched in early September. "The program will not have big impact on the sales of qualified domestic institutional investors products as the latter have already been given go-ahead to invest in almost all the global equity markets," he said.
Cheung Kong Infrastructure (1038), the infrastructure arm of Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa (0013), is making a 1.5 billion (HK$23.61 million) offer for the former Norweb electricity distribution business held by United Utilities, according to a London report.
Ocean Park will increase ticket prices by more than 10 per cent from next month because of rising operational costs and expanding facilities. From October 1, a one-day ticket price for adults will rise from HK$185 to HK$208, and from HK$93 to HK$103 for children aged three to 11. The last price rise for regular tickets was in April 2004, the park said. The park's deputy chief executive, Matthias Li Shing-chung, said it had opened new attractions and needed capital for further development. He said the park was also shouldering interest on a HK$5.5 billion loan for redevelopment and needed to keep an appropriate cash reserve. Chairman Allan Zeman said: "We fully understand it is sometimes difficult when prices are raised, and we are addressing this by our 11 caring initiatives." The initiatives include an Ocean Park Social Care Ticket, enabling people from organizations registered with the Social Welfare Department to visit the park for HK$20. Local senior citizens aged over 65 and people with disabilities can gain free admission to the park at any time, while Hong Kong ID card holders can visit for free on their birthday. A Tourism Commission spokesman said the government understood the park's need to adjust ticket prices and welcomed its move to offer discounts for needy people. In July, the park said it had almost 5 million visitors in the year to June 30, breaking attendance records for the third consecutive year. Rival Hong Kong Disneyland charges HK$295 on regular days and HK$350 on peak and special days, with children charged HK$210 on regular days and HK$250 on peak and special days. Organized crime outfits in Guangdong are growing bigger, becoming more sophisticated and recruiting more youngsters thanks to triads from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the province's Higher People's Court says. Reviewing the results of an 18-month crackdown on organized crime, officials said there were worrying signs that "overseas" triads had taken root in Guangdong. "Overseas infiltration is getting more obvious," said the court's spokesman, Chen Cao. Triads were involved in industries including transport, construction, entertainment and wholesale markets, he said. Many gang members were in their 20s. Some were teenagers. "Crime organizations from overseas have been increasingly open and daring in recruiting members, particularly those with no proper jobs. They are expanding into a network," the spokesman was quoted as saying by Xinhua. Mr Cao cited a recent case in Guangzhou in which police found a local gang was linked to the Tianlinhui, or Heavenly Way Gang, in Taiwan. The gang controlled many local restaurants and extorted money from them, the report said. Taiwanese businessmen in the Pearl River Delta admit they are subjected to extortion and violence by Taiwanese gangs who followed them to the mainland. "The situation was particularly serious three years ago, when we had several blackmail and murder cases in Foshan , where many Taiwanese people set up factories," said Johnny Tsai, former chairman of the Taiwan Merchants Association in Foshan. He said the situation had improved after a police crackdown, but many Taiwanese businessmen, particularly in Dongguan and Xiamen , still suffered from the problem.
China Aviation Industry Corp. I (AVIC I) said it has inked a deal with General Electric (GE) to co-produce engines for the country's first homegrown commercial aircraft. With GE's technology support, AVIC I, China's leading aircraft maker, will produce the CF34-10A engine for its ARJ21-700 aircraft in a subsidiary in northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. It was the first Sino-foreign cooperative program on the production of passenger aircraft engines, said a statement from AVIC I. The cooperation came four years after AVIC I decided to import the GE-developed engine to power its ARJ21-700, a regional passenger jet that has 70 to 90 seats. Both the ARJ21-700 and its longer version the ARJ21-900 are expected to make the maiden flight in March 2008, with mass production to begin in 2009. AVIC I had received 71 orders for the ARJ21 series by January this year, from domestic airline companies such as Shanghai Airlines, Shandong Airlines and Xiamen Airlines. Sales of the aircraft will reach 50 units annually on the domestic and global markets in the next few years, according to AVIC I Commercial Aircraft Co. Ltd.
China's railway departments need to boost innovation efforts to expand the nation's rail transportation capacity, Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said on Saturday. "We should crank up innovation efforts to master the designs and construction technologies of the high speed railways and cargo arteries," Zeng said while visiting a railway technology exhibition in Beijing. "We should strive to reach the target of self designing and mass producing bullet trains that run at 200 kilometers per hour or higher as well as the high horse power locomotives that are as good as their foreign counterparts." Zeng also urged the railway authorities to more vigorously cut energy consumption and pollution and provide better and safer services. The country has made huge progress in the railway sector over the past three decades, the vice premier said. "The operation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and renovation of existing rails have initially alleviated the nation's rail transportation bottleneck," he added.
MasterCard Worldwide released a report on the luxuries market on September 4, 2007, saying that by 2016, young wealthy Chinese might spend US$24.6 billion on luxuries, while elder wealthy Chinese might spend US$18 billion. Young moneybags in China are usually better educated and have a more open attitude toward consumption than elder ones, thus they are more willing to spend money. The demand for luxury goods in the entire Asian-Pacific region will grow by 12% every year, and the market for elder people might even witness a 3-digit growth. Most wealthy Chinese are more prone to spend money on luxury items than on luxury service. Sept 11, 2007
APEC leaders at their annual meeting are to announce a regional goal of a reduction in energy intensity by at least 25 percent by 2030 from the 2005 level in support to United Nations global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) will also announce an APEC-wide regional goal of increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares of all types of forests by 2020, according to a draft declaration on climate change, energy security and clean development, obtained by Xinhua. Chinese vice premier Wu Yi Friday called on multinationals to strengthen their cooperation on technological innovation with local partners. "We hope the multinational companies will build more high-level research and development centers in China and establish technological cooperation alliances with leading local firms," Wu said while presiding a panel meeting with delegates from 70 multinationals in Xiamen, southeast coastal province of Fujian. China also hopes the transnational corporations can adjust and improve their investment strategies in line with China's general targets on economic and social development and increase their investment in the high-tech and high-end services industries, she stated. "The Chinese government will actively explore new ways for foreign and overseas investment so as to participate in the international economic cooperation on higher levels and in broader fields." "The government will improve policies to encourage foreign firms to invest in the West, Northeast and Tianjin Binhai New Area," Wu said. The vice premier added, "we will also support oversea investment by Chinese businesses and encourage them to carry out cooperation with foreign peers in this regard."
HSBC Holdings (0005) has come under fire from US activist investor Knight Vinke Asset Management, who urged the bank to review its strategy for the future direction and governance of the group. In a separate development, it emerged that HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, the German bank controlled by HSBC Holdings, would consider buying IKB Deutsche Industriebank after it had to be bailed out over the subprime mortgage rout. HSBC was thrown into the spotlight on Thursday when Knight Vinke, which prompted the restructuring of oil major Shell, called on Europe's largest bank to examine its strategy, but declined to comment on specific demands.
Sept 10, 2007
Macao International Airport (MIA) and Canada's Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport inked a twin-airport agreement on Friday. Deng Jun, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the MIA Company Limited, said while addressing the agreement signing ceremony that the two airports under the treaty are to enhance cooperation in sectors including resource, marketing, airlines and management. The MIA handled 3.7 million passengers and 35,376 take-offs and touch-downs in the first eight months of 2007, according to statistics released by the airport. Winnipeg, being located in Canada's western province of Manitoba, boasts one of the busiest airports of the country. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government notified Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) on Friday that it has increased its shareholding in HKEx, for the account of the Exchange Fund, to beyond 5 percent of the share issue of HKEx. According to news from the Information Services department of the HKSAR government, the HKSAR government's shareholding in HKEx amounts to 5.88 percent. Hong Kong Financial Secretary John C Tsang said that the gradual acquisition by the HKSAR government of a significant share in HKEx was a demonstration of the government's long-term confidence in HKEx. The holdings in HKEx will be retained by the Exchange Fund as a strategic asset in support of the maintenance of Hong Kong as an international financial center, he added. "HKEx is one of Hong Kong's principal engines of growth, an important part of our financial infrastructure, and a key agent in the growth of Hong Kong as an international financial center," Tsang said. "This acquisition underlines the Government's support for HKEx and enables the HKSAR government, over the longer term, to contribute as a shareholder to the promotion of HKEx's strategic development," Tsang added. Hong Kong's foreign currency reserve assets added 1.2 billion U.S. dollars to 138.3 billion U.S. dollars in August, the Monetary Authority said here Friday. The latest figure represents about seven times the currency in circulation or 36 percent of Hong Kong dollar M3. Hong Kong is the world's ninth-largest holder of foreign currency reserves.
HK’s port cargo throughput rises by 7pc - Hong Kong’s total port cargo throughput increased by seven per cent to 63.8 million tons in the second quarter compared with the previous year, latest statistics released showed on Friday. The Census and Statistics Department figures showed that within this total, inward port cargo rose by five per cent to 37.3 million tons, while outward port cargo went up by 10 per cent to 26.6 million tons. For the first half of 2007, total port cargo throughput increased by three per cent over a year earlier to 118.8 million tons. A government spokesman said: “Within this total, inward port cargo decreased slightly by one per cent to 69.7 million tons, while outward port cargo grew by eight per cent to 49.1 million tons.” On a quarter-to-quarter comparison, total port cargo throughput increased by 11 per cent in the second quarter. Within this total, inward and outward port cargo rose by 12 per cent and nine per cent, respectively. “Within port cargo, seaborne and river cargo increased by 10 per cent and one per cent over a year earlier to 46.3 million tons and 17.5 million tons respectively in the second quarter of 2007,” the spokesman said. Within inward port cargo, imports recorded virtually no change over a year earlier to 21.0 million tons, while inward trans-shipment increased by 12 per cent to 16.2 million tons in the second quarter. “For outward port cargo, exports (including domestic exports and re-exports) decreased by 14 per cent over a year earlier to 8.8 million tons, while outward trans-shipment went up by 28 per cent to 17.8 million tons,” he said. Within port cargo, seaborne cargo increased by six per cent in the first half of 2007 over a year earlier to 85.6 million tons, while river cargo decreased by four per cent to 33.1 million tons. Within inward port cargo, imports decreased by eight per cent in the first half of 2007 over a year earlier to 38.5 million tons, while inward trans-shipment rose by nine per cent to 31.2 million tons. For outward port cargo, exports decreased by 13 per cent to 16.4 million tons, while outward trans-shipment went up by 23 per cent to 32.6 million tons. Hong Kong has one of the world’s largest, busiest and most efficient ports. The city is the world’s largest exporter of garments, watches and clocks, toys, games and electronic products. Hong Kong acts as an entrepot; many goods from the mainland are exported to Hong Kong where they have valued added to them and are then re-exported again overseas.
China will raise the reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points for commercial banks to 12.5 percent.
Sept 8 - 9, 2007
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from China's mainland and Hong Kong to Australia has increased 196 percent over the past five years, an Australian government agency said Thursday. In 2006, FDI from China's mainland and Hong Kong accounted for 4 percent of the total stock of all FDI in Australia from the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies, Invest Australia, the Australian government's inward investment agency, said in a press release here.
Social workers staged their largest-ever protest yesterday, then threatened to escalate their industrial action if the government refuses to review the controversial lump-sum grant system. Holding banners and chanting slogans, thousands of social workers took a half-day leave in the afternoon and marched from Edinburgh Place in Central to the government headquarters. Peter Cheung Kwok-che, president of the Social Workers' General Union, said 5,000 serving and former social workers, as well as welfare officers, took part. "We will consider holding a strike which may last for several days. And we don't rule out other industrial actions such as work-to-rule." The social workers first staged a protest in June, demanding the government review the grant system, which they said had cut funding of welfare groups and reduced pay. Protesters yesterday demanded that the funding of NGOs revert to the level of 2000, when the lump-sum grant system was introduced. "This year, the government's funding to NGOs should be about HK$7.3 billion under the lump-sum grant system at year 2000 level," Mr Cheung said. "But the actual funding to NGOs was only HK$6.7 billion." He also demanded the pay of NGO social workers be put on a par with government social workers. A government social worker with a degree gets a starting salary of HK$22,910, but those in NGOs get HK$15,000 to HK$17,000, he said.
Peter Tsi Ka-kei has quit as executive director of the Hong Kong Int'l Film Festival. Resignation was tendered Monday to the fest board, which accepted it with immediate effect. Tsi confirmed to Variety that he had resigned. But he offered no further explanation. A spokesman for the festival cited only "personal reasons." According to industry sources, Tsi's abrupt departure follows a period of mounting tension within the org. Tsi had long been outspoken on the need for more financial and promotional support for the festival from gov't sources. The fest receives some HK$7 million ($900,000) from the Arts Development Council towards a budget of $2.5 million. But the 2007 event faced criticisms from film critics that fest had become too commercial as a result of its quest for sponsorship and private sector cash. In the short term Tsi's responsibilities will be shared by the fest's artistic director Li Cheuk-to and administrative director Jannie Ma. Spokesman said that fest will seek applicants for a replacement through public advertisement. The HKIFF Society organizes two annual events, the protracted March HKIFF, which has completed 31 frames, and the more youth oriented Summer IFF. Next edition of the HKIFF is skedded to run March 17 - April 16, 2008.
State-owned conglomerate China Resources (Holdings) will invest US$1.2 billion to expand its semiconductor production in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, and move up the value chain. Sept 7, 2007
Hong Kong banks may not lower their prime interest rates immediately after September 18 - even if the US Federal Reserve decides to cut the Fed funds target rate on that date - due to recent jumps in interbank rates, Citigroup economists said yesterday.
While
power plants are the biggest sources of air pollution in Hong Kong, more than
half of the electricity consumed here - 3,097 kilowatt-hours per person each
year, or 2,081 tones of carbon dioxide produced - is used for air-conditioning
and lighting.
Rare artefacts from the British Museum – covering a time span of two million years – will feature in an exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from September 14 to December 2. The show entitled “Treasures of the World’s Cultures from the British Museum” will present about 270 sculptures, ceramics, wood carvings, jewellery, drawings and prints from various cultures. “Visitors will be able to explore diverse cultures from ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, as well as other styles of European, African, American and Asian art,” said Thomas Chow Tat-ming, director of Leisure and Cultural Services. Mr Chow said the exhibition was among a number of official events to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 1997 handover. Highlight items will include an Egyptian wooden mummy board, “the Unlucky Mummy” of about 3,000 years ago; a “Queen’s lyre” of about 2600-2400 BC found in the Royal Cemetery at Ur; and a 13th century Egyptian brass “Astrolabe” with silver inlay. Other items will include a marble Roman statue of Dionysus, the God of Wine, of the 2nd century; a walrus ivory chess-piece made in about 1150-1200 and found in Scotland; a portrait-head of Euripides, the leading playwright of Classical Athens; and a nude male drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. “It will give Hong Kong people a rare opportunity to experience an invaluable collection of treasures from the world’s oldest and greatest museum,” said Stephen Bradley, the British consul-general in Hong Kong. “I hope that this exhibition will be popular with families and that we will see more and more cultural collaborations of this type between Hong Kong and the UK in the future,” he added.
Chinese mainland's exported frozen shrimps are safe for consumption, China's chamber for food export said in a newly issued statement, responding to Taiwan authorities' late ban on the product. The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Animal By-Products (CFNA) said the mainland has been carrying out strict supervision on raw materials and finished products for frozen shrimp exports, and "nitrofuran is absolutely forbidden to be used in raising shrimps." "Each shipment has to pass drug residue tests before export," the statement said. The Taiwan authorities has banned shrimp imports from the mainland after residue of the forbidden antibiotic nitrofurans, a cancer-causing drug, was discovered in five shipments between July and August this year, local media reported. In the first half of 2007, Taiwan imported 2,500 tons of frozen shrimps from the mainland. The CFNA, however, admitted there are cases of illegal exports, and blame them for the recent food safety problems spotted in mainland aquatic food exports. The substandard illegal exports "have greatly tarnished the reputation of mainland aquatic products," it said. The CFNA opposed extreme trade protectionism in any form which may mix up the illegal with legal activities, or the individual cases with the panorama, the statement said. And the CFNA urged relevant authorities to keep sober and revoke import restriction in any form. The CFNA was a non-profit national trade and industry organization which represents over 5,400 members on the mainland.
Ten Chinese movies will be sent to the coming Hollywood China Film Festival, said the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) here Wednesday. The movies, including My Dream, The Knot, The Tokyo Trial and The Longest Night in Shanghai, are all latest motions in China, the SARFT said in a press release. My Dream, a documentary on disabled dancers of China Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe, had been released at Cannes in May this year winning favorable response. The third Hollywood China Film Festival is scheduled to be held at Hollywood from Nov. 1 to 29, jointly hosted by EDI Media Inc., Ruddy Morgan Organization, Shenhart Entertainment and Sun Media Investment Group of Companies, the press release said. The first festival was held in September 2005 in Los Angeles, the United States, aiming to promote exchanges between film makers of the two countries and introduce more Chinese movies to U.S. audience.
Toymaker Mattel Incorporated on Tuesday announced a third recall of Chinese-made toys, saying it would take back more than 800,000 units globally that contain “impermissible” levels of lead. In total, 522,000 US toys and 322,000 outside the United States are being recalled. The toys were shipped between August 3, 3006, and July 31, this year, the company said. The latest recall involves three Fisher-Price toy models and eight Barbie brand play sets.
Sept 6, 2007
Bribes and hidden trade barriers are costing APEC member states at least US$148 billion (HK$1.15 trillion) in lost economic activity, according to a World Bank report published yesterday.
Multiplex Cinema (MCL) and Shaw Property Holdings are building Hong Kong's biggest ever multiplex: The Grand Cinema. The more than HK$100 million (US$12.8 million) project will have 12 screens and more than 1,600 seats. Located at Elements, a high-end shopping mall at MTR's Kowloon Station--a public-transport train stop--the multiplex is skedded for an Oct. 1 soft opening. To help kickoff The Grand Cinema's Infrasonic System, U.S. comic book artist and animator Pat Lee will make a 30-second CG animation to highlight the technology that allows some sounds to be felt but not heard. Lee has worked on "Spider-man¨ and "Transformers¨ comic series. The cinema will be operated by MCL, which is the sister company to distrib Intercontinental. MCL currently operates three other cinema sites in Hong Kong: MCL JP Cinema in Causeway Bay, MCL Cinema Metro in Tseung Kwan O and MCL Kornhill Cinema in Taikoo. Not only will the facility house theaters, but also a thematic restaurant, gallery, interactive zone and souvenir shop.
Sept 5, 2007
The new second hangar at the Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre will be able to handle the next generation of large business jets, said Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah on Monday. Mr Tsang said this would include large planes such as the Boeing 737-700 and the new Airbus A380 – which is currently in Hong Kong for the first time. The financial secretary was speaking at the Grand Opening Ceremony of Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre to celebrate the opening of the second hangar. “Since its inception, the Business Aviation Centre has positioned itself as Asia’s premier executive aviation support facility and has played an important role in meeting the travelling needs of senior business executives,” Mr Tsang said. He said the new hangar, which occupies a site of 4,500 square metres, was the product of a HK$100 million investment. “This investment is also a vote of confidence in the future of executive jet traffic, which we expect will continue its rapid growth in the light of our vibrant economy and the exponential growth of the mainland economy.” Mr Tsang said the second hangar will be able to respond to other market needs. “The improved services of the centre will also strengthen the connectivity of the Hong Kong International Airport, which prides itself on being a regional and international aviation centre and one of the gateway hubs of the mainland. The finance secretary said the Airport Authority and the government were working closely to maintain the long-term competitiveness of the airport. “Apart from expanding the air network, we are pursuing various initiatives to stay ahead in the highly competitive aviation environment,” added Mr Tsang. Hong Kong’s International Airport has over the past few years enjoyed strong growth in passenger traffic. According to the HKIA website, annual passenger and cargo throughput reached 44.4 million and 3.6 million tonnes in 2006, up 9.1 per cent and 5.2 per cent over 2005, respectively. Over 85 airlines operate at HKIA, linking Hong Kong with more than 150 locations round the world, including some 40 cities in the mainland. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced here Monday that the Authority has granted a banking licence to The Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, Ltd. (SCSB) under the Banking Ordinance. The granting of this banking licence took effect on Aug. 31, 2007. SCSB was incorporated in Taiwan in 1954. According to the July 2007 issue of The Banker, SCSB is the 11th largest bank in Taiwan and the 290th largest bank in the world in terms of tier one capital. After the granting of a banking licence to SCSB, the number of licensed banks in Hong Kong has increased to 143.
EganaGoldpfeil, (0048) a Hong Kong- based luxury goods maker, is struggling to secure liquidity for ongoing operations in the wake of revelations that it may not be able to recover HK$2.28 billion owed to it. Sing Tao News Corp will turn its English language newspaper The Standard into a free newspaper starting from next Monday in a move to explore new readers and advertising revenue. Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang said on Monday she was not interested in contesting a seat in the Legislative Council at present.
While China's week-long National Day holiday is still a month away, many people have already started making preparations for trips during the golden travel season. Han Kui, with China Youth Travel Service, said they have been busy dealing with travel applications starting from last week. "Tourists who plan to visit some far away places have all started registration. Packages to some hot destinations, like Europe and Maldives have almost been booked out." He says that domestically, Hainan, Yunnan and Sichuan are proving most popular, while Europe and Australia are the hottest overseas sites, as October is the best travel season for these destinations. However, along with the increase in enthusiasm, travel has come a hike in the prices of holiday packages across the board, whether domestic or overseas. China Youth Travel Service's Wang Yuan said, "As a result of the rise in air ticket and local hotels as well as transport, the price of all routes have generally risen 10 to 20 percent." For this reason, insiders are suggesting that travelers start their trips either a few days before the holiday begins or towards the end of it if they want to enjoy substantial discounts.
Sept 4, 2007
The mainland will intensify cooperation with the Hong Kong government to further improve food quality in the special administrative region, the country's top quality control official said on Friday. Li Changjiang, minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said that cooperation would focus on the increased exchange of information, updating of safety standards and improvement of laboratory facilities. "We've been attaching great importance to the safety of food exported to Hong Kong," Li told visiting Hong Kong Food and Health Secretary York Chow. Chow said Hong Kong imported 90 percent of its foodstuffs, with 60 percent of supplies coming from the mainland. In the first seven months of this year, the mainland exported 300,000 tons of fresh vegetables, 165,000 tons of meat, 75,000 tons of aquatic products, 850,000 live pigs, 4.6 million live poultry and 50 million eggs to Hong Kong. At the same time, the Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department conducted two extensive studies of food quality. These revealed that 99.2 percent and 99.6 percent of food on the local market was up to standard. "The results show that the quality of our food exported to Hong Kong can be guaranteed," Li said. But he acknowledged that problems remain and that the two sides should intensify cooperation to ensure that all exported food is safe. Chow thanked the mainland inspection and quarantine departments for their efforts to prevent substandard products from reaching Hong Kong. He also applauded the recent moves by the central government to improve food safety and product quality, and pledged Hong Kong's support for the campaign.
The subprime-led slowdown in US demand for Chinese goods
has been offset by growing demand in Asia and Europe - which has now taken over
the United States to absorb 67 percent of the mainland's exports, according to a
Hang Seng Bank report. Recent developments in Macau could threaten Hong Kong's existing convention and exhibition services, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Frederick Ma Si-hang admitted Friday.
Efforts to boost traffic on the underused Western Corridor by mainland authorities appear to be paying off as the number of cross-border trucks surged more than 80 times last month compared with July. According to Customs & Excise Department statistics, 11,865 trucks passed through the new vehicular crossing between August 1 and August 30, compared with 147 - an average of roughly five a day - in July. A Hong Kong woman who apparently hit a jackpot of HK$40 million in Macau is unlikely to cash in the amount due to a "machine error", the city's deputy gaming inspector said yesterday. "It seems that the amount will not be paid out," said António Pedro Silva Correia Paiva, deputy head of the Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau (DICJ) "It's a gross mistake [by the machine]," Mr Paiva said. Mr Paiva said it had happened because of a software problem in the machine at the StarWorld Casino. "That machine never pays [so much]. It's queer," he said. The middle-aged woman, surnamed Tin, deposited a HK$5 coin in a slot machine at the StarWorld casino about 8pm on Thursday. Shortly after she pushed a bet button, the red light started flashing on top of the machine and the number 40,000,000 appeared on the credit meter. But casino staff told Ms Tin it was a mechanical mistake and switched off the machine despite her protests. She then called the police. A spokeswoman for Galaxy Entertainment (SEHK: 0027), which owns StarWorld, said the maximum jackpot payout of that machine was HK$45,000.
Property sales in Hong Kong's primary and secondary markets increased last week, buoyed by a recovery of investor sentiment on the stock market and the pre-sale of units in Central Park Towers in Tin Shui Wai. Transactions in the primary market, which had languished since the beginning of the year as developers focused on selling remaining units in projects already launched, surged last week to more than 1,120 from 37 a week earlier, thanks to the launch of Central Park Towers. Property agents said about 98 per cent of the transactions came from the pre-sale of Central Park Towers, a mass residential project developed by Cheung Kong (Holdings) (SEHK: 0001) in Tin Shu Wai. Shih Wing-ching, chairman of Centaline (Holdings), the parent company of Centaline Property, said the strong sales showed buyer hunger for new residential projects. "Prices of most of the units in the project are below HK$2 million," he said, and the sale came with mortgage schemes that made the units more affordable. Fredy Wu Yat-fat, chief executive of Hong Kong Property, said many developers planned to relaunch the remaining units of their projects after seeing the strong sales in primary market. One project relaunched recently was Chianti in Discovery Bay, developed by HKR International (SEHK: 0480). Property agents said prices of the remaining 200 units in the development ranged between HK$3,000 and HK$5,000 per square foot. In secondary market transactions in the key 50 housing estates monitored by Ricacorp Properties, deals increased to 257 last week, a modest rise from 240 in the period a year earlier. The average price of the units sold rose 0.4 per cent to HK$4,063 per square foot from HK$3,907 a week earlier. David Chan Tai-wai, a director of Ricacorp Properties, said the transactions at key housing estates in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon increased 28 per cent and 4 per cent to 51 units and 105 units, respectively. The increase was driven by the stock market recovery and the willingness of flat owners to cut their asking prices, Mr Chan said. Secondary deals in the New Territories rose 2 per cent to 101 as property agents steered buyers to units in Central Park Towers with attractive commissions of 2.5 per cent. Kingswood Villas in Tin Shui Wai was the most popular housing estate in the secondary market two weeks ago, recording 23 transactions at an average price of HK$1,807 per square foot. However, this dropped 43 per cent to 13 units last week. For the overall secondary market, Mr Chan expects transactions to rise 10 per cent this week and property prices to remain stable.
Beijing will ban all unlicensed catering outlets and celebrity-starred medical ads by the end of this year, according to the capital's quality and food safety authorities. The city would focus its quality checkup on ten kinds of products , including food, drugs, home appliances and toys, said the municipal government when kicking off a four-month campaign aimed at improving product quality and food safety on Saturday. Vegetables, fruits, meat, edible oil, aquatic products, children's food and health food are the main targets in food checkups, according to a detailed plan for the campaign. The plan says that by the end of the year the city will close all unlicensed restaurants, all its food producers must be qualified, and no harmful material can be used in food processing. Medical advertisements in which public figures or experts testify the alleged effectiveness of products will also be banned. "Currently, the main problem in the city's product quality and food safety lies in small food processing factories and workshops and in the urban-rural fringe areas," said Lu Hao, vice mayor of Beijing. The checkups will be carried out by the city's industry and commerce, quality supervision and health departments. The Chinese government has been striving to improve product quality after a string of safety scares with China-made products at home and abroad. The scares included tainted wheat gluten for pet food and children's toys found to contain excessive lead levels. In the latest move, China's quality watchdog on Friday introduced the nation's landmark recall systems for unsafe food products and toys. The recall regulations went into effect on the same day.
The Chinese government is working on specific regulations for collecting royalties from television, radio stations for using music works, a senior official said in Beijing over the week. However, it has not been decided when the regulations will be publicized, Liu Binjie, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and the National Copyright Administration (NCA), was quoted as saying. The Chinese government's efforts in combating piracy and protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) have resulted in more shops and restaurants signing up to pay royalties on the ubiquitous background music that had long been used for free. Background music played at department stores or hotels -- also called "muzak"-- received legal protection in China in 2001 under revisions to the Copyright Law. The law states that both live and mechanical performances enjoy the same rights. Up to now, most big hotels, department stores and supermarkets in Beijing and Shanghai have paid fees to the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC) for using the songs under their administration, according to sources. And Karaoke bars in China's main cities were made to pay 12 yuan (US$1.50) a day in royalties to music artists for each room, according to a regulation set by China's National Copyright Administration late last year. However, most television and radio stations in China are still using music works without paying any royalties. The Music Copyright Society of China is now negotiating with television and radio stations on copyright fee payments, China Press and Publishing Journal reported. The Music Copyright Society of China is the country's only officially recognized organization for music copyright administration. The association has now administered copyrights for over 14 million music works by 4,000 members. Public venues including hotels, restaurants and department stores are charged with different standards by the society. The usual fee is 2.54 yuan (US$33.9) per square meter per year for a department store of 10,000 to 20,000 square meters to use the music, the society said. He Ping has been appointed as the new editor-in- chief of Xinhua News Agency, the media group said.
Sept 3, 2007
HSI punches through 24,000 - Hong Kong stocks rallied 2.1 per cent on Friday as United States rate-cut hopes and news that the United States government would help tackle the subprime mortgage problem.
Jet Li says he and Jackie Chan are getting old and audiences that view "The Forbidden Kingdom" should not expect too much from the martial arts scenes. "When Jackie Chan and I first wanted to work together 15 years ago, our passion was at its peak. ... Our desire to succeed was very strong," the 44-year-old Li told The Associated Press. "Now we joke that when we watch the 'The Forbidden Kingdom' our combined age is 100." (Chan is 53.) The martial arts stars come to grips and blows in "The Forbidden Kingdom," about an American teenager's fantasy journey to ancient China to rescue a mythological Monkey King, but Li warns: "How intense are the battle scenes? My mentality is to not have high expectations." The film is tentatively scheduled for U.S. release next spring. Total deposits with authorized institutions in Hong Kong went down two percent in July, with HK dollar deposits declining 5.9 percent and foreign currency deposits rising 2.8 percent, the Monetary Authority said in a report Friday. Hong Kong dollar demand and time deposits shrank, but savings deposits expanded, with renminbi deposits going up 0.9 percent to 27.9 billion RMB (3.67 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of July, accounting for around 1.2 percent of total foreign currency deposits, said the report. Total loans and advances contracted by 4.8 percent as the decrease in HK dollar loans exceeded the increase in foreign currency loans. Loans for use in Hong Kong declined by 6.0 percent whereas those for use outside Hong Kong grew by 2.2 percent. Decrease in HK dollar loans was faster than deposits, leading the HK dollar loan-to-deposit ratio down to 72.9 percent at the end of July. On a seasonally adjusted basis, HK dollar M1 declined by 3.1 percent in the month but increased by 12.1 percent on a year-on-year basis. Unadjusted Hong Kong dollar M2 and M3 both decreased by 5.5 percent during the month, although they went up 20.2 percent and 20.1 percent respectively from a year earlier. Total assets of Hong Kong's Exchange Fund added 17.6 billion HK dollars, or 1.4 percent, in July, amounting to 1,274.5 billion HK dollars (163.4 billion U.S. dollars) on July 31, the Monetary Authority announced Friday. The increase consists of a growth of 5.2 billion HK dollars in foreign currency assets and a rise of 12.4 billion HK dollars in the Hong Kong dollar assets. The rise in foreign currency assets was attributed to valuation gains on foreign currency investments and interest and dividend from foreign currency assets, which were partly offset by redemption of certificates of indebtedness, the Monetary Authority said in a report. The rise in HK dollar assets was due mainly to valuation gains of Hong Kong equities held by the exchange fund and an increase in exchange fund bills and notes issued but not yet settled, which were partly offset by fiscal draw downs. The monetary base at the end of July was 296.9 billion HK dollars, representing a decrease of 1.6 billion HK dollars, or 0.5percent, from the end of June 2007. The backing assets increased by 1.5 billion HK dollars, or 0.4 percent, to 333.6 billion HK dollars, pushing the backing ratio to rise to 112.39 percent from 111.28 percent at the end of the previous month. (7.8 HK dollars = 1 U.S. dollar)
Chinese famous director Feng Xiaogang's "Assembly" has been selected as opener of the 12th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), local media reported on Wednesday. According to local media, the festival has also decided to close with Japanese imitation "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone," which is directed by Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki. The "Assembly" will be screened as a world premiere at PIFF. It is the latest film of Feng who has made films including "The Banquet," "A World Without Thieves," and "A Sigh." The film is a human drama portraying a soldier who devotes his entire life to redeeming the honor of fellow soldiers who are declared missing in action. PIFF, one of Asia's major film festivals, will be held in the southeastern port city of Busan on Oct. 4-12.
China's quality watchdog on Friday introduced the nation's landmark recall systems for unsafe food products and toys amid efforts to improve product safety. The two regulations, following the introduction of recall system for defective automobiles in 2005, went into effect on Friday. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ) stated the recall systems were culmination of recent regulations on the supervision of product quality and food safety promulgated by the State Council, or cabinet. The regulations require manufacturers are required to stop production and sales, notify vendors and customers, and report to the quality control authorities when product defects are found. The regulations, however, did not specify how the producers should notify the vendors and customers. The manufacturers are also ordered to take all necessary timely measures, including replacing or refunding to mitigate the effects brought about by the unsafe food and toys. The government took all the measures after the safety of China-made products became a major concern at home and abroad with frequent product safety scares. The scares ranged from ducks and hens that were fed cancer-causing Sudan Red dye to make their egg yolks red, to pet food made of melamine-tainted wheat protein that killed scores of dogs and cats in the United States. The AQSIQ acknowledged that the recall systems supplemented China's legal system on product safety supervision and management. The recall systems, coupled with market access systems, would help to strengthen the government's supervision of product safety and tackle product safety emergencies more effectively. The regulations state clearly that producers must take the prior and major responsibilities for preventing and eliminating unsafe food and toys. This would push them to enhance product safety awareness and step up efforts on quality management, the AQSIQ stated. Chinese mainland has overtaken Japan as Australia's number one trading partner, according to official figures released Friday. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said that Australia's trade with the Chinese mainland was worth 50.5 billion dollars (US$41.4 billion) in the 12 months to July, while trade with Japan reached 49.7 billion. It is the first time in 36 years that Japan has not topped the list of Australia's international trade partners. "This is very much a big deal. For the past 36 years, Japan has retained the mantle of Australia's largest trading partner," Commsec chief equities economist Craig James said. "Now that mantle is held by Chinese mainland." Japan remains the main destination for Australian exports at 32.4 billion dollars, while Chinese mainland is the main supplier of imports to Australia at 27.5 billion dollars. James said trade between Australia and Chinese mainland had doubled in the past three years and expected bilateral ties to continue to flourish. "The trading, cultural and political relationship with China will grow more and more important in coming years," he said. "Australian companies that fail to embrace the importance of China to the Australian economy will quickly fall behind."
More international flights are expected to service Hainan with the liberalization of aviation rights for the mainland's most southern province, the chairman of Hainan Meilan International Airport (0357) said yesterday.
Beijing is likely to make clear its stance on Hong Kong's pace of democracy in February ahead of the National People's Congress' new term, which starts in March, executive councilor Tsang Yok-sing said yesterday. Sept 1 - 2, 2007
Hong Kong Jockey Club chairman John Chan Cho-chak yesterday urged the government to reconsider the club's earlier request for five more race days per season and for a slight increase in the number of simulcasts of overseas races. Beijing has delayed enforcing a controversial new rule penalizing exporters of low-end goods, giving breathing space to tens of thousands of Hong Kong manufacturers across the border likely to be hit by the law.
Citybus and New World First Bus will have 28 eco-friendly Euro IV buses running on busy roads by November to help clean the air. The companies said they would also cut exhaust emissions of their fleet of around 1,600 buses to comply with the European Union directive's Euro IV emission standard by 2012. The budget for the Euro IV buses - 10 for Citybus and 18 for First Bus - is HK$100 million. They would probably run first in Des Voeux Road in Central, Yee Wo Street in Causeway Bay and Nathan Road, said Paul Li Kwong-wai, head of operations and engineering for the two bus firms. "By 2012, the exhaust emission level will be cut by 95 per cent," Mr Li said. But he said it was hard to calculate the total amount of exhaust reductions. The companies have about 90 pre-Euro buses, most of which have been used for up to 17 years and are due for replacement. Euro IV buses - the latest eco-friendly model - will emit 97 per cent fewer respirable suspended particulates than pre-Euro buses. They will also cut the emissions of nitrogen oxides by 61 per cent and hydrocarbons by 81 per cent compared with pre-Euro buses. Mr Li said they planned to invest HK$200 million a year to buy 50 to 70 Euro IV buses over the next few years. All pre-Euro and about 400 Euro I buses will be phased out by 2012, two years ahead of schedule. The companies will also spend HK$50 million to install diesel particulate filters on all of about 1,000 Euro II buses to achieve the Euro IV emission standard by 2009. "It will cut the exhaust emission level by 90 per cent by then," Mr Li said. All 100 Euro III buses have already been equipped with the filters to reduce the emission of fine particles. "We will see if there is a need to adjust the fares according to the preset fare-adjustment mechanism with the Transport Department," Mr Li said. Since October, all new heavy diesel vehicles over 3.5 tonnes registered in Hong Kong must meet Euro IV. Euro IV vehicles emit about 80 per cent fewer fine particles and 30 per cent fewer nitrogen oxides than Euro III vehicles. Euro IV has been in force in the EU since 2005.
When a central bank official talks about financial services, he is more likely than not talking about the macro economy side. But Vice-Governor Su Ning of the People's Bank of China discussed stronger statistical functions, the formulation of a modern payment system and other matters yesterday at a press conference. Some of the improvements he enumerated were obvious to everyone. The growing popularity of credit cards, for one, has been a very recent hallmark of the banking sector's efforts to diversify and upgrade services. The 1.29 billion bankcards issued so far have not only brought unprecedented convenience to ordinary Chinese consumers, but are also transforming their spending patterns. We sense the changes made possible by information technology and computerized service networks that integrate all service outlets. A lot of things have become easier thanks to such developments. It was once unimaginable that an average Chinese would be able to go on a crazy shopping spree overseas without much cash in hand. To be fair to our banking industry, its progress has been quick in recent years. But regular people have their own ways of gauging financial services. They care more about how well they are served by bank clerks than they do issues such as money laundering. Such micro-level concerns may appear insignificant. But they are essential for customer loyalty. Complaints about long wait times, for example, may end up becoming an important new factor affecting people's preference when they have to make a choice between banks. If domestic banks did not have to worry much about customer satisfaction in the past, they do now. Relatively higher entry barriers and a lack of outlets prevent overseas banks from directly competing with their Chinese counterparts. But that will not last forever. The banks prefer to have fewer customers visiting their service counters, saying many of their services are now available online. This is undoubtedly a good way to shorten queues. So why do people brave long queues and insist on seeing bank clerks face to face? Different surveys have discovered varying degrees of distrust of online transactions, the No 1 concern being safety. Most of such worries are groundless. But the banking sector needs to convince the public their promise of safety is dependable. Safety, too, is an important part of financial services. Providing it will not only liberate bankers from lots of time and paperwork, but also eliminate a major source of mass discontent. Foreign acquisitions of Chinese companies will be subject to stringent checks intended to protect national economic security under a new law.
*News information are obtained via various sources deemed reliable, but not guaranteed
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Hong Kong:
The insurance arm of HSBC Holdings,
Europe's biggest bank, has received approval from China's insurance regulator to
form a joint venture insurance company, the South China Morning Post said on
Thursday. HSBC is the first insurer to receive approval to form an insurance
joint venture under the closer economic partnership arrangement between Hong
Kong and the Chinese mainland, the newspaper said. The move also marks the
latest foray by the European bank into insurance markets across Asia. On
Wednesday HSBC said it would open an insurance business in Taiwan Province, and
earlier this year it announced it was taking stakes or forming joint ventures to
tap insurance markets in India and Vietnam. HSBC Insurance will form a 50-50
venture with National Trust, a Beijing-registered trust and investment firm, to
establish individual insurance business, particularly life insurance,
nationwide, it said. The new venture, to be headquartered in Shanghai, could
begin operation as early as the second half of next year, it said. "The minimum
capital requirement for getting a nationwide licence is about 500 million yuan ,
however, the actual amount involved in the initial stage still has to be
decided, it said. The new venture will sell insurance services mainly through
HSBC's banking network and National Trust's business channels, and could also
distribute its insurance products through the branch network of Bank of
Communications , in which HSBC holds an 18.6 percent stake, it said. HSBC has
more than 40 branches and sub-branches in Chinese mainland, it added. Insurance
premiums in Chinese mainland rose more than 20 percent to 371.8 billion yuan
(US$49.5 billion) in the first half of this year.
Former security chief Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee on Thursday afternoon announced her
candidacy for December’s Legislative Council by-election – ending speculation
about her intentions in the contest. Mrs Ip will face her old colleague, former
chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang, in the contest for the seat left vacant
by the death of former DAB chairman Ma Lik. Announcing her decision at a hotel
conference room, Mrs Ip said she had always been thinking about participating in
a democratic election after her resignation in 2003. “After the passing away of
DAB chairman Ma Lik, I felt myself a person fit to fill up the position left by
him so I decided to run,” Mrs Ip told her supporters. Mrs Ip, now chairwoman of
the Savantas Policy Institute, admitted that she had caused much controversy in
Hong Kong when she tried to push through a drafted anti-subversion law bill in
2003. She resigned from as the secretary for security after 500,000 people
marched in the streets to protest against the proposals. The government
eventually shelved the bill. “For many years, I have been deeply reflecting on
the role I played in drafting the Article 23 bill. It caused much controversy
among the public. The people’s opposing voices to the bill are still clear in my
mind,” she said. “Looking back, I think there was much room for improvement in
the way I handled it,” she added. However, the former security chief said it had
not been her own decision to put forward the controversial bill, but the
“collective decision” of the then chief executive in council, which comprised
all politically-appointed ministers and Exco members.
The Hong Kong Institute of Education on
Thursday appointed executive councillor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung its new
president. Twelve of the 13 members of the institute’s council voted in support
of Professor Cheung at a meeting. One member abstained from voting. Professor
Cheung’s term will start in January and last for five years. As well as an Exco
member, he sits in various public bodies and is teaching at City University’s
public and social administration department. Describing his new job as a
“challenge”, Professor Cheung said his top priority was to help the teacher
training college in Tai Po to achieve university status. “The HKIEd is now in a
critical moment in its development. There will be a few important tasks for me.
First it is the quest for a university status,” he said. Professor Cheung said
the HKIEd and the government enjoyed friendly and constructive relations – but
admitted relations were tense at times. He said autonomy and academic freedom
were important. Professor Cheung said he would discuss the institute’s plans
with the University Grants Committee. “As far as I know, the University Grants
Committee has established a taskforce to study a blueprint earlier put forward
by the HKIEd. I haven’t taken up the post yet but I will participate in the
discussions in an appropriate manner,” he said. The HKIEd president had been
left vacant after the school did not renew its contract with Paul Morris earlier
this year. Professor Morris was a key figure in a row over alleged government
interference in the institute.
Cathay to strengthen ties with US - Cathay Pacific Airways (SEHK: 0293) plans to
strengthen ties between Hong Kong and United States through the launch of its
new twice daily direct flights, Cathay Pacific Airways chief executive Tony
Tyler said on Thursday. Mr Tyler was speaking at a business luncheon held by the
Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco and Hong Kong Association
of Northern California in San Francisco. He announced Cathay’s new twice daily
direct flight – chartering between San Francisco and Hong Kong – which would be
launched in mid-October. “Cathay Pacific is very much committed to building the
image of Hong Kong as a place in which to conduct business and trade and we have
been working hard to build links between Hong Kong and the United States, and in
particular California,” he said. The state of California is reportedly home to
one of the largest Chinese populations in the United States with an Asian
population estimated at five million – approximately one-third of the country’s
14.9 million. Cathay Pacific Airways reported a profit of HK$2,581 million in
its interim profits this year up 54.7 per cent from the HK$1,668 million
reported the previous year – a record for the company. In recent years, the
airline has worked hard toward appealing to more travelers and earlier in 2007,
it launched plans to install new seat designs and cabin interiors with enhance
inflight entertainment options in its carriers. It has recently taken
environmental measures against global warming, becoming the first airline in the
Asia Pacific region to announce a carbon offset scheme as part of its overall
environmental strategy. The airline was also ranked third best airline this year
by international airline survey company, Skytrax behind Singapore Airlines and
Thai Airways.
China:
International retail giants Wal-mart, Carrefour and Metro have told China's
Ministry of Commerce that they are satisfied with the quality of Chinese
products, more than 99 percent of which meet standards, ministry spokesman Wang
Xinpei said on Thursday. The qualification rate reached 100 percent of export
Chinese products purchased by U.S. firm Wal-Mart, 99.5 percent by France's
Carrefour, and 99 percent by Germany's Metro. The products mainly include
cleaners, hardware and household appliances, textiles, toys and food, retailer
representatives said in a meeting with the ministry. The Carrefour
representative acknowledged the efforts made by Chinese government to guarantee
product quality and food safety, and said it increased confidence in Chinese
products. Carrefour purchased 59 billion yuan (7.86 billion U.S. dollars) worth
of products in China last year, and planned to buy more. It spent 36.2 billion
yuan in the first half. Metro's purchase, though smaller in value, grew
significantly to 11.8 billion yuan in the first half, only 2.4 billion short of
the amount in the entire 2006. "We have been purchasing from China for nearly 26
years," said the Wal-Mart representative, "Chinese products are economic in
price and guaranteed in quality." Wal-mart has located its global purchasing
office in China. Around half of the purchased products would be exported, said
the representatives. 
Two local
residents walk along the well-groomed Century Avenue in Shanghai on September
26, 2007. National flags have been put up on both sides of 1-kilometer street,
to celebrate the upcoming National Day on October 1.
China's
unified premium price of 20 yuan for aviation accident insurance will end from
Dec. 1, China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) announces in Beijing on
Sept.26, 2007.
Chinese actress Li Xiaoran (L), model and TV host Pace Wu and actress Angie
Chiu(R), have their photos taken for an activity called "Pink Ribbon" in
promotional photo for a health magazine.
The
new archbishop of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Diocese said at his installation
yesterday that politics is not on the church's agenda. Observers say the
middle-lane approach indicates the Anglican diocese intends to keep smooth
relations with both Beijing and the SAR government. Paul Kwong, 56, told
parishioners that his church will not get involved in political movements,
including the call for universal suffrage, but will continue to work with the
government to better the lives of the people. He said societal atmosphere was
much happier now, but many problems such as poverty still needed to be
addressed. Solutions, for which the government and society must join hands, will
not come quickly, Kwong said. 
As a multi-instrumentalist songwriter,
Wang Lee-hom revels in having a lot of control over his work. And it goes
without saying that every song on his records bears his name. Yet the fact that
he isn't credited as either the songwriter or the lyricist for Falling Leaves
Return to the Root, the first radio hit from his new album Change Me, surprised
many, and plenty of his young fans have been intrigued by the identity of the
songwriter, one Kuang Yu-min. Kuang doesn't actually exist; he's the fervently
patriotic student activist that Wang plays in Lust, Caution, Ang Lee's film
adaptation of Eileen Chang Ai-ling's eponymous short story. "I think that's the
song Kuang Yu-min wrote for Wong Chia-chi," says the 31-year-old musician,
referring to Kuang's unrequited love for the film's main character, a fellow
student activist played by mainland actor Tang Wei. "I didn't realise this until
I wrote it, so that's why I didn't say it was composed by Wang Lee-hom. It's the
first song I wrote after we finished the movie. The record company was going,
`You've been away [making Lust, Caution] for eight months now and it's time for
you to start writing a new album'. So, when I first started writing the album I
was still very much in character." Wang's inability to emerge from Kuang's
shadow could be attributed to his lack of experience in serious drama - he was
not formally trained as an actor, and his first two films, China Strike Force
and The Avenging Fist, are hardly profound character studies. But the actor says
his obsession may also be down to his similarity to the character he plays.
Anson Chan Fang
On-sang took her by-election campaign to the streets for the first time
yesterday, and was soon mobbed by lunchtime crowds. Mrs Chan stepped out onto
the streets of Central around noon as workers streamed out of offices on their
lunch breaks. Surrounded by scores of reporters and cameramen, she soon found it
difficult to move - so the crowds came to her. Several people pulled out cameras
or mobile phones to take pictures. Mrs Chan was greeted by businesspeople in
suits, blue-collar workers in uniforms, young and old supporters, local people
and tourists. "The crowds have been very, very friendly. At least they come up
to you, they receive your platform declaration, and most of them say they will
support you," Mrs Chan said, adding that she enjoyed the new experience of
street canvassing and was encouraged by the enthusiastic response. 
Those who missed
the chance to catch a glimpse of the mid-autumn moon did so when clearer weather
and a fuller moon make for better skyward gazing. The Observatory's scientific
officer, Lee Kwok-lun, said the moon was not the fullest. "The full moon
actually occurs on September 27 at around 3.40am. The sky will also improve
tonight and the amount of cloud will also decrease, so the probability of seeing
the moon is greater," Mr Lee said. The mid-autumn full moon usually falls on the
15th day of the eighth lunar month and, according to the observatory, the last
time it occurred on the 17th day was in 2000. The next time will be in 2016.
Tonight's full moon will be one of the fullest seen in years when moon rise
occurs at night. Apart from this year, all mid-autumn full-moon rises from 2005
to 2016 occurred, or are due to occur, during the day.
China's lunar satellite launch open
to tourists - A computer-generated image of China's first lunar orbiter, Chang'e
I. Tourists are being invited to pay 800 yuan (105 U.S. dollars) to witness the
launch of China's first lunar satellite in Xichang, southwest Sichuan province.
A travel agency in Xichang, where one of China's major satellite launch sites is
located, has designed special travel packages for tourists wishing to view the
historic launch. "Tourists will have to pay 800 yuan to witness the launch from
two observation platforms 2.5 km from the site," Wang Cheng'an, a manager at
Xichang Jinying Travel Agency, told Shanghai Morning Post. Wang said the two new
observation platforms, which will be completed ahead of the launch on two
opposite hillsides near the site, are capable of holding 2,000 and 500 people
respectively. More than 300 people have already applied for the 2,500 places but
the successful applicants will have to pass security checks, according to the
agency. The lunar probe, previously scheduled to blast into space on Tuesday to
coincide with this year's traditional Mid-Autumn Festival, is expected to be
launched late October. The satellite project was approved by the Chinese central
authorities in 2004 as part of the three-stage "Chang'e Program," named after
the legendary Chinese goddess who flew to the moon, which aims to place an
unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010.
China, France conduct joint naval drill
- The "China-France Friendship 2007" drill in the Mediterranean Sea off the
southern French port city of Toulon was the first of its kind between the two
navies in the Mediterranean.
Lithuanian dancers and Dancers from Cook Islands perform
with pans and spoons during the opening ceremony of the 7th China International
Folk Arts Festival (CIFAF) in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, Sept. 25,
2007. As a grand art carnival initiated by China's Federation of Literary and
Art Circles in 1990, the triennial festival, featuring international, national
and grass-root flavor, is aimed to develop and promote exchange of folk arts
across the world. Starting on Tuesday, this year's CIFAF is acclaimed as the
largest ever in the country with nearly 460 artists from 22 countries and
regions staging indoor and outdoor performances.
Homebuyers at a real
estate exhibition in Dalian, Liaoning Province. The government may raise the
interest rate of mortgage lending to curb the fast rise in house prices and
speculation in the real estate market.
Cathay Pacific Airways
Ltd. and the parent company of its Chinese affiliate have backed off from a
planned joint bid for shares in China Eastern Airlines Corp., a report carried
by The Wall Street Journal network said on Monday.
Hong Kong's inflation rate is
expected to reach 1.8 to 2 percent - exceeding the government's official
forecast of 1.5 percent - as a weakening US dollar increases the cost of imports
and surging pork prices in the mainland continue spilling across the border.
"Featuring prominently on my radar screen is the specter of inflation,"
Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun- wah told a financial forum yesterday. "In
line with the trend in many parts of the world in recent years, inflation is,
indeed, creeping up slowly in Hong Kong as well." The SAR's inflation for the
year is likely to hit up to 2 percent because of a stronger yuan and rising food
prices worldwide, Tsang said. "These factors will not go away any time soon, and
they will continue to pose upside risks to Hong Kong's inflation rate in the
near term." Tsang said a weaker US dollar raises the cost of food imports, and
because of Hong Kong's currency peg to the greenback, there is little room for
any exchange rate or interest rate policy.
DBS Group Holdings, one of the largest financial services
groups in Asia, announced yesterday that vice chairman and chief executive
Jackson Tai is resigning, but stressed his decision has nothing to do with the
bank's exposure to collateralized debt obligations.
Anson Chan Fang On-sang came under
criticism for "acting like a minister and a bureaucrat" at last night's debate
with her rival pro-democracy candidate in December's legislative by-election. "I
thought I was talking to a government official," former lawmaker Lo Wing-lok
said during the 1-hour debate as part of the pro-democracy camp's selection
mechanism to pick its candidate for the Hong Kong Island poll to be held on
December 2. Chan - Hong Kong's "Iron Lady" and former chief secretary under the
Tung Chee-hwa administration - and Lo of the League of Social Democrats are
vying to represent the pan-democrats in the by-election to fill the seat vacated
by the death of pro-Beijing politician Ma Lik. Lo lashed out at Chan for lacking
a firm stance on various critical issues facing the territory. Ma Ngok, a
Chinese University associate professor who is one of three academics who
questioned the two contenders, said Lo appeared to have gained the upper hand in
the debate. "He was consistent and logical, but Chan had some baggage from her
past performance and spoke like the minister she used to be," Ma said. 
Dell Inc says it will begin selling personal computer products through Gome
Group, China's largest electronic retailer, in a move to win back consumers by
going beyond its direct-sales model. Under the agreement, Dell products will go
on sale next month at 50 Gome outlets, and will expand to more stores nationwide
in the first half of next year.
Awfully
Chocolate is a Singaporean franchise dessert shop and its Shanghai store was
opened by three young people.
Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Ang
Lee said on Sunday he has low expectations for his new spy thriller Lust,
Caution in the US, because it is a “very Chinese” film that may be alien to
American audiences. “Its pace, its film language — it’s all very Chinese. I also
used Western film noir. It’s a new start for me. It’s not very audience-friendly
for a market like the US It’s not their subject matter,” Lee told a forum for
young directors in Hong Kong. He acknowledged that Lust, Caution could
marginalise him in the US market after he gained mainstream recognition with
films like the kung fu hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the gay romance
Brokeback Mountain, which won him a Oscar for best director last year. Another
obstacle is the film’s restrictive rating in the US of NC-17 (no children under
17) which bans viewers younger than 17. Lust, Caution which won the top Golden
Lion prize at the recent Venice Film Festival, is based on a short story by
famed Chinese writer Eileen Chang. It’s about a group of patriotic students who
plot to assassinate the intelligence chief in the Japanese-backed Chinese
government during the World War II era. Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai
plays the intelligence official, Mr Yi, while newcomer Tang Wei plays Chinese
student Wang Jiazhi, who seduces Yi to pave the way for the assassination. The
movie also features Joan Chen from The Last Emperor and Chinese-American pop
star Wang Leehom. Hollywood trade publication Variety reported earlier that the
movie features lovemaking involving provocative sexual positions, implied oral
sex and full frontal female nudity. Using a baseball pitching analogy, Lee
likened his new movie to a “curve ball” for his producer James Schamus. Speaking
to reporters after the forum, Lee said an edited version of Lust, Caution — with
fewer sex scenes — recently cleared mainland censors. The mainland does not have
a ratings system, so Lee had to provide a version suitable for all ages. He said
the cuts did not compromise the movie’s plot and character development, but
dampens some of its emotional intensity. Lee called the sex scenes the “crux of
the movie.” “Many of the actors’ best performance came in the sex scenes. For
me, it’s an ultimate performance,” the director said. Lee also said he thinks
the Chinese-language movie market has the potential to overtake the
English-language market, but that it will take time to cultivate a film culture
in the mainland. “The mainland had denied its own cultural roots and the
development of film in the past few decades,” he said, apparently referring to
the political upheavals and strict ideological control under communist rule.
“When it comes to culture, you can’t organise the Olympics, train your athletes
to death and win the most number of gold medals, or hire the world’s best
designers to build the world’s biggest buildings,” Lee added. “To strive to
surpass Hollywood on this barren land is unrealistic,” he said. Lee also
revealed that Lust, Caution went over its US$12 million (HK$93.3 million) budget
and that he had to front another US$2 million (HK$15.6 million).
Hotel chef Lau
Chi-kit spent six months cloistered inside his kitchen, and came up with more
than 100 low-fat, low-salt and low-sugar dishes. Lau's main aim is to convince
diners that simple blanched vegetables and boiled meat can become perfect meals.
Twenty-three of the chef's dishes will be on the menu of Hoi Yat Heen Chinese
restaurant at Harbor Plaza hotel until the end of the month. Organic is the
chef's key word - he wants to revolutionize cooking conventions. Using a few
teaspoons of oil at most, Lau believes the key to a tasty dish is finding the
right combination. 
Mooncakes, a
traditional delicacy gifted to families and friends during the Mid-Autumn
Festival, have become an important ingredient in maintaining business and work
relations. With the festival falling tomorrow, the reception areas of almost
every office building are overflowing with boxes of mooncakes. The traditional
festival has become a Chinese Christmas of sorts, topping other occasions for
giving or receiving gifts. "We send presents to our clients during the
Mid-Autumn Festival, rather than the Spring Festival," said Elsa Wang, who works
for a public relations firm in Beijing. The company started budgeting months
earlier and has been delivering mooncakes as early as a month ago. "It doesn't
matter how much a package costs.... Mooncakes are the best way to say: Let us
keep in touch." Lin Jian, a guest writer on the Financial Times Chinese website,
wrote that the consumption of mooncakes has one simple purpose - to maintain
relationships. "How many mooncakes one gets measures his intangible value," Lin
wrote in his column. "The more coupons you receive, the more respect you have."
The market has reacted to the increasing demand with expensive packages to lure
high-end consumers. In Changchun, one vendor sells a box for 1,800 yuan (240
U.S. dollars) with a golf club as a complimentary accompaniment. About 250,000
tons of mooncakes were produced last year with revenue exceeding 11 billion yuan
(1.42 billion dollars). 
A
photo taken on September 18, 2007, shows the National Grand Theater lit up at
night. The Theater will have its first trial show on September 25. Located west
of Tian'anmen Square, the egg-shaped structure is 46.68 meters tall and reaches
a depth of 32.5 meters and is covered with more than 20,000 titanium tiles.
Actresses in Chinese ethnic
minorities dresses perfrom during a preview in Hong Kong, south China, Sept. 21,
2007. To celebrate the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival, the Leisure and Cultural
Services Department of the Hong Kong Special Administration will present several
lantern carnivals and performances by Chinese ethnic minorities in Hong Kong as
from Sept. 22. 
"Lust, Caution" director Ang Lee and
lead actress Tang Wei arrive in Hong Kong on Friday. Movie director Ang Lee
arrived in Hong Kong on Friday with his lead actress, Tang Wei, to prepare for
the premiere of their Golden Lion-winning opus, "Lust, Caution". The film was
rated "Category III" in Hong Kong, meaning viewers younger than 18 are barred.
The premiere ceremony will be held Saturday night, and the film will open in
local theatres on Sept. 26. 
Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, nominated
by a search committee to become the next president of the Hong Kong Institute of
Education, said he will not resign from the Executive Council or the Consumer
Council but will rearrange his other appointments to concentrate on his new
role.
Stewardesses welcome the passengers
aboard a charter flight across the Taiwan Straits at the Gaoqi International
Airport in Xiamen, southeastern China’s Fujian Province, Sept. 21, 2007. A
Mid-Autumn Festival chartered flight with 166 passengers across the Taiwan
Strait took off in Xiamen for Taiwan on Friday afternoon. 
Chinese pop diva Faye Wong and her
actor husband Li Yapeng will hold a charity ball in Beijing on Tuesday night to
raise funds for their Smile Angel Foundation. This will be Wong's first public
appearance since she gave birth to her daughter Li Yan in May. Li Yan
subsequently underwent corrective surgery in the United States for a cleft lip.
The ball will be attended by many big-name Chinese stars including Zhao Wei, Xu
Jinglei and Na Ying. More than a hundred security guards have been hired to
maintain order, Shanghai Morning Post reported. Wong and her husband Li Yapeng
started the foundation in November to help children with cleft lips and palates.
The couple donated 1 million yuan (125,000 U.S. dollars) to start the foundation
which will be supervised by the Red Cross Society of China.
Mainland actress Fan Bingbing attends a
charity auction held in Beijing on Thursday night. A charity auction was held in
Beijing Thursday night, attracting some 500 celebrities to dedicate their love
to mothers and newborn babies in poor areas. Entertainment stars including Hu
Jing, Huang Yi, Lu Yi and pop band Yuquan took part in the event, which was
jointly organized by China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation and the organizing
committee of Top Essence exhibition. The auction items were all donated by
internationally-acclaimed brands and exhibiters of Top Essence. Over 1.5 million
yuan, or about 200,000 US dollars, were raised through the auction. All the
proceeds will be used to aid the lying-in women and their babies from poor
families. 
China moves to curb price hikes ahead
of national holiday - Measures will be taken across China to stabilize food
prices by ensuring a plentiful supply for the remaining months of the year,
particularly during the coming two holidays, the nation's top economic planner
announced on Friday.
Tourists walk
past illuminated Olympic rings featuring Fuwa - official Olypic Games mascots -
during a lamp festival themed with the Beijing Olympic Games at a park in
Beijing September 22, 2007.
An AIG-Huatai booth
at a Beijing exhibition. AIG will expand its range to cash in on demand for
higher-yielding investment products from China's growing middle class.
The
Chinese mainland is to impose a quota on investments on the Hong Kong stock
market, which will reduce capital outflows to a fraction of the US$100
billion-plus forecast when its outward investment scheme was announced last
month. Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC),
said there would be no limit on individuals. But he said there would be tight
controls on the total amount. Liu said there would be a "quota in general" and
when that was reached, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) would
reassess market activity. "They can lift and readjust the quota if necessary and
appropriate – it's a flexible ceiling," he told the Financial Times. It was the
first mention from China's financial authority of a quota on its plan to allow
individuals to invest in foreign stocks. Chinese officials refused to disclose
the level of the quota but it is reckoned to be lower than the amount of
investment expected by the Hong Kong market, which has soared in anticipation of
a flood of money from the Chinese mainland. The benchmark Hang Seng Index has
risen 26 percent since the SAFE announcement. The new scheme, known as the
"through-train to Hong Kong stocks" was announced by SAFE on August 20 and
required investors to open trading accounts with Bank of China's (BOC) branch in
the northern city of Tianjin. SAFE said investors would be allowed to open
accounts from any BOC outlet in the country and buy an unlimited amount of
foreign exchange for the purpose. But the scheme has been delayed by
disagreement between SAFE, CBRC, the central bank and the securities regulator.
The central bank's focus is on draining liquidity from the economy and making
the currency more flexible. The securities regulator wants to avoid extensive
overseas investment that could damage the booming domestic stock market, which
most analysts regard as overpriced. Jing Ulrich, chairman of China equities at
JPMorgan, said the government was considering restricting the plan to residents
of the big cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. Mr Liu said: "We
are supportive (of the scheme) but we are carefully looking at those banks who
are channeling public funds to invest in Hong Kong stocks or via Hong Kong to
invest in other markets to make sure they have a sound and solid risk control
system. They must show me satisfactory answers before they can do the 'train to
Hong Kong stocks'."
Workers and residents in Central and Western
should be prepared for chaos when Batman arrives in Hong Kong in November, a
district councillor warned yesterday. Kam Nai-wai, of the Central and Western
District Council, also warned residents to prepare ear-plugs as the producers
intend to use a helicopter in the late hours of the day. Kam's warning followed
a district council meeting yesterday at which the distributors for The Dark
Knight, a sequel to the hit movie Batman Begins, outlined how the caped crusader
intends to move from Gotham City to fight his enemies who are gathering in Hong
Kong. The filming locations will include the Central-Mid-Levels escalator, some
parts of Queen's Road Central and The Centre. Some areas are expected to be
closed to the public during the nine days of filming. The distributor of the
movie, Warner Brothers, told the council it is seeking the approval of various
government departments for the closure of some roads during filming. Kam said
the road closures could cause traffic chaos if done in daytime. "Warner Brothers
also said it will use a helicopter for the filming. Of course, we are worried
that the residents will be disturbed," Kam said. The representative from the
distributor assured the district council Queen's Road Central will only be
blocked around midnight and that daytime shooting will take place mainly inside
The Centre.
For the third time in two months, Hong
Kong investors yesterday found out two weeks after the fact that major
international investor Warren Buffett - through his Berkshire Hathaway holding
company - had offloaded shares in leading mainland oil producer PetroChina
(0857).
Monastery destroys oldest stone houses -
Hong Kong's biggest Buddhist temple - Po Lin Monastery - is demolishing some of
its oldest structures to make way for a new temple.
China's central banker: No timetable
for RMB convertibility - China is committed to pushing forward its currency
reform but has no timetable for the full convertibility of renminbi, said Zhou
Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, at a financial forum in Hong
Kong Friday. 
South Korean spunky singer Rain (Jung Ji
Hoon) is set to perform in a special Mid-Autumn Festival show organized by China
Central Television on September 24 and 25 in Chengde City, east China's Hebei
Province. Korean media quoted rain's agency as saying: "Rain will spend this
year's Mid-Autumn Festival with fans in China. He will arrive in China on
September 23 and leave on September 26." During his stay, Rain will also appear
on a live broadcast for the 2007 Asian Art Festival in the city of Nantong, east
China's Jiangsu Province, together with his compatriots Shin Seung Hun, Kim Dong
Wan BADA and Chinese stars Andy Lau and Jackie Chan. Rain, who has been on an
international tour since 2006, was scheduled to stage a concert in Shanghai this
May. But the concert was postponed until October 6, the commencement of his
second world tour. The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most important family
reunion celebrations in China. According to the Chinese lunar calendar, the 15th
day of the 8th month is the exact middle of autumn, so it's called the
Mid-Autumn Festival.
The booth of
PetroChina in a Chemical Fair in Shanghai in March. The securities regulator
will review the oil giant's A-share IPO plan next Monday.
Shanghai
Futures Exchange (SHFE), the biggest of the three commodities futures exchanges
in China, is exerting an increasing influence on the global pricing of such key
commodities as copper, aluminum and natural rubber. Teng Jiawei, executive
vice-president of SHFE, says: "China's increasing pricing power in the
international commodities markets has helped guarantee national economic
security that has a far-reaching impact on the country's long-term development."
For many physical commodities, cash-market participants often base spot and
forward prices on the futures prices that are discovered in the competitive,
open-auction markets of futures exchanges. SHFE is emerging as an important
pricing center for non-ferrous metals, copper in particular, second only to the
London Metal Exchange (LME). Statistics show the coefficient index, an indicator
reflecting the correlation between LME copper prices and those in Shanghai, has
increased from less than 10 percent to 40 percent in the past several years.
Houhai, located dead in
the middle of old Beijing, is also known as Shishahai, an area including Qianhai,
Houhai and Xihai and with a history of more than 700 years. Many interesting
restaurants and shops have shot up around the lake during the last six years.
The lake, however, achieved global fame after becoming a safe haven during the
SARS outbreak. Since then, Houhai has been a landmark of Beijing nightlife.
Actor Chow Yun-fat
(bottom C) smiles as he attends the 3rd Fresh Wave Short Film Competition in
Hong Kong September 19, 2007.
Residents
watch smoke billowing out of a five-storey shopping mall in a county in South
China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region September 18, 2007. No casualties were
immediately reported, but all of the commodities sold in the mall were swallowed
by the raging fire. It took more than 100 firefighters three hours to put out
the fire. The investigation into the cause of the flame is underway.
Electrical
workers work on power lines of a power transmission and transformation project
of the Three Gorges Dam. The project had transmitted 189.2 billion kwh of power
to 11 provinces in China as of September 17, 2007.
China to
determine world economic fate - Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan predicted the world's economic fate depends on China.
Houhai, located dead in
the middle of old Beijing, is also known as Shishahai, an area including Qianhai,
Houhai and Xihai and with a history of more than 700 years. Many interesting
restaurants and shops have shot up around the lake during the last six years.
The lake, however, achieved global fame after becoming a safehaven during the
SARS outbreak. Since then, Houhai has been a landmark of Beijing nightlife.
Real-estate heavyweights are set to
raise the bidding temperature at the government land action today for a Tai Po
waterfront residential site, driving the price to a record high of HK$4.8
billion. The 238,164-square-foot plot, facing Tolo Harbor, is Site B of Pak Shek
Kok Reclamation Phase 1. It will allow for a gross floor area of 714,493 square
feet. Two adjacent plots were sold in March. Site A was auctioned for HK$2.11
billion, or HK$6,109 psf. The accommodation value, or price per- square-foot was
a record for the New Territories. Site C was settled for HK$3.5 billion, or
HK$4,668 psf. A G Wilkinson & Associates said on Wednesday, the land may fetch
HK$4.88 billion, or HK$6,828 psf, 58 percent above the trigger price of HK$3.08
billion. On Friday, Savills also raised its estimate for the site from HK$4.2
billion to HK$4.6 billion in view of the possible synergies it could create. The
surveyors' set a range of HK$3.8 billion to HK$4.4 billion for the site just
after it was put up for sale on August 23. Charles Chan Chiu-kwok, managing
director of Savills valuation and consultancy, said "the consortium [that] took
the two adjacent A and C sites would be most aggressive in bidding." If the
three sites offering 1.8 million sq ft of GFA were developed together, the
synergies would help lower investment cost by 5 percent, he said.
4th IMS world pork conference
held in Nanjing - It would discuss issues concerning pork production and its
market, pork consumption trend, new technology and new products as well as
global pork trade and policies.
Coca Cola expects China to be its
largest market, said E. Neville Isdell, chairman and chief executive officer of
the Coca Cola Company. Although China's economy has been growing rapidly for
more than two decades, Isdell noted that he had confidence in its further
growth. "China is currently our fourth largest market, but I hope it could
become No.1." Coca-Cola built two new bottling factories in east China's Jiangxi
Province last July and in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in
August, bringing the total number of its factories in China to 37. A new complex
including the Global Innovation and Technology Center and the new Coca Cola
China Headquarters, costing 80 million U.S. dollars, broke ground in Shanghai,
China's largest industrial center, according to Isdell. 
China has more than 600 million
mobile phones users by June this year, which means every one in five mobile
phone users is Chinese, an senior official said on Sunday.
A woman rides a
bicycle past a billboard promoting the "No Car Day" in Hefei, East China's Anhui
Province, September 16, 2007. China will launch a campaign calling on people to
travel by bike and public transportation instead of driving a car.
The government on Friday rushed to
save a 70-year-old Chinese-style mansion from the wrecker's ball. However,
according to some observers, damage to some of the building's interior may be
irreversible. At the government's request, the Antiquities Advisory Board moved
quickly on Friday after it was reported the building on Stubbs Road, King Yin
Lei, was undergoing renovation. It was quickly decided the building should be
placed on the proposed monuments list and this will be gazetted on Saturday. The
declaration will be valid for 12 months during which time the building cannot be
demolished, altered or changed in any way without permission from the
Antiquities Authority. This will also give the authority the opportunity to
consider if the building should be declared a monument and to negotiate possible
preservation options with the owner. Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng
Yuet-ngor, speaking after a special meeting with the Antiquities Advisory Board,
said the mansion was assessed on Thursday night and was qualified to be listed
as a proposed monument. "All work which may destroy or harm King Yin Lei,
including removing tiles, cannot be proceeded with," Cheng said, admitting it
was rare for the government to gazette an order on a Saturday. However, Lam said
she did not know when the government could discuss the mansion's future with the
owner. Board chairman Edward Ho Sing- tin said the move to list King Yin Lei as
a proposed heritage site was unanimous. King Yin Lei is three-story
Chinese-styled mansion with a gross floor area of 25,000 square feet, with the
whole site covering 50,000 square feet. The mansion was said to be undergoing
"intensive renovations" when the government decided to act.
Chinese stocks closed slightly
higher for a third straight day on Friday led by steel and cement. The benchmark
Shanghai Composite Index on the major Shanghai Stock Exchange rose 0.73 percent,
or 38.59 points to end at 5,312.18. The Shenzhen Component Index on the smaller
Shenzhen Stock Exchange rose 1.42 percent, or 561.1 points to close at
17,959.51.
A shopper picks
pork in a Shanghai supermarket in July. China's imports of pork more than
doubled in the first seven months, according to customs statistics released on
Thursday.
Director Ang Lee holds
the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice film festival September 8,
2007. Lee won for "Lust, Caution", a World War Two espionage thriller set in
Shanghai. Chinese director Ang Lee Saturday picked up the Venice Film Festival's
Golden Lion for best picture for his spy thriller "Lust, Caution," just two
years after taking the same award for "Brokeback Mountain." This is the third
consecutive year that a Chinese director has won the Golden Lion. Last year's
best picture award went to Jia Zhangke for "Still Life." Jia's "Wuyong", or
'Useless,' took the Orizzonti Doc Prize at this year's Venice Film Festival.
Lee's movie, called "Se, Jie" in Chinese, is set in the Japanese-occupied
Shanghai in 1940s. The boldness of the sex scenes in the movie between a spy
girl played by novice actress Tang Wei and powerful political figure played by
Tony Leung became a major topic at the festival. Jury president Zhang Yimou said
Lee's movie has won applause from all of the seven-member jury. Lee had made an
excellent integration of international resources while filming "Lust, Caution,"
which played an important role in winning him the award, he said. Lee told the
red carpet prize ceremony that the movie "has taken me to some very difficult
places." Lee said he was accepting the prize "in the shadow of the passing of
two great giants, Michaelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman." The director said
he would like to dedicate the award to Bergman, whom he saw while working on
"Lust, Caution". "Ingmar hugged me the way a mother hugs a child. This hug was
not for me, it was for you, the keepers of cinema," he said. Bergman died on
July 30, and Antonioni of Italy one day later. Lee also expressed his gratitude
to Chinese viewers and his colleagues in Hong Kong, saying that he hoped to
share the award with all Chinese. Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche's
immigration drama "La Graine et le Mulet" ("The Secret of the Grain") had been
the pre-award favorite for the Golden Lion. It took away one of two runner-up
jury prizes, while the other was won by U.S. director Todd Haynes for his "I'm
Not There." 
The Hong Kong
government has given the green light to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition
Centre Phase III extension, a move analysts said would help the city better
compete with the emerging threat from Macau. Members of the inner circle of the
administration, including Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Chief
Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, are supporting the development, a senior
government source told The Standard. They believe additional capacity from Phase
III will help Hong Kong stay competitive as a leading convention city in Asia,
the source said. "There is an urgency to speed up the expansion of the HKCEC,"
Jeffrey Lam, chairman of the Trade Development Council's Toys Industry Advisory
Committee, told The Standard. Lam said there is often a long waiting list of
exhibitors who were unable to book space at HKCEC trade fairs. "Obviously, Macau
would like to take away business from us," Lam said. "Nevertheless, we still
have our competitive edge in terms of software. "What we lack is hardware - the
exhibition space." The Phase III Benjamin Scent and Bonnie Chenextension will
expand the floor space to beyond 100,000 square feet, a member of the 19-person
governing body of the TDC said. The newly-enlarged HKCEC facilities have an
exhibition area comparable to the Venetian Macao, which has about 111,500 square
meters of meeting, convention and exhibition space. "The Venetian attracts,
first of all, because of the huge space that is available, and the other [reason
is] entertainment," said Credit Suisse analyst Gabriel Chan. "In Hong Kong, the
space is almost always full." Phase III will be developed on land now occupied
by the bus terminus and sports grounds near Great Eagle Centre, the government
source said. Although the existing sports facilities will be demolished, the TDC
plans to build new sports facilities on top of the HKCEC Phase III structure to
serve the public interest. In tandem with the expansion, the government will
rebrand HKCEC as an all-around complex offering exhibition, performance, and
sports facilities, the source said. "The Venetian attracts, first of all,
because of the huge space that is available, and the other [reason is]
entertainment," said Credit Suisse analyst Gabriel Chan. "In Hong Kong, the
space is almost always full." Phase III will be developed on land now occupied
by the bus terminus and sports grounds near Great Eagle Centre, according to the
government source. Although the existing sports facilities will be demolished,
the TDC plans to build new sports facilities on top of the HKCEC Phase III
structure. In tandem with the expansion, the government will rebrand HKCEC as an
all-around complex offering exhibition, performance, and sports facilities, the
source said. "There's not that much convention business in Hong Kong right now,"
said Morgan Stanley analyst Rob Hart. "Macau is better situated to focus on the
convention business, and there's plenty of other convention business around in
the Pearl River Delta region." The Phase III extension follows the Atrium Link
extension, now under way and expected to be completed in 2009. The Atrium Link
extension, which links the Phase I and Phase II wings of the convention center,
will add 19,400 sq m of exhibition space, an increase of 42 percent, for a total
exhibition area of 66,000 sq m. At the moment, the HKCEC offers 49,000 sq m of
exhibition space spread between the Phase I and Phase II wings. Plans call for
construction to begin on the Phase III project in 2009. Work is expected to be
completed by 2015. 
Hong Kong's drive to attract new talent has drawn two
notable additions - a licensed art therapist from the United States and an
award-winning papercutting artist from the mainland. Jordan Potash, an American
in his early 30s, and Shandong province-born Lu Xue said settling in the SAR
under the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme is a dream come true. Both praised
the scheme, saying it allows them to develop their speciality in the SAR. Potash
said he decided to further develop his career as an art therapist after visiting
Hong Kong two years ago. "I was notified of the scheme by the Hong Kong Economic
and Trade Office in Washington, DC, around March 2006. They told me to watch out
for the scheme's implementation, and I was, perhaps, the first to download the
application form in June," Potash told reporters at St John's Cathedral
Counselling Service in Central, his current place of work. His application was
approved last November. Potash is professionally trained in both art and therapy
to encourage clients to express their emotions by drawing or in other art forms,
to better cope with stress or other emotional problems. He said since the scheme
did not require him to produce a letter of appointment, he can develop his
career without red tape. Now, he is glad to offer counseling services to people
from all walks of life. "I enjoy Hong Kong as I was raised in Philadelphia, and
lived in Washington and other big cities for a long time. I really like it [Hong
Kong] - it's a busy city with vibrant and orientated people," Potash said. He
said his family supported his decision to spend the rest of his career in Hong
Kong. "It's hard to move away from my parents and siblings. No matter how great
the city is, it can't replace the family," he said. Lu, who became a Hong Kong
resident through the scheme in April, said it was a dream to set foot in the
territory. Lu is an internationally renowned artist whose works are
characterized by their contemporary themes and traditional Chinese art. She is
no stranger to the city as her Anderson Tales series was featured in stamps
issued by Hongkong Post in 2005. She was also invited by the Leisure and
Cultural Services Department to create a series of portraits of Dr Sun Yat-sen,
the founder of modern China. Her recent work, Influential People Marking the
10th Anniversary of the Handover, portrayed top political figures and senior
officials in Hong Kong.
Changzheng 2
(Long March) Rocket Launcher makes its debut at a spaceflight exhibition held in
Wuhan, China on September 9, 2007.
The first 8,530-TEU
container ship, of which China owns the full intellectual property rights, had
been delivered to China Shipping Container Lines Co. Ltd. (Shanghai) and left
for its maiden voyage to the United States on Sunday. It has made China the
fourth country in the world, after the Republic of Korea, Japan and Denmark that
is able to design and build such giant container ships, said experts. The ship,
named "New Asia", is the first of five container ships of the same type to be
designed and built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co. Ltd. for the
China Shipping Container Lines Co., Ltd. The 101,000-dwt container ship, 335
meters long and 42.8 meters wide, can sail at a speed of 25 knots an hour. The
Shanghai-based shipbuilding company spent six years to build the ship, the
largest container ship independently designed and built by China. It is one of
the mainstream type of container ships in the world.
Models present creations during the ninth Nanjing International Fashion Show
held in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province Sept. 7, 2007. The show featuring
fashion designers and creativity attracted more than 300 enterprises from home
and abroad. 
China
boasts a huge market, cost-effective products and a growing number of companies
that wish to invest overseas. Costa Rica, on the other hand, enjoys political
stability, rich human resources, lower tariffs as well as preferential policies
towards investors.
Performers take part
in the opening ceremony for the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup before the match
between Germany and Argentina at the Hongkou Football Stadium in Shanghai,
September 10, 2007. 
He persuaded the last emperor to abdicate,
was the first prime minister of the Republic of China, negotiated to keep the
British out of Tibet and was a personal friend of two US presidents. Tang Shaoyi
is the pride of the small township of Tangjiawan (the bay of the Tang family),
on the outskirts of Zhuhai , and one of the main reasons why earlier this year
it earned the title of a township famous for its history and culture, one of
only 20 on the mainland. It has been inhabited for almost 700 years.
Mary Ma Xuezheng, who retired in May after 17 years with computer maker Lenovo
Group (SEHK: 0992), has found a new home as partner and managing director in
Hong Kong of United States-based private-equity investment firm TPG. One of the
mainland’s highest-profile businesswomen, Ms Ma, 54, is expected to provide a
big boost to TPG’s investment strategy in the country. The global buyout company
is also a stakeholder in Lenovo, the world’s third-largest personal computer
supplier.
China will unveil financial policies
changes to support overseas investment of domestic companies, Zhou Xiaochuan,
governor of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), said Saturday. The central bank
will scrap unnecessary controls on foreign exchange reserves to fund local
firms' outbound investment, Zhou told a forum at the 11th China International
Investment and Trade Fair opened in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeastern
Fujian Province. "We will remove unnecessary restrictions on reviewing sources
of foreign exchange funds, as well as on foreign currency purchase and profit
remittance," he said. "We will also allow domestic firms to use their own
foreign exchanges or buy foreign funds with local currency yuan to invest
abroad." The governor noted the central bank will explore ways to buy shares in
foreign banks so as to provide more convenient financial services for the
overseas operations of domestic businesses.
APEC leaders,
wearing the Australian outback stockman's raincoats, pose for a group photo
during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit at the Sydney
Opera House September 8, 2007.
Venice wows 6-minute "Warlords" - To pay his tribute to
the Venice Film Festival, director Peter Chan has made a special edition of his
new war epic "The Warlords" to be shown during the ongoing festival. The
six-minute short film describes the scene of a wretched war field, reflecting
the complicated relations between the main characters. Festival director Marco
Muller was invited to watch the trailer. He praised the short version as a
shocking six minutes, saying that it was the best present at Venice. He said
that he felt very regretful that the film missed this year's festival. But,
having watched the special version, he thought it no bad thing to wait for such
an opus. He was longing for the film's debut in next year's festival. Peter Chan
was reportedly still working on his film's post-production editing. The film is
slated to open in Chinese theaters in December. Peter Chan's musical romance
"Perhaps, Love" was made as the close film of last year's Venice Film Festival.
Bus fares are
set to go up if Kowloon Motor Bus has its way. The company has applied for an
average 9 percent fare rise for all its routes, citing soaring fuel costs and
the need to maintain quality services. If approved, the hike would be KMB's
first in 10 years. But the move has drawn fire from lawmakers and critics who
called the proposed increases "unacceptable" and "too high." KMB chief executive
John Chan Cho-chak said on Friday that the company's decision has been prompted
by surging operating costs and other factors such as consumer prices, wages and
productivity. Other factors which are not part of the new fare-setting mechanism
but have been taken into account include rising fuel costs and tunnel fees over
the years, he said. Chan noted that KMB has not raised fares since December
1997. 
An open recruitment
drive is to be launched to fill the post of broadcasting director vacated by Chu
Pui-hing. The Civil Service Bureau said on Friday the exercise will begin later
this month following its approval of the Radio Television Hong Kong chief's
application for early retirement. Government sources said senior executives in
the private broadcasting sector and retiring senior government officials are
likely to vie for the post. A spokesman for the Commerce and Economic
Development Bureau said the decision was taken as the government considered it
necessary to allow eligible candidates from the private sector and within the
civil service to apply for the job through an open process. The appointment will
be for a term of 2 years.
The 2007 New
Silk Road model pageant kicked off in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province on
Sept. 6, 2007.
A giant tea cup draws
much attention at a tea culture exhibition held this April in Hangzhou, East
China's Zhejiang Province. Drinking tea has been an integral part of Chinese
culture for thousands of years. Guangzhou's preeminent association for female
expats may not be the first place one would expect to find fans of one of its
more low-key cultural exports. But over the years, an increasing number of
members of the Guangzhou Women's International Club (GWIC) have been embracing
the art of kungfu tea (gongfu cha) with a passion. Kungfu tea, in fact only one
of many Chinese tea ceremonies, has its origins in East China's Chaozhou,
Guangdong Province, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The ceremony combines
spiritual and ritual, brewing techniques with an appreciation of all these
elements, to create an art form. Today, it remains popular in Guangdong and in
the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou areas of Fujian Province. And the GWIC, which boasts
a regular membership of 500-plus foreigners from all over the world, regularly
arranges trips to Tao Ran Tea House in historic Shamian Island, so that members
can be introduced to this traditional pursuit. 
Workers load
a container with one of the pandas for Spain to a TNT 747 freighter in the
Shanghai Pudong International Airport, on the morning of September 8 2007. The
pandas are on their way to Spain’s Madrid Zoo for a 10-year stay which is part
of the Giant Panda International Conservation Cooperation Project between China
and Spain. Bing Xing and Hua Zuiba, the panda duo, will land in Madrid Saturday
evening after flying for nearly 14 hours, said Michael Drake, Managing Director
for TNT Greater China.
A branch
of China Construction Bank in Shanghai. Regulator approved the bank's A-share
listing plan on September 7.
Aplethora of big-name
acts are set to inject the capital with a massive dose of rock, with the star
roll for this weekend's Beijing Pop Festival featuring industrial gods, Nine
Inch Nails, hip hop legends Public Enemy, and Marky Ramone, the surviving member
of the Ramones. They join the Who's Who of Chinese rock for a two-day festival
of music madness. The third installment of this annual event will be staged at
Chaoyang Park in eastern Beijing.
Cosmetics get promotional
lift online - Better promotion online. Leading international brand L'Oréal has
recently conducted a series of marketing campaigns including giving away free
samples of its new skincare products and launching a website with the Chinese
domain name "膚老化之謎.CN" (meaning "mystery of ageing skin"). The site allows
Mainland consumers to log on and obtain detailed information on its products in
the Chinese language. In addition to L'Oréal, other cosmetics giants such as
Unilever, Shiseido and Chanel have also lost no time in registering Chinese
domain names for their local websites targeting Mainland customers. According to
industry experts, leading international cosmetics brands are exploring the best
media channels for their local promotions. Online marketing is definitely going
to make up a significant part. As market competition gets steeper every day,
cosmetics companies have found it increasingly difficult to communicate the
unique features of their products in detail to consumers. Conventional
advertising channels offer limited exposure, they believe. The launch of the
L'Oréal Chinese domain name website has triggered a new trend of online brand
promotion that can effectively resolve the communication bottleneck under
conventional marketing. Studies have found that cosmetics giants have all
introduced websites for their brands under Chinese domain names for some time.
As well as those mentioned, companies include La Roche-Posay and Aupres.
Pictures of
giant pandas Bing Xing (Ice Star) and Hua Zuiba (Flowery Mouth) are on display
at a panda breeding center in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province,
September 7, 2007.The pandas set off for Madrid on Friday.
China's State Council, or
the cabinet, appointed the head of National Corruption Prevention Bureau, a
brand new and first ever anti-corruption agency, here Thursday. Ma Wen, the
newly appointed Minister of Supervision, was appointed head of the bureau, with
Qu Wanxiang, Vice Minister of Supervision, as the deputy head, according to a
press release issued by the State Council. Few detail is available about the
establishment of the bureau in the press release. "I have no idea of how the
bureau will function. But personally I think this would be a tough job, even
tougher than investigating a high-profile official involved in corruption
scandal," said Prof Ren Jianmin, from the School of Public Policy and Management
of Tsinghua University. One of the important jobs to prevent corruption is to
reform the supervision system on officials and develop new anti-corruption
policies, he said. Some of these reforms will face resistance as they might harm
interests of some powerful people, he said. The news of setting up such a new
anti-corruption agency was first released by Gan Yisheng, spokesman for the
Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of
China (CPC), early this year. At the annual session of National People's
Congress this March, another CCDI senior official Xia Zanzhong also confirmed
that the establishment of the bureau has been approved and the framework of
personnel been set. As one of the efforts to curb corrupt officials, the new
agency is expected to play an effective role in corruption prevention, Gan said
at a press conference in February. The proposed bureau will follow effective
practices seen overseas, he said. According to Gan, the new agency will set up
units at local level once the headquarters is established. "China sets up such a
high-powered national corruption prevention body as one of the efforts to apply
the United Nations Convention against Corruption," Ren said. It was also driven
by domestic need to curb corruption in government departments. According to CCDI,
97,260 officials were disciplined last year, more than 80 percent of whom had
failed to carry out duties, taken bribes or violated the party's financial
rules. Several high-profile officials had fallen in corruption scandals,
including the former head of the food and drug administration and former party
head of China's economic hub Shanghai. "We can't count on punishment only. It
will take effect for some time but did not touch the root of corruption. We need
to enhance the preventive measures," said Yan Qunli, a CCDI official in charge
of anti-corruption publicity and education programs. China's policies to prevent
corruption used to focus on moral education of government and party officials
but in recent years a series of rules and regulations were issued to deal with
systemic loopholes, covering administrative approvals, financial management,
official promotion and penalty on corrupted officials. The CCDI also kept
working out policies against "new forms of corruption" trying to catch as many
corrupted officials as possible. Four months ago it has issued a regulation
covering several new fields of bribery like taking stocks and shares as gifts,
buying houses or cars at ridiculously low prices from those who ask them for
favors, laundering bribes by gambling and asking bribers to arrange jobs after
retirement.
Steel products
are displayed at an exhibition in Shanghai on May 10. China's top economic
planner urged to curb "drastic fluctuations" of domestic steel prices on
Thursday.
Zhang Xin,
born in China and educated in the UK, used to work on Wall Street before she and
her husband Pan Shiyi founded SOHO China 12 years ago. The company has grown
into one of the largest commercial property developers in Beijing. The couple
have become the most high-profile property celebrities in China with their
innovative ideas on property development and international vision.
As its name
suggests, Bundview offers a picturesque panorama of the Bund and the winding
Huangpu River. It is one of those Pudong restaurants that encourages diners to
sit back, enjoy the spacious, naturalistic environs and observe the bustling
city from a tranquil distance. It being a rare sunny day, we visited and chose
our meal from the affordable lunchtime set menu (starting at RMB 88 for choice
of appetizer, soup, main course, dessert of the day and one drink). Our first
courses, the traditional Caesar salad and minestrone soup, were both well
prepared. Our next dish, the green curry with steamed rice, was hearty, with a
full-flavored and aromatic sauce. Bundview is a good choice for business lunches
or any meal in which luxurious ambiance and a beautiful view are paramount.
Tourism chiefs hope to join
forces - Mutual co-operation and collaboration will be on the agenda when
members of the Hong Kong Tourism Board meet their Macau counterparts at the end
of next month. They will explore ways to develop the lucrative "Mice" market -
corporate meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions. The meeting,
involving the board's chairman, James Tien Pei-chun, and executive director,
Anthony Lau Chun-hon, will come about nine weeks after Las Vegas Sands unveiled
its mammoth integrated resort-hotel, The Venetian Macao, which boasts more than
1.2 million sq ft of convention and meeting space. Despite fears that the pace
of tourism infrastructure development in Macau will boost its appeal as a top
destination for corporate meetings and conferences, Mr Lau said Hong Kong still
had a lot going for it as an international city with top professional services
and infrastructure. But those from the travel and exhibitions trades largely
expect Macau to capture corporate meetings and incentives business, while Hong
Kong will remain the hub for conventions and exhibitions. Mr Lau, who joined the
board a month ago, said focus should be put on the quality of shows rather than
just their size. He said Mr Tien would further promote Hong Kong by highlighting
the city's culinary delights on a Discovery Channel program to be broadcast in
the US by year's end before being shown around the world.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said
in Sydney Thursday that numerous facts have proved China and the United States
are each other's stakeholders and constructive cooperators. President Hu Jintao,
on the defensive over recalls of tainted toothpaste, pet food and toys, told US
President George W Bush yesterday that Beijing is stepping up product safety
inspections. Hu was the first to bring up the sensitive subject about recent
recalls that have stained the "Made in China" label. Bush expressed America's
concern about the safety of imported products, and stressed to Hu that safety
concerns did not amount to trade protectionism. China has acknowledged that some
manufacturers have cut corners and used substandard materials, but that the
problem involves a relatively small portion of the nation's factories. Hu told
Bush that the government has set up an agency to oversee the quality and safety
of exports, and that officials responsible for wrongdoing have been held
accountable. "The president was quite articulate about product safety, and I
appreciated his comments," Bush said after his sit- down with Hu on the
sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney. At a joint
news conference with the summit host, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Hu
said his government is taking the product safety issue seriously. "The Chinese
side is willing and ready to work together with the international community to
step up cooperation in quality inspections and examinations and further deepen
mutually beneficial economic cooperation and trade," said Hu, speaking through a
translator.
It
was a night of spectacular Japanese theatrical scenes -- with actors in
elaborate make-up, costumes with brilliant colors, and sakura as the stage
background when Two Japanese kabuki classics were presented in Beijing Tuesday.
The death of Italian tenor Luciano
Pavarotti, who had given Chinese impressive performances for 3 times, aroused
great sadness in his Chinese courterparts. "People may not know opera well but
they know who is Pavarotti. He is a super star and flagship of Italian opera on
the world stage. His death is a great loss," Yao Hong, one of China's best
sopranos, told Xinhua here Thursday. She had been on the same stage with
Pavarotti at the concert held at the Forbidden City of Beijing in 2001 for
China's campaignto host the 2008 Olympics. "I will never forget the moment when
I held his hand and sang together at the concert as he has been the master I
revere most," Yao said. Pavarotti had been to China for three times, in 1986,
2001 and 2005. On Dec. 8, 2005, he gave a farewell concert in Beijing. "We had
the luck to work with this master of opera for several times. He had given
Chinese people the chances to enjoy the most wonderful voice in the world. We
appreciate him forever," said Liu Xijin, dean of China National Opera House.
Pavarotti passed away in Modena of Italy early Thursday at the age of 71. He had
undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer last year and stayed out of the stage
ever since. "I had expected to sing with him in China again when Beijing hosts
the Olympics in 2008. This dream will never realize," Yao the soprano said.
Team China (L-R) Yang Wei,
Xiao Qin, Huang Xu, Liang Fuliang, Chen Ybing and Xu Kai celebrate their gold
medal in the team all-around competition at the 40th World Artistic Gymnastics
Championships in Stuttgart September 6, 2007.
Bush sees
'good opportunity' in China - U.S. President George W. Bush (R) announces that
Dana Perino (L) will take over the post of White House Press Secretary from Tony
Snow, in the press briefing room of the White House, August 31, 2007. White
House Press Secretary Tony Snow gave his resignation to the president earlier in
the day. US President George W. Bush said on Thursday China's rapid economic
growth has provided a "good opportunity" for the United States as well as other
countries in the Asia-Pacific region. "Is China an issue for the world?
Absolutely. But I don't view it as a negative issue, I view it as an opportunity
to work with one of the really significantly growing economies in the world,"
Bush said on the eve of his visit to Australia next week. "I view that a growing
middle class in China is good for US exporters; it provides opportunity," said
the US president, who will attend the 15th economic leaders' informal meeting of
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, scheduled to be held in Sydney on
September 8-9.
The year 2007 marks
the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. Also it has been
10 years since Hong Kong tea restaurants landed in Shanghai. After ten years'
development, now Hong Kong tea restaurants can be found on every corner of
Shanghai and they have become popular dining places for Shanghainese people.
Boy wonder finds maths a big yawn -
One big yawn! That is what child prodigy March Tian Boedihardjo thought about
the first lesson of a five-year course that will lead him to a masters degree at
the Baptist University of Hong Kong.
More delays are in store for the mainland's
stalled investment "direct train" to Hong Kong, as legal and technical hurdles
surrounding the pilot project have not been cleared. Mainland media outlets
reported yesterday that sources close to the China Banking Regulatory Commission
blamed unresolved technical issues for delaying the launch. Steve Lee, chief
executive of China- based fund management company HSBC Jintrust, agreed that the
start-up of the project allowing mainland investors to purchase Hong Kong
equities may take longer to materialize. He told Reuters that last month's
announcement by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to kick off the
project was too sudden. "The whole system and method on how to clear accounts
still need time to be resolved. The regulatory policies also have to be
revised," Lee said. All this work will further delay the much-anticipated pilot
project. Bank of China's (3988) Tianjin branches - the first designated gateway
to host the trial scheme - have been packed with eager individuals opening
accounts to invest directly in Hong Kong equities. The project is also yet to
receive official Chinese regulatory approval.
There is
little chance of a new round of negotiations this week between striking
ironworkers and contractors, a government source said yesterday. The assessment
came as the number of construction sites seriously affected by the dispute
jumped from nine at the end of August to 14 yesterday, while the number of bar
benders on the job remained at about 930. There are 166 construction sites in
the city. Bar benders lay the girders that form the skeletons of buildings. "We
are not optimistic that the workers and the Bar-bending Contractors' Association
will return to the negotiating table this week," the source said, adding that
the contractors were furious with the workers for refusing to compromise when
given a new offer. At talks last week, the contractors added HK$25 to the HK$850
daily wage they offered on August 12. But this was rejected by the Federation of
Trade Unions, which is insisting on HK$900. The leader of the rival
Confederation of Trade Unions, legislator Lee Cheuk-yan, admitted the breakdown
in talks had made it more difficult to solve the crisis.
Anson Chan Fang
On-sang reiterated yesterday she was not interested in running in the Legco
by-election, but said she would consider the views of the pan-democrats after
intense lobbying. It is understood that she will soon meet members of the
pan-democratic camp on the issue. A day after Cyd Ho Sau-lan withdrew to make
way for a stronger contender from the camp, the former chief secretary said
again that she had no intention to stand in Legco elections. But she said that
she had been urged to join the poll. "I have already said, so far at this point
in time, I have no interest in participating in Legco elections. But since I
have been approached by different quarters, I am bound to consider the views and
I will issue a statement in due course," she said after attending a business
forum on universal suffrage last night.
An extended pedestrian subway is to be built to help
shoppers in Tsim Sha Tsui. The 240-metre-long subway, costing about HK$215
million, would allow people to get from East Tsim Sha Tsui station to the Canton
Road area in 10 minutes, said Ken Wong Kin-wai, senior resident engineer of the
Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation. "It provides an alternative for people. They
can walk from one side to the other in the air-conditioned, well-linked
pedestrian subway," he said. Now, people coming from the East Tsim Sha Tsui
station have to get out of the underpass when reaching the Kowloon Hotel and
walk to Canton Road. The new section, named Middle Road Subway Extension, will
connect the existing underpass in Middle Road to two government subways,
including Kowloon Park Drive Subway and Peking Road Subway. 
Wei Rongping,
director of the Bifengxia Panda Base of the Chinese Research Center for the
Protection of Giant Pandas, examines a panda cub in Ya’an of southwest China’s
Sichuan Province on Sept. 4, 2007. A total of 22 giant pandas have been
artificially bred in China this year, with 21 of them surviving. 
President Hu Jintao (L) meets with Australia’ s Governor-General Michael Jeffery
(R) at Government House in Canberra September 4, 2007. Hu is scheduled to attend
the 15th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney on September 8-9.
Tourists watch the
spewing of the Baotu Spring in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province,
Sept. 5, 2007. The water table of the Baotu Spring reached 28.74 meters on
Wednesday. The spring has been spewing since its re-spewing in September 2003.
(R-L) Fashion
designer Ma Ke, director Jia Zhangke, and the production team of the documentary
"Inutile," pose at the film's premiere in Venice, on Monday, Sept. 3, 2007.
The year 2007 marks the 10th
anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. Also it has been 10 years
since Hong Kong tea restaurants landed in Shanghai. After ten years'
development, now Hong Kong tea restaurants can be found on every corner of
Shanghai and they have become popular dining places for Shanghainese people.
The argument
that China is stealing jobs from the west is lost on French entrepreneur
Jean-Louis Desjoyaux. He is focused on meeting orders piling up from wealthy
Chinese for his swimming pools, which are made in France. Mr Desjoyaux's 210
employees in France have 800 pools to produce for private Chinese clients, and
sales are up 90 per cent this year. Mr Desjoyaux opened his first outlet in
Beijing in May and expects the mainland to rival Europe as a market within a
decade - buying 10,000 of his pools each year.
Li Sha (C),
the winner of the Miss New Zealand Chinese Beauty Pageant 2007, poses for a
photo with the first runner-up (L) and the second runner-up (R)after the final
competition held at Aotea Centre in New Zealand on September 2, 2007.
Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with West Australia Premier Alan Carpenter in
Perth Monday. Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Perth Monday for a state
visit to Australia, where he will also attend the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting
in Sydney on September 8-9. During his visit, Hu is expected to discuss with
Australian leaders ways of furthering the development of bilateral relations, as
well as major world and regional issues of common concern. This year marks the
35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and
Australia. In 2006, the two countries agreed to develop comprehensive and
cooperative ties for mutual benefit in the 21st century.
A trader unloads
watermelons at a wholesale market in Beijing. Senior commerce officials
yesterday urged foreign investors to expand in China's agricultural wholesale
sector.
Airbus A380, the world's biggest passenger plane so far, made low flights across
the Victoria Harbor in central Hong Kong in a flying show shortly before the
opening of Asia's largest airshow on Monday morning. The superjumbo jet, 72.8
meters long and with a wingspan of 79. 8 meters, thrilled spectators at the
harbor by flying low against the backdrop of dense skyscrapers nearby, making it
possible for people on the ground to have an unusually detailed view. The plane
generated a comparatively smaller noise as it flied over the Victoria Harbor, a
spectator was quoted by the local RTHK radio as saying. The plane arrived at
Hong Kong's International Airport at Chek Lap Kok at about 6:30 p.m. local time
Sunday. It took off from the airport at about 7:53 a.m. local time on Monday.
Rude and unscrupulous cabbies could be driven off the roads when a global
positioning system is launched next month. More than 1,000 taxis will initially
be fitted with the navigational devices. The cabs belong to a new radio-taxi
company called HK Cab ITS and will roll onto the streets this autumn. The
company - jointly owned by the six largest taxi groups and Castel Spaceinet
Communications - said the fleet would expand to at least 5,000 by the middle of
next year. There are 18,138 taxis in Hong Kong and 15,250 are urban cabs. Apart
from improving navigation, the HK$20 million system would improve deployment of
taxis and standardise quality, it is claimed. Kwok Chi-ping, Spaceinet managing
director, said operators at the control centre in Lai Chi Kok would distribute
jobs according to the proximity of taxis to the caller, with each cab appearing
as a red dot on a wall-sized electronic map that also shows traffic conditions.
"We send messages to empty cabs to inform them of a job to shorten waiting
time," Mr Kwok said. "Drivers can choose if they want it or not. But we provide
them with an extra source of customers at low cost and they don't have to pay
for the equipment. I don't see why they wouldn't want to join us." The system is
also designed to improve driver safety. If drivers feel threatened by a
passenger they can press an alarm linked to the control centre. On receiving the
signal, operators start recording the conversation inside the taxi and police
can be called if drivers are in danger. The cabs are also protected against
theft as drivers have to enter a code before they can start the engine. Fuel
supply is cut if the taxis are started by other means. But in exchange for these
services, drivers must be polite, Mr Kwok said. "You must have heard unpleasant
tales of disputes between drivers and passengers regarding fares, choice of
routes or attitude problems, but in our team, drivers must never scream at the
passengers." Traditionally easy prey for rogue drivers, like foreigners, can
also claim their money back if it is proved that the driver demanded an
unreasonable fare or had taken them on a longer route than necessary. "Every
detail of the trip is recorded, along with traffic conditions, so there will be
no argument," Mr Kwok said. He expects that up to 90 per cent of urban cabbies
will eventually join his team. Transport analyst Hung Wing-tat said if the
scheme worked, the company could monopolise the radio-taxi trade, which may turn
the city's cab operation into one similar to that in Singapore - where on-hire
cabs have been replaced by radio taxis. But Professor Hung said there was a long
way to go because the company could only exert power over the drivers as long as
it provided them with extra profits. The Transport Department said it welcomed
initiatives to enhance taxi services. Meanwhile, the Transport Advisory
Committee is examining how to improve the taxi trade's competitiveness and
whether its fare structure is outdated. The findings will be released by early
next year.
China Eastern Airlines (CEA), one of the country's leading carrier, announced on
Sunday it will sell a 26-percent stake to Singapore Airlines Limited ("SIA").
Industry analysts believe the long- awaited transaction allows SIA to secure a
foothold in an aviation market that is shaping up to be at the center of growth
in Asia, a region which will be the world's biggest market for aviation by 2010,
according to International Air Transport Association forecasts. The deal will
enable China Eastern to strengthen management and improve bottom line, polish
its brand reputation and sharpen its competitive edge as the carrier prepares to
take on domestic rivals such as Air China (0753), in which Cathay Pacific
Airways (0293) holds 17 percent. Under the deal, the strategic investors will be
held to a three-year lock-up period. Singapore Airlines chairman Stephen Lee
Ching Yen said yesterday the acquisition is for the long haul. "Even though
there is a three-year lock-up period, it doesn't mean we are ready to sell out
in three years. As far as SIA is concerned, this is of long-term strategic
importance." Temasek is SIA's biggest shareholder with a 55.14 percent interest
as of June. In July, the annual Skytrax survey rated SIA as the Airline of the
Year. China Eastern president Cao Jianxiong said the deal will boost the
company's finances and operations. 
Trade between
China and Russia is expected to surpass 40 billion U.S. dollars this year, Wei
Jianguo said on Sunday. 
Multinationals
need to rebuild corporate image in China - McDonald's has approved a pay raise
for more than 95 percent of its employees in China, a move that may redeem the
fastfood giant's reputation in the wake of being accused of underpaying its
staff. The payment adjustment, the first ever initiated by the hamburger king
since it came to China 17 years ago, was launched on Saturday, company sources
said. The move was in response to extensive public outcries that the company,
along with KFC and Pizza Hut, has been underpaying their part-time staff in the
southern city of Guangzhou by up to 40 percent below the local statutory minimum
wage of nearly US$1 an hour, he said. The beneficiaries, mainly part-time
workers in about 75 percent of McDonald's outlets across the country, will see
their basic payment raised by 12 to 65 percent. The salary incident was a result
of the development of China's social supervision system and the growth of
people's consciousness of social injustice, said Wang Lingyi, professor with
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, pointing out that "many foreign firms are
forced to rebuild corporate image." "Just depending on PR activities to build up
corporate image is no longer adequate in China, where the legal system is being
updated and industrial criteria are catching up with the world's level," he
said. Peng Xizhe, professor of social sciences with Shanghai-based Fudan
University, said that "transnational companies were once considered business
examples, but many have been found of attempting to test the limit of Chinese
laws and ethical principles." German engineering powerhouse Siemens, under
investigations over bribery and corruption allegations in Europe and the United
States, sacked 20 employees in its China branch last year, saying they had been
found to be related to things the company "doesn't want to accept." Following a
report released by a German magazine last week saying that about half of
Siemens' business in China was tainted by bribery, Peter Loescher made his first
visit to China after being appointed Siemens' new CEO. In addition, about 90
foreign-invested companies, including KFC, Pepsi and Carlsburg, have been found
of violating Chinese rules on waste discharge since 2004, a recent report by the
Institute of Public and Environment Affairs said. An on-line survey shows that
more than 73 percent of the interviewed were strongly against foreign companies
which moved polluting industries to China. Another 82.5 percent of netizens
blamed those who forged deficit statistics to avoid tax paying in China, the
survey conducted by Ipsos between June to July said. More than 280,000
foreign-funded companies have registered in China by the end of June this year,
bringing in a total investment of US$180 million, government figures show. At
the same time, Chinese public are paying more attention to whether these
multinational companies are performing in accordance with laws and commercial
ethics and realize due social responsibilities, Professor Wang said. Mere public
relations strategies won't work, and big multinationals need to rebuild their
lost role of business models in China, just as they used to do in their home
countries, he said.
The Securities and Futures Commission has frozen the assets of Man Lung Hong
Securities and its clients after the regulator uncovered misappropriations of
client assets worth about HK$20 million. The commission also issued a
restriction notice ordering the local small brokerage to stop trading or
engaging in any activities for which it is licensed. An SFC spokesperson said 28
clients had reported a shortfall of shares totaling about HK$20 million. Upon
further investigation, the regulator determined that Man Lung Hong management
had identified earlier misappropriations but concealed them from clients and the
SFC. "Based on our initial inquiries, we do not have confidence in the firm's
internal control and believe that client assets are at risk," the SFC said in a
statement. "[This] calls into serious doubt the integrity of the firm and its
fitness and properness to remain licensed." Some clients of the brokerage showed
up on Friday at Man Lung Hong's locked offices in Central to demand release of
their money. They were not allowed into the office and were told all assets had
been frozen by the SFC.
The government will auction off Hong Kong's
fifth license to operate high- speed mobile services late next month or early
November with a reserve price of HK$76 million, it was announced on Friday. The
reserve price is about 60 percent lower than the previous one six years ago. The
radio spectrum on offer is based on the code division multiple access 2000,
which is used in many countries including the United States, Japan and South
Korea. "The reserve price has to reflect the market situation, it has to be at a
level that will not create too high an entry barrier," said Marion Lai Chan
Chi-kuen, deputy secretary for commerce, industry and technology. Lai said the
reserve price was set with regard for current market conditions and
international benchmarks. "If you look at auctions for 3G spectrum
internationally, such as in the United States, Denmark and Malaysia, the price
has decreased by an average of more than 60 percent," she said. Phone operators
will have until October 12 to submit bids. 
One of President Hu
Jintao's closest aides is tipped for promotion, while an ally who was sacked as
Beijing mayor during the 2003 SARS crisis has made a political comeback, signs
of the leader's growing strength. The changes were part of a reshuffle ahead of
the party's 17th congress, which opens on October 15 with Hu expected to promote
more of his men to key posts and further consolidate power. Ling Jihua, 50,
deputy director of the General Office of the Communist Party's Central
Committee, is expected to replace Wang Gang, 64, as director in the near future,
two sources with ties to the leadership said. "It's a very important job," one
source said, adding it was an indication Hu was politically stronger. The
general office is the party's nerve center, handling classified documents and
administrative and logistical affairs of the party's 23-member, decision-making
Politburo. Previous directors of the general office were concurrently alternate
members of the Politburo, including Wen Jiabao, who is now premier, and Zeng
Qinghong, the vice president. State media said former Beijing mayor Meng Xuenong,
58, had been appointed deputy party boss of the coal- rich northern province of
Shanxi. "Hu does not have a lot of people he can trust," a second source said,
referring to Meng's comeback. On Thursday, parliament approved the appointments
of new ministers of state security, personnel and supervision. 
China
Eastern Airlines realized 58.21 million yuan (US$7.7 million) in net profits in
the first half of this year, up 104.36 percent over the same period of last
year. In a major effort to restructure China's fledgling air flight industry,
Beijing has given the final approval for the Shanghai-based China Eastern
Airlines to sell a 24 percent stake to Singapore Airlines and the well-known
Temasek Holdings.
Newly-crowned world
champion Liu Xiang from China kisses his gold medal on the podium at the
awarding ceremony for the men's 110 meters hurdles final at the 11th IAAF World
Athletics Championship in Osaka September 1, 2007.
The record price a rare commercial site in Shanghai
fetched at an auction last week will provide a big boost to the office and
retail leasing market in the city, property consultants say. The 13,709 square
metre office-retail site on East Nanjing Road, Shanghai's busiest shopping
address, was sold to Suning on Friday for 4.4 billion yuan, or a record 66,927
yuan per square metre. Assuming a developed gross floor area of 65,743 square
metres, space must be offered by the winning developer at 100,000 yuan per
square metre - double current market prices - to make a reasonable profit. The
auction's surprise outcome reflected a vote of confidence from local and
overseas developers in Shanghai's economic outlook and pointed to even higher
prices ahead, the consultants said. 
"Mad
Detective" and "Exodus" Premiere at Toronto - Two Hong Kong films are set to
premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival which will run from
September 6-15. "Mad Detective" by Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai will be screened at
Special Presentations, a showcase for daring and artistic films with
high-profile stars or directors. In this suspense action drama, Lau Ching Wan
plays a reclusive yet gifted mad detective who is enlisted to help crack the
case of a missing police pistol connected to a series of heists and murders.
Andy On, Kelly Lin and Lam Ka Tung co-star. The picture marks Lau's first role
after winning best actor for the first time at this year's Hong Kong Film
Awards. It is also the first directing collaboration between To and Wai since
2003. The duo previously co-directed a string of highly successful films,
including "Running on Karma", "Turn Left, Turn Right", "Love For All Seasons",
"My Left Eyes Sees Ghost" and "Fulltime Killer". Meanwhile, Pang Ho Cheung's
"Exodus" is in the Vanguard section dedicated to irreverent, stylistically
playful films that challenge the boundaries of social discourse. The HK$10 mn
production is about a police cop (Simon Yam) who uncovers a secret worldwide
network of women conspiring to exterminate men. His investigation is soon
thwarted with the organization's infiltration into the police force and soon he
can no longer trust anyone, including his family. The cast also features Annie
Liu, Irene Wan and Nick Cheung. Both "Mad Detective" and "Exodus" are scheduled
for release in Hong Kong before year-end. As previously announced, Wilson Yip's
action-packed "Flash Point" starring Donnie Yen, will be played in the Midnight
Madness section of Toronto. 
Leon Ko Sai-tseung stays where his music doesn't - in the background. Despite
having penned a Canto-pop hit in secondary school, winning numerous music
awards, and with a Broadway musical in the works, the composer avoids celebrity.
It's away from the limelight that he's most at ease - and inspired. "I guess I
need to observe; I like to walk down the street and among the crowd without
being part of it," Ko says. "Sometimes people scare me. I don't know why. At one
point, I lived in my own shell. I stroll down the street in my own shell now and
just pick up things from people ... and that's my inspiration." His music, on
the other hand, seeks to make an impression. "It has to be felt; I believe in a
very strong theme." No atmospheric compositions for Ko, who writes mainly for
theatre and film. "I like strong melodic themes be they in theatre, pop or
movies. I just can't get away from tunes, so that's going to be in whatever I
do." There will be plenty of powerful tunes in Angel Falls, his latest work with
playwright Raymond To Kwok-wai and the Hong Kong Dance Company. The production,
which tells the story of a young man's pursuit of a dance career over family
objections, opens next week. It marks Ko's first foray into dance, a dreaded
territory for him.
The world's
largest casino attracts thousands of eager Chinese punters - ITS construction
involved filling in the sea between two of Macau's islands to recreate the Las
Vegas strip, and then carefully cutting out tiny canals to provide at least a
hint of Venice. On August 28th the Venetian Macau, the world's biggest casino,
opened its doors to an ocean of people eager to get to its tables. A packed
ceremony in the casino's 15,000-capacity arena culminated in Diana Ross singing
“Ain't No Mountain High Enough”—reflecting, perhaps, the hopes of both the
gamblers with their stacks of chips, and the firm behind the casino, Las Vegas
Sands. It would be hard to find a project more amenable to hype, or an industry
less shy about disclosing its extravagance. The enormous building, Asia's
largest, required 20,000 construction workers and 3m sheets of gold leaf.
Running it takes 16,000 employees and enough power for 300,000 homes.
Construction costs swelled from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion—more, the South
China Morning Post pointed out, than Macau's entire public-works budget for the
past five years. The Venetian has 870 tables and 3,400 slot machines in the
world's largest gambling hall, which is encircled by 350 shops, more retail
space than any Hong Kong mall. That is also over twice as many tables as existed
in all of Macau in 2002, when a local monopoly was broken and the Las Vegas
operators were allowed in. This brought together American firms, with their
business plans and architectural schemes honed in Nevada, and enthusiastic
Chinese punters. Macau's old casinos could not compete. Las Vegas Sands opened
its first casino in Macau in 2004, and it became profitable overnight, as did
casinos opened by fast-moving rivals. Investors took a while to understand the
market's potential, but between late 2005 and early 2007 shares in Las Vegas
Sands doubled. But they have since been volatile. The Chinese authorities
recently cracked down on visas issued from southern China—the kind of political
twist that can play havoc with strategic planning. Wynn Resorts, Sands' closest
rival, has scaled back its own expansion in Macau. But Sands' chairman, Sheldon
Adelson, is convinced that the Venetian's success is a sure-fire bet. Judging by
this week's crowds, he may well be right.
Jay Chou is
incorporating plots into his upcoming Shanghai concert scheduled on Nov. 24,
relating to each song he is going to play, according to the Shanghai Morning
Post. 
Models present
a new car of China’s Hafei Automobile Group at Krokus Expo in Moscow. A batch of
new cars launched at the exhibition by Chinese enterprises attracted many
visitors.
More than
200 pieces of cultural relics from the underground palace of the Famen Temple
near Xi’an were exhibited on August 30 in Tianjin. 
Children's
clothes on display at a Beijing exhibition. China welcomes the results of a New
Zealand probe into the safety of made-in-China children's pajamas.
Chinese
actress Tang Wei and actor Wang Lee-hom arrive at the Cinema Palace in Venice
August 30, 2007. Tang and Wang star in director Ang Lee's movie "Lust, Caution"
which is showing at the Venice Film Festival.
Eat hotpot during
such a scorching summer? The idea may sound crazy. But the newly opened Le Shabu
Shabu Pot claims their special soups can dissipate internal heat.
A Birthday Celebration for Queen Lili'uokalani: this Sunday, 'Iolani Palace.
Lili'uokalani is remembered today as the queen who was deposed - and as a famous
composer.
The proposal comes
after Octopus revealed last month that 15,270 faulty EPS add-value transactions
between January 2000 and December 2006 had led to HK$3.7million being wrongfully
deducted from the bank accounts of Octopus card users. In his online opinion
column Viewpoint on the authority website released yesterday, Mr Yam said now
might be a good time to review how Hong Kong's electronic money system should
develop. "While there are lessons on governance and risk management to be
learned by Octopus and others from the failure of add-value transactions through
EPS, it is becoming increasingly clear that whether there is a need for
separation of the management of the platform and the issue of stored-value cards
is an important issue to be considered and debated," he said. Saying a lack of
competition might be one of the reasons for the recent overcharging problem, Mr
Yam stressed, however, that Hong Kong had the potential to have the most
efficient electronic money system in the world. In response to Mr Yam's
comments, Donald Cheung, Octopus senior corporate communications manager said:
"Hong Kong is a free market, and competition for multi-purpose stored-value
cards comes from both existing payment systems such as cash, credit card and
EPS, as well as new entrants." He added: "We will continue to focus on our
efforts in enhancing our services and increasing the ways Octopus can be used in
Hong Kong."
China's Big Four state lenders are losing
market share as affluent mainland consumers seek more advanced products and
better services, according to a report from McKinsey & Co. Affluent mainland
customers, defined as those with an annual income of US$50,000 (HK$390,000), are
shifting their business to banks that better fit their sophisticated
requirements, a study by the global consultancy found. The customers are moving
away from banks such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1398) and Bank
of China (3988) to joint-stock lenders such as China Merchants Bank (3968),
China CITIC Bank (0998) and China Everbright Bank (0165) as well as new foreign
entrants to the mainland market. "Chinese customers are also no longer simply
satisfied with basic products such as savings and time-deposit accounts," said
Emmanuel Pitsilis, Hong Kong-based head of McKinsey's financial institutions
practice in Greater China. "They expect banks to deliver on these services, but
now demand individually tailored products and services as well," he said. Eighty
percent of the 514 affluent mainland consumers surveyed by McKinsey use a Big
Four bank for their primary banking business, down from 92 percent of 128 people
surveyed in 2001. "What we're seeing is customers are no longer as entrenched as
before with the Big Four banks," Kenny Lam, an associate partner in McKinsey's
Hong Kong office, told The Standard. "They're willing to shop around."
