Archive for July, 2013

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23/07/2013

China to expand imports from ASEAN members

Is this action based on genuine economic reasons or is it partly to diffuse China‘s tension with many ASEAN countries involved with the on–going maritime territorial disputes?

China Daily: “China pledged to increase its imports from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as bilateral trade started to favor China in the second half of 2012, Vice-Minister of Commerce Gao Yan told a news briefing on Tuesday.

Emblem of ASEAN

Emblem of ASEAN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

China will enhance trade facilitation through cooperation with ASEAN members in areas including customs and quality checking while sending purchasing groups for agricultural products from ASEAN members, Gao said.

In addition, exhibitions, including the 10th CAEXPO to be held September 3-6 in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, will serve as opportunities for ASEAN exporters to expand their sales to China, she added.

China is the biggest trade partner of ASEAN and bilateral trade hit $400.1 billion in 2012, with Chinese exports totaling $204.3 billion and imports of $195.8 billion, leaving a trade surplus of $8.5 billion. China previously had a trade deficit with ASEAN, Gao said.”

via China to expand imports from ASEAN members |Economy |chinadaily.com.cn.

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23/07/2013

China starts 5-year ban on new gov’t buildings

First ostentatious spending, then came curtailment of banquets and now building construction. China is ratcheting up its austerity drive.  But one wonders if this is countering the efforts to re-vitalise the economy.

Xinhua: “Central authorities on Tuesday introduced a five-year ban on the construction of new government buildings as part of an ongoing frugality campaign.

Building construction

Building construction (Photo credit: Toban B.)

The General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued a directive that calls for an across-the-board halt to the construction of any new government buildings in the coming five years.

The ban also covers expensive structures built as training centers or hotels.

The directive said some departments and localities have built government office compounds in violation of regulations.

The directive called on all CPC and government bodies to be frugal and ensure that government funds and resources be spent on developing the economy and boosting the public’s well-being.

According to the directive, the construction, purchase, restoration or expansion of office compounds that is done in the guise of building repair or urban planning is strictly forbidden.

The directive also bans CPC and government organizations from receiving any form of construction sponsorship or donations, as well as collaborating with enterprises, in developing construction projects.

While allowing restoration projects for office buildings with dated facilities, the directive stresses that such projects must be exclusively aimed at erasing safety risks and restoring office functions.

According to the instruction, such projects must be approved first by related administrative departments and luxury interior decoration is prohibited, with criteria and spending to be set in accordance with local conditions.

The directive stipulates that expenditures on office building restoration should be included in CPC and government budgets.

According to the instruction, buildings with reception functions, such as those related to accommodation, meetings and catering, should not be restored.

The directive orders all CPC and government departments to rectify the misuse of office buildings, including those that are used for functions that have not been approved.

The directive says CPC and government officials with multiple posts should be each given only one office, while offices for those who have retired or taken leave should be returned in time.

Local authorities should establish or perfect the management of government buildings by strictly verifying the buildings’ size, according to the directive.

Departments that have moved to renovated or newly-built locations should transfer the original office blocks to government office administrators in a timely fashion, according to the directive.

Departments and units at all levels should address the office shortage caused by adding new institutions by themselves. If the additions do not meet their needs, government office administrators should adjust existing resources to solve the shortage, according to the directive.

Strict approval procedures are also required for renting new office blocks, according to the directive.

“Banning the building of new government buildings is important for building a clean government and also a requirement for boosting CPC-people ties and maintaining the image of the CPC and the government,” according to the circular.”

via China starts 5-year ban on new gov’t buildings – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Posted in austerity, China alert, Construction, Economics | 1 Comment »

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23/07/2013

China’s Smartphone Generation

BusinessWeek: “Every day at noon, workers spill out through the red gates of the Xue Fulan garment factory on the outskirts of Beijing to enjoy one precious hour of lunchtime freedom. They are mostly in their late teens or early 20s, living in no-frills dormitories within the factory complex. Most saunter out on a hot summer day with a water bottle in one hand and a smartphone in the other.

Commuters use their phones riding a Metro train in Shenzhen City, China

While personal computers are rare inside the factory, many of these young migrant workers—who are just climbing onto the lowest rung of the urban economic ladder—are now on the Internet daily. With 12-hour workdays, their free hours are scarce, but they still find time to use social media and dating apps, play video games, and read lifestyle and news sites, where they can catch a glimpse of the upscale urban life they aspire to.

Last week the government-affiliated China Internet Network Information Center reported that 591 million people in China now have Internet access; that’s 45 percent of the population. Just six years ago, only 16 percent of China’s population was online. Among the drivers of the steep rise in Internet penetration: the rapid adoption of Internet-enabled mobile devices, especially among groups that previously lacked regular connectivity, including China’s migrant workers. More than three-quarters of China’s netizens (464 million people) now use a mobile Internet device—instead of, or in addition to, a laptop or PC.

Kantar Media, a U.K.-based global consumer research and consulting firm, polled nearly 100,000 Chinese Internet users about their online habits and preferences in 2012 and just released its analysis of the study: 59 percent of respondents said that online chat and dating were their favorite uses of the mobile Internet, while 43 percent described themselves as “frequent” users of social media. Notably, the number of Chinese netizens who claimed they had visited a social media site in the past day was higher among mobile Internet users (32 percent) than among all netizens (26 percent). Weixin (“WeChat”), Tencent’s (700:HK) popular social-media app, is almost exclusively used on smartphones and tablets.

Megacity commutes are also correlated with more time online. In 2012, Chinese commuters who travelled more than one hour to work were three times as likely to go online daily as those whose commutes were under a half hour. As China’s large cities sprawl, traffic jams proliferate as well. Shen Ying, a general manager at CTR Media, Kantar Media’s joint-venture partner in China, believes that the “fragmentation of ‘social’ time created by longer commutes” goes hand in hand with the “desire for social networking.” Fortunately for China’s lonely subway passengers, Internet access on Beijing’s subway is more stable than on New York City’s.”

via China’s Smartphone Generation – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Consumer, Economics, Internet, Migrant workers, social media | 1 Comment »

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23/07/2013

First U.S. citizen detained as China pharma probe spreads

First crackdown on party members and officials, now on commercial organisations.  China‘s anti-corruption campaign gathers pace.

Reuters: “The first U.S. citizen has been detained in China in connection with probes sparked by an unfolding corruption scandal in the drugs industry, as China widens the range of international firms and staff under the spotlight.

A Chinese national flag flutters in front of a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) office building in Shanghai July 12, 2013. REUTERS/Aly Song

Police have also questioned two further Chinese employees from drug maker AstraZeneca in Shanghai, after a local sales representative was taken away for questioning earlier.

And China’s health ministry said 39 hospital staff would be punished for taking bribes from drug companies.

The unnamed American is the first U.S. citizen to be detained in connection with the investigations, and the second foreign national, after a British risk consultant linked with GlaxoSmithKline was held last week.

GSK has been accused by China of funneling up to 3 billion yuan ($489 million) to travel agencies to facilitate bribes to doctors and officials.

“We are aware that a U.S. citizen has been detained in Shanghai. We are in contact with the individual and are providing all appropriate consular assistance,” U.S. embassy spokesman Nolan Barkhouse said on Tuesday, when asked about the involvement of U.S. citizens in the widening probe.

He declined to say which company the individual was associated with.

The latest moves by Chinese officials underline the country’s tough stance on corruption and high prices in the pharmaceutical industry, as it unrolls wider healthcare access and faces an estimated $1 trillion healthcare bill by 2020.

“Momentum is gathering and if you are a big international firm, then you’re a good example to be held up. This is a wake-up call for the rest of the industry,” said Jeremy Gordon, director of China Business Services, a risk management company focusing on China.

AstraZeneca said that the Shanghai Public Security Bureau had asked on Tuesday to speak with two line managers linked to the sales representative questioned earlier.

“The Public Security Bureau is describing this as an individual case. We have no reason to believe it is related to other investigations,” the company said in the statement.

via First U.S. citizen detained as China pharma probe spreads | Reuters.

Posted in corruption, Economics, Politics, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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23/07/2013

Indian development: Beyond bootstraps

The Economist: “An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions. By Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze. Allen Lane; 434 pages; £20. To be published in America in August by Princeton University Press; $29.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

AS A conundrum it could hardly be bigger. Six decades of laudably fair elections, a free press, rule of law and much else should have delivered rulers who are responsive to the ruled. India’s development record, however, is worse than poor. It is host to some of the world’s worst failures in health and education. If democracy works there, why are so many Indian lives still so wretched?

Social indicators leave that in no doubt. A massive blackout last summer caught global attention, yet 400m Indians had (and still have) no electricity. Sanitation and public hygiene are awful, especially in the north: half of all Indians still defecate in the open, resulting in many deaths from diarrhoea and encephalitis. Polio may be gone, but immunisation rates for most diseases are lower than in sub-Saharan Africa. Twice as many Indian children (43%) as African ones go hungry.

Many adults, especially women, are also undernourished, even as obesity and diabetes spread among wealthier Indians. Despite gains, extreme poverty is rife and death in childbirth all too common. Prejudice kills on an immense scale: as many as 600,000 fetuses are aborted each year because they are female. Compared even with its poorer neighbours, Bangladesh and Nepal, India’s social record is unusually grim.

“An Uncertain Glory”, an excellent but unsettling new book by two of India’s best-known development economists, Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze, sets out how and why this is so. They argue that Indian rulers have never been properly accountable to the needy majority. Belgian-born Mr Drèze has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002. Now at Allahabad University in the north, he is influential among Indian policymakers, particularly for pushing a right-to-information law. Mr Sen, a Nobel laureate, now at Harvard, famously showed how famines have never happened in democracies. The two men want a debate on India’s social failures and how to fix them.”

via Indian development: Beyond bootstraps | The Economist.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/and-india/

Posted in Economics, India alert, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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22/07/2013

Knife attacks and bomb threats follow Beijing airport explosion

SCMP: “Several incidents of violence have been reported in Beijing in the aftermath of the attempted suicide by an aggrieved petitioner at the capital’s international airport on Saturday.

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On Monday, a man armed with a knife went on a rampage at a Carrefour shopping centre, in Beijing’s western district, wounding at least four people. Police have arrested a Beijing-native surnamed Wang, born in 1963 at the scene, local police said in a statement.

One child was among those wounded, Beijing News reported on its microblog. The report did not say what triggered the attack.

Last Thursday, a knife-yielding man stabbed two people, including one US woman, to death, in a similar incident.

In two unrelated incidents, Beijing police arrested two men for “threatening to carry bombs and attempting to disturb social order” in the capital.

Four hours after petitioner Ji Zhongxing caused an explosion at Beijing Capital International Airport on Saturday, a 39-year-old man surnamed Wang from Beijing’s Miyun county threatened to set off explosives at a Beijing airport to protest against land seizures, according to a statement by Beijing police.

Only one hour later, a 31-year-old man surnamed Liu from Jiangsu province, threatened to detonate explosives at a video arcade, police said. Both men have since been arrested.

Many Chinese netizens blamed a “butterfly effect” and criticised the government for failing to address petitioners’ grievances. “If the government continues in its corrupt ways, everybody will become Ji Zhongxing,” said one Weibo user. “Using lives to protest is the last way for ordinary people to seek changes,” wrote another.

via Knife attacks and bomb threats follow Beijing airport explosion | South China Morning Post.

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22/07/2013

To Remain Tops in Innovation, the U.S. Needs Immigration Reform

BusinessWeek: “As China’s economy catches up with America’s in pure size, it’s worth asking whether China will eventually assume the top spot when it comes to innovation as well. The U.S. retains a strong global lead in research and new inventions, in large part because the U.S. continues to attract innovators from the world over—including from China. But to stay on top, the U.S. needs immigration reform that makes it easier for scientists and technology developers to come and stay in the country.

China is producing ever more science and technology graduates and climbing the global rankings in patent applications

China is churning out ever more science and technology graduates and climbing the global rankings in patent applications. By 2004 it was the fifth-largest producer of academic scientific publications—behind only the U.K., Germany, Japan, and the U.S. And in 2011, China’s ZTE (000063:CH) alone made 2,826 international patent filings—the most of any company in the world.

More global innovation is a good thing for everyone—so there’s no reason to fear China’s increasing technological heft. Regardless, that heft is still a fraction of America’s. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the U.S. is still first by a big margin in terms of widely cited articles—a measure of the quality of research. China ranks 17th. Per dollar of gross domestic product, the U.S. produces more than six times China’s number of patents that are filed in at least three different countries, which is an indicator of marketable innovation.

In 2012, China earned $1 billion in foreign royalty and license payments—this for intellectual property the country had created that was being exploited by companies elsewhere. Meanwhile, it paid $18 billion in royalty and license payments to foreign firms, for a total deficit of $17 billion. Compare that with the U.S., which ran a $82 billion surplus.

A new paper co-authored by Carsten Fink, chief economist of WIPO, suggests one big reason for the U.S.’s continued lead: The country remains a magnet for global innovators. Fink’s paper studies patent applications filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty, which records more than half of all international applications and lists the residence and nationality of the inventors of more than 4 million patents. Using that data, Fink and his colleague Ernest Miguelez found that in 2010 about 10 percent of inventors worldwide lived outside their country of nationality when making their international patent application. The proportion of international patent applications made from the U.S. by non-nationals was twice as high—around 20 percent. That proportion approximately doubled from 1985 to 2010, and it’s the highest share out of any large economy. It compares with a non-national share of international patent applications of about 2 percent in Japan and closer to 5 percent in Germany and France.

The U.S. is by far the biggest global net beneficiary of innovator migration. Between 2001 and 2010, 14,893 inventors with U.K. nationality applied for international patents while residing in the U.S., for example. And there were three times as many Chinese inventors in the U.S. than British ones. That illustrates the U.S. has done particularly well in attracting innovative talent from the developing world—more than half of the U.S. non-national innovator population comes from countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development club of rich countries.

Still, recent trends are disturbing. Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa reports that the proportion of high-tech startups founded by Chinese and Indian immigrants in Silicon Valley dropped from 52 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2011, in part because more and more Indian and Chinese graduates of U.S. universities are returning home rather than dealing with the hassle of American immigration procedures. The U.S. is becoming less attractive to the very people who help power the U.S. innovation economy.

via To Remain Tops in Innovation, the U.S. Needs Immigration Reform – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/how-well-will-china-and-india-innovate/

Posted in China alert, Economics, innovation, Technology | Leave a Comment »

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21/07/2013

How poverty wages for tea pickers fuel India’s trade in child slavery

The Observer: “When the trafficker came knocking on the door of Elaina Kujar’s hut on a tea plantation at the north-eastern end of Assam, she had just got back from school. Elaina was 14 and wanted to be a nurse. Instead, she was about to lose four years of her life as a child slave.

Saphira Khatun, whose daughter Minu Begum was trafficked to Delhi at the age of 12

She sits on a low chair inside the hut, playing with her long dark hair as she recalls how her owner would sit next to her watching porn in the living room of his Delhi house, while she waited to sleep on the floor. “Then he raped me,” she says, looking down at her hands, then out of the door. Outside, the monsoon rain is falling on the tin roof and against the mud-rendered bamboo strip walls, on which her parents have pinned a church calendar bearing the slogan The Lord is Good to All.

Elaina was in that Delhi house for one reason: her parents, who picked the world-famous Assam tea on an estate in Lakhimpur district, were paid so little they could not afford to keep her. There are thousands like her, taken to Delhi from the tea plantations in the north-east Indian state by a trafficker, sold to an agent for as little as £45, sold on again to an employer for up to £650, then kept as slaves, raped, abused. It is a 21st-century slave trade. There are thought to be 100,000 girls as young as 12 under lock and key in Delhi alone: others are sold on to the Middle East and some are even thought to have reached the UK.

Every tea plantation pays the same wages. Every leaf of every box of Assam tea sold by Tetley and Lipton and Twinings and the supermarket own brands – Asda, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and the rest – is picked by workers who earn a basic 12p an hour.

If it says Fairtrade on the box, or certified by the Rainforest Alliance or the Ethical Tea Partnership, it makes no difference: the worker received the same basic cash payment – 89 rupees (£1) a day, a little over half the legal wage for an unskilled worker in Assam of 158.54 rupees. To place that in context, a worker receives about 2p in cash for picking enough tea to fill a box of 80 tea bags, which then sells for upwards of £2 in the UK. The companies say they know the wages are low, and they are trying to make things better, but their hands are tied by the growers. The growers, who set the wages by collective bargaining, say it is all they can afford.

But there is a price for keeping wages so low, and it is paid by the workers who cannot afford to keep their daughters. When the traffickers come knocking, offering to take the girls away, promising good wages and an exciting new life, they find it hard to say no. “He said he would change our lives,” says Elaina, now 20. “The tea garden was closed when he came and my parents were not working, so my father wanted to send me.”

The trafficker had promised excitement and glamour: instead she started work every day at 4am and worked until midnight, and though he promised to give her 1,500 rupees a month, she was never paid. He kept her as a prisoner, unable to leave the house or contact her family.

“His wife was suspicious about what was happening. I told her he had raped me but he denied it and told me to shut up my mouth,” she says. “After that, I was always crying, but he kept me locked in the house. I was afraid. I had no money and he threatened that I would end up in a brothel.”

She was saved only when he sent her to a new owner who, on learning her story, sent her home.”

via How poverty wages for tea pickers fuel India’s trade in child slavery | World news | The Observer.

Posted in agriculture, deficit, demographics, India alert, Labour, Low income, poverty | 1 Comment »

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21/07/2013

Kashmir militants rebuild their lives as hopes of a lasting peace grow

The Observer: “Shabir Ahmed Dar has come home. His children play under the walnut trees where he once played. His father, white-bearded and thin now, watches them. The village of Degoom, the cluster of traditional brick-and-wood houses in Kashmir where Dar grew up, is still reached by a dirt road and hay is still hung from the branches of the soaring chinar trees to dry.

Shabir Ahmed Dar with one of his children

But Dar has changed, even if Degoom has not. It is 22 years since he left the village to steal over the “line of control” (LoC), the de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani parts of this long-disputed former princely state high in the Himalayan foothills. Along with a dozen or so other teenagers, he hoped to take part in the insurgency which pitted groups of young Muslim Kashmiris enrolled in Islamist militant groups, and later extremists from Pakistan too, against Indian security forces.

“I went because everyone else was going. The situation was bad here. I had my beliefs, my dream for my homeland. I was very young,” he said, sitting in the room where he had slept as a child.

The conflict had only just begun when he left. Over the next two decades, an estimated 50,000 soldiers, policemen, militants and, above all, ordinary people were to die. Dar’s aim had been to “create a true Islamic society” in Kashmir. This could only be achieved by accession to Pakistan or independence, he believed.

But once across the LoC, even though he spent only a few months with the militant group he had set out to join and never took part in any fighting, he was unable to return. “I was stuck there. I made a new life. I married and found work. I didn’t think I would ever come back here,” Dar said.

But now the 36-year-old has finally come home, with his Pakistani-born wife and three children. He is one of 400 former militants who have taken advantage of a new “rehabilitation” policy launched by the youthful chief minister of the state, Omar Abdullah.

Dar’s father heard of the scheme and convinced his son to return last year. “I am an old man. I wanted to see my son and grandchildren before I die. I wanted him to have his share of our land,” said Dar senior, who is 70.

The scheme is an indication of the changes in this beautiful, battered land. In recent years, economic growth in India has begun to benefit Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state. At the same time, despite a series of spectacular attacks on security forces by militants in recent months, violence has fallen to its lowest levels since the insurgency broke out in the late 1980s. The two phenomena are connected, many observers say.

It is this relative calm that has allowed Dar and the others to return – and allows even some hardened veterans who have renounced violence to live unmolested. “A few years ago the [Indian intelligence] agencies would have shot this down because they would have seen it as another move to infiltrate [militants from Pakistan],” Abdullah, the chief minister, said.

The scheme is not, however, an amnesty. “If there are cases against them they will still be arrested [and] prosecuted … Largely this scheme has been taken up by those who have not carried out any acts of terrorism. Either they never came [across the LoC], or if they came we never knew about it,” Abdullah said.”

via Kashmir militants rebuild their lives as hopes of a lasting peace grow | World news | The Observer.

Posted in Defence, Dissident, India alert, Insurgency, Internal politics, Military, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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21/07/2013

China starts construction on ‘world’s tallest building’

SCMP: “China has embarked on the construction of an 838-metre-tall building in Changsha that is billed as the “world’s tallest”.

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Developer Broad Group on Saturday held a ground-breaking ceremony in the capital city of central province Hunan to start building the 208-storey tower, the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald newspaper reported on Sunday. Upon completion, the building would be about 10 metres taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the world’s tallest.

The Changsha project, carried out by China Construction Fifth Building, is expected to be completed in April 2014, said Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of the Broad Group. It was slated to open in May or June next year.

The skycraper will contain a total area of 1.05 million square metres and will cost a whopping 5.2 billion yuan (HK$6.5 billion) to build, government-run news portal voc.com.cn reported.

Named “Sky City”, the mega building is designed to house various public facilities so the “building can serve as a city”, the developer said. It would house schools, an elderly care centre, hospital, offices in lower levels, while apartments and hotels would make up the upper levels.

Changsha-based technology enterprise Broad Group was founded in 1988. Its products include energy-saving electronic equipment and quake-proof construction materials.

China is home to five of the world’s top-10 tallest buildings, according to a list in Forbes magazine last year.”

via China starts construction on ‘world’s tallest building’ | South China Morning Post.

Posted in Construction, Economics | Leave a Comment »

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