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30/09/2014

Fake Trade Documents Sneak Money in and Out of China – Businessweek

Companies have “faked, forged, and illegally reused” trade documents to sneak $10 billion of hot money in and out of China since April of this year, a Chinese official announced yesterday.

Fake China Trade Disguises at Least $10 Billion of Hot Money Flows

A multi-month investigation into China’s dodgy export and import numbers has revealed the latest invoicing scams, said Wu Ruilin, a deputy head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, at a press briefing in Beijing on Thursday, reported China Daily today.

Much of the financial funny business was carried out through the port of Qingdao, where a commodity financing scandal was unearthed earlier, he added. The fraudulent trades have “increased pressure from hot money inflows and provided an illegal channel for criminals to move funds,” Wu said, adding that they had also distorted trade data.

China’s long-standing problem with false invoicing got an added level of official scrutiny after unusually high export numbers early last year. Companies have long inflated export numbers to disguise capital inflows, often aiming to benefit from China’s appreciating currency or to invest in property when that market was still hot. Exaggerating imports has been used to spirit money out of China, by contrast.

The practices of China’s banks will now be in the spotlight, as they have failed in “verifying the authenticity of the deals, which helped increase the fraudulent activities,” China Daily reported Wu as saying. All told, the foreign exchange regulator found 967 separate illicit foreign-exchange transactions through August, and imposed 180 million yuan (almost $30 million) in fines. The investigation now covers 24 provinces and cities across China.

via Fake Trade Documents Sneak Money in and Out of China – Businessweek.

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30/09/2014

China’s Norinco Is Defense Giant on Global Growth Path – Businessweek

At the Africa Aerospace and Defence expo in September, weapons buyers from across the continent descended on Air Force Base Waterkloof in the South African capital of Pretoria for a bit of shopping. There they were wooed by Chinese defense gear giant Norinco, which has honed its pitch to an art.

China's New Export: Military in a Box

Namibia Deputy Defense Minister Petrus Iilonga, wearing Prada sunglasses and a Lenin pin, studied models of battle tanks before representatives from Norinco, a state-controlled conglomerate also known as China North Industries Group, ushered him into a room marked VIP for some personal salesmanship. Nearby, the Tanzanian military chief, General Davis Mwamunyange, furrowed his brow while a company official in a charcoal suit and orange tie described a truck with a radar device mounted on the back. “Just about a month ago, we did a live test on this one,” the Chinese official confided.

Norinco has even devised a novel way to make buying weapons easier: It bundles together starter kits of basic defense gear—everything from rifles to howitzers, laser-guided bombs, armored personnel carriers, tanks, and drones—for governments that want to quickly outfit their armed forces. Chinese state media has dubbed the package a “military set meal.”

STORY: Why Japan’s Controversial Shrine Infuriates China and Korea

More than three decades after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and the Communist Party founded Norinco, in the wake of a humiliating border war with Vietnam that ended in a stalemate, the company sits atop a military-industrial complex that increasingly rivals the U.S. war machine in firepower and influence.

via China’s Norinco Is Defense Giant on Global Growth Path – Businessweek.

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30/09/2014

Mental Illness in China: Still a Stigma – Businessweek

Of the approximately 173 million people in China estimated to suffer from “a diagnosable psychiatric disorder,” only about 15 million have ever received medical treatment, according to a 2012 paper in the British medical journal Lancet. The country of 1.4 billion people has only about 20,000 psychiatrists, just 4,000 of whom are adequately trained and qualified, according to the journal.

Beijing Begins to Pay Attention to Mental Health Care

Awareness of mental health as a public health issue is still nascent in China, and great stigmas still attach to acknowledging that oneself—or a close family member—may suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, or another condition. At the same time, the massive changes associated with China’s rapid urbanization—including millions of children separated from parents who go to work at distant factories—adds enormous psychological strain, according to the journal.

In May 2013, China’s first law to safeguard the medical privacy of people seeking health for mental treatment went into effect. The law also prohibited involuntary treatment of mental illness without the consent of a guardian. In the past, Chinese political dissidents were sometimes labeled as “mentally ill” by authorities, who used this excuse to confine them; human rights activists say this practice has not been totally abolished. Still, despite its flawed enforcement, the American Journal of Psychiatry hailed the new law as “a high-water mark for Chinese psychiatry, and potentially for global mental health.”

via Mental Illness in China: Still a Stigma – Businessweek.

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30/09/2014

China’s Rapidly Aging Population Drives $652 Billion ‘Silver Hair’ Market – Businessweek

The increase in China’s elderly people to more than 200 million has created a host of challenges, from a shrinking labor force to soaring pension needs. But there’s a silver-haired lining.

China's Rapidly Aging Population Drives $652 Billion 'Silver Hair' Market

The market of goods and services for China’s rapidly aging population will reach 4 trillion yuan ($652 billion) this year, or eight percent of GDP, according to the “China Report on the Development of the Silver Hair Industry” issued Tuesday in Beijing.

The industry is expected to rise to 106 trillion yuan ($17 trillion) by 2050, amounting to a third of the Chinese economy. That would make it the world’s largest market for the aged. That year China will have 480 million people over 60—one quarter of the world’s elderly—says the report, which was published Sept. 23 by the China National Committee on Aging.

“The silver hair industry has started the rapid booming phase, making it a new promising industry in China,” said Wu Yushao, deputy director of the committee, reports the China Dailytoday. “The major reason for the boom is based on the growing number of aging people.”

Future opportunities to serve the elderly will be clustered in four main fields, the report explains. Those include appliances (to serve the less-mobile elderly, for example), services (such as home care and special transportation), real estate (assisted living centers), and financial services. The latter—insurance and money management for the elderly, for example—will make up the biggest portion of the market and still has lots of room to grow.

While 6.21 million people work in the U.S. financial industry and more than half focus on retirees, China has only 5.27 million, estimates Dang Junwu, deputy head of the Beijing’s Chinese Research Center on Aging. “There has been a huge gap in the financing industry for senior residents between China and the developed countries,” Dang told the English-language paper.

via China’s Rapidly Aging Population Drives $652 Billion ‘Silver Hair’ Market – Businessweek.

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30/09/2014

China’s Legions of Tourists Will Spend $155 Billion Abroad This Year – Businessweek

China is preparing for roadways clogged with cars and trains overloaded with travelers during its weeklong National Day holiday starting Oct. 1. But the real action for Chinese tourists will be happening overseas.

Chinese tourists in Paris

Over the full year, 116 million Chinese tourists are expected to travel abroad and spend $155 billion, up 20 percent over 2013, projects a new report by the China Tourism Academy. That compares with less than $55 billion that will be spent by tourists inside the country, a gap of more than $100 billion. “The deficit will further increase in the future,” predicts academy head Dai Bin, who was quoted in the China Daily.

China now sends more tourists abroad than any country in the world, according to China’s National Tourism Administration. Favored destinations include Australia, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries as well as, increasingly, Europe and the U.S. Chinese tourists abroad will exceed half a billion annually within five years, says Shao Qiwei, administration chief of the English language paper.

In the first half of this year, Chinese spent $70 billion on overseas travel, up 20.7 percent from the same period a year earlier. Chinese travelers abroad spend almost three times as much per capita as foreign tourists in China, says Fan Zhiyong, an economist at Renmin University in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Along with hotel lodging fees and restaurant meals, overseas spending includes plenty of purchases of such high-priced products as Rolex watches, Prada (1913:HK) shoes, and Chanel handbags. One-third of all Chinese travel expenditures goes to buy goods, often “luxury items—to take back home,” says McKinsey & Co. in a June report. Total spending could reach $194 billion by 2015, Morgan Stanley (MS) estimated last year.

via China’s Legions of Tourists Will Spend $155 Billion Abroad This Year – Businessweek.

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30/09/2014

India Plans to Clean Up for Gandhi’s Birthday – India Real Time – WSJ

On Sunday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a crowd at Madison Square Garden that cleaning up India was his priority.

“Mahatma Gandhi never compromised on cleanliness. He gave us freedom. We should give him a clean India,” said Mr. Modi.

To honor Gandhi on the anniversary of his birth on Oct. 2, Mr. Modi earlier this month announced the launch of the Swachh Bharat, or Clean India, Mission. “I myself will set out with a broom and contribute towards this pious task” on Thursday, said Mr. Modi in an official statement. Previously called the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, the program will be restructured into two separate programs for urban and rural India.

Sanitation is one of the most pressing challenges India faces: almost 600 million people defecate in the open in the country.

The movement aims to “create a Clean India” by 2019 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. It’s an ambitious initiative, but viewed as critical to sustainable development in a country that has long ignored the most basic needs of many of its people.

As Oct. 2 draws nearer, millions of people across the country are joining daily the cleanliness drives organized by government departments, nonprofits and local community centers.

But the federal government will carry out the lion’s share of the work. Here’s what it has pledged:

The urban component is expected to cost 620 billion rupees (around $10.1 billion) over 5 years, and includes plans to eliminate open defecation, convert insanitary toilets into pour-flush ones and eradicate manual scavenging.

Manual scavenging — the practice of scraping feces out of primitive dry latrines or collecting waste from fields where villagers relieve themselves — has been illegal for decades but still persists in Indian regions lacking indoor plumbing.

In urban areas, 10 million households will be provided with around half a million public and community toilets and waste management facilities.

In rural India, 1,340 billion rupees (around $21.7 billion) has been pledged to construct around 110 million toilets across the country, said India’s rural development minister in a statement.

That’s a lot of new toilets, which if built could help prevent water-borne diseases like diarrhea, which kills almost 100,000 Indian children each year.

More toilets could also make women in India safer — in June, two teenage girls were assaulted in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh when, lacking toilets, they had gone outside to relieve themselves in the privacy of the darkness.

Mr. Modi has also directed state governments to ensure that all schools have separate toilets for boys and girls by Aug. 2015, according to a government of India press release. Many girls in India quit school when they reach puberty because of a lack of functioning toilets on the premises.

via India Plans to Clean Up for Gandhi’s Birthday – India Real Time – WSJ.

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30/09/2014

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces at Work in the Nation-State | Stratfor

“Here begins our tale: The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” This opening adage of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, China’s classic novel of war and strategy, best captures the essential dynamism of Chinese geopolitics. At its heart is the millennia-long struggle by China’s would-be rulers to unite and govern the all-but-ungovernable geographic mass of China. It is a story of centrifugal forces and of insurmountable divisions rooted in geography and history — but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of centripetal forces toward eventual unity.

Tibetan Settlement in India

This dynamism is not limited to China. The Scottish referendum and waves of secession movements — from Spain’s Catalonia to Turkey and Iraq’s ethnic Kurds — are working in different directions. More than half a century after World War II triggered a wave of post-colonial nationalism that changed the map of the world, buried nationalism and ethnic identity movements of various forms are challenging the modern idea of the inviolable unity of the nation-state.

Yet even as these sentiments pull on the loose threads of nations, in China, one of the most intractable issues in the struggle for unity — the status of Tibet — is poised for a possible reversal, or at least a major adjustment. The long-running but frequently unnoticed negotiations have raised the possibility that the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, may be nearing a deal that would enable him to return to his Tibetan homeland. If it happens, it would end the Dalai Lama’s exile in Dharamsala, India — an exile that began after the Tibetan uprising in 1959, nine years after the People’s Republic of China annexed Tibet. More important, a settlement between Beijing and the Dalai Lama could be a major step in lessening the physical and psychological estrangement between the Chinese heartland and the Tibetan Plateau.

Read rest of article via Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces at Work in the Nation-State | Stratfor.

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30/09/2014

Stand-off continues, Chinese army refuses to withdraw from Chumar

 

The standoff between the Indian Army and their Chinese counterparts continued on Monday at the Chumar sector in eastern Ladakh, along the Line of Actual Control. At one of the eight spots in the Chumar sector, the Indian Army made a tactical retreat in the face of a heavy Chinese presence. Despite diplomatic interventions on Monday, both sides continue to hold their tactical positions against each other. The standoff has continued primarily because of China’s unwillingness to stop its road-building exercise to the Line of Actual Control and India’s refusal to demolish structures built in the area to shelter troops.

via Scroll.in – News. Politics. Culture..

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20/09/2014

China approves plan to combat climate change – China – Chinadaily.com.cn

The Chinese central government on Friday approved a plan that maps out major climate change goals to be met by 2020.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, gave a green light to the plan, which was proposed by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s economic planner. A statement released on the State Council’s website urged the NDRC to carry out the plan.

China has pledged to reduce its carbon emission intensity, namely emissions per unit of GDP, by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level. It will also aim to bring the proportion of non-fossil fuels to about 15 percent of its total primary energy consumption.

Other targets include increasing forest coverage by 40 million hectares within the next five years.

The government will speed up efforts to establish a carbon emission permit market, under the plan, which also calls for deepened international cooperation under the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” equity and respective capability.

The State Council said local governments and departments at all levels should recognize the significance and urgency in dealing with climate change and give higher priority to action on this issue.

China’s release of the action plan came just before a climate summit to be held at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli will attend.

Xie Zhenhua, deputy chief of the NDRC and the country’s top official on climate change, told a press conference that the plan was concrete action by China to participate in the global process to tackle climate change.

By the end of last year, China had reduced carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 28.56 percent from 2005, which was equivalent to saving the world 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, Xie said.

At the end of 2013, China’s consumption ratio of non-fossil energy to primary energy stood at 9.8 percent. Forest growing stock had increased by 1.3 trillion cubic meters from 2005 to two trillion cubic meters, seven years ahead of schedule, according to the official.

In the first nine months of 2014, China’s energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 4.2 percent year on year and carbon intensity was cut by about 5 percent, both representing the largest drops in years, he said.

As a developing country, China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. With the plan, the country has showed its confidence in achieving its green goals.

via China approves plan to combat climate change – China – Chinadaily.com.cn.

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20/09/2014

The rise and rise of Xi Jinping: Xi who must be obeyed | The Economist

THE madness unleashed by the rule of a charismatic despot, Mao Zedong, left China so traumatised that the late chairman’s successors vowed never to let a single person hold such sway again. Deng Xiaoping, who rose to power in the late 1970s, extolled the notion of “collective leadership”. Responsibilities would be shared out among leaders by the Communist Party’s general secretary; big decisions would be made by consensus. This has sometimes been ignored: Deng himself acted the despot in times of crisis. But the collective approach helped restore stability to China after Mao’s turbulent dictatorship.

Xi Jinping, China’s current leader, is now dismantling it. He has become the most powerful Chinese ruler certainly since Deng, and possibly since Mao. Whether this is good or bad for China depends on how Mr Xi uses his power. Mao pushed China to the brink of social and economic collapse, and Deng steered it on the right economic path but squandered a chance to reform it politically. If Mr Xi used his power to reform the way power works in China, he could do his country great good. So far, the signs are mixed.

It may well be that the decision to promote Mr Xi as a single personality at the expense of the group was itself a collective one. Some in China have been hankering for a strongman; a politician who would stamp out corruption, reverse growing inequalities and make the country stand tall abroad (a task Mr Xi has been taking up with relish—see article). So have many foreign businessfolk, who want a leader who would smash the monopolies of a bloated state sector and end years of dithering over economic reforms.

However the decision came about, Mr Xi has grabbed it and run with it. He has taken charge of secretive committees responsible for reforming government, overhauling the armed forces, finance and cyber-security. His campaign against corruption is the most sweeping in decades. It has snared the former second-in-command of the People’s Liberation Army and targeted the retired chief of China’s massive security apparatus—the highest-ranking official to be investigated for corruption since Mao came to power. The generals, wisely, bow to him: earlier this year state newspapers published pages of expressions of loyalty to him by military commanders.

He is the first leader to employ a big team to build his public profile. But he also has a flair for it—thanks to his stature (in a height-obsessed country he would tower over all his predecessors except Mao), his toughness and his common touch. One moment he is dumpling-eating with the masses, the next riding in a minibus instead of the presidential limousine. He is now more popular than any leader since Mao (see article).

All of this helps Mr Xi in his twofold mission. His first aim is to keep the economy growing fast enough to stave off unrest, while weaning it off an over-dependence on investment in property and infrastructure that threatens to mire it in debt. Mr Xi made a promising start last November, when he declared that market forces would play a decisive role (not even Deng had the courage to say that). There have since been encouraging moves, such as giving private companies bigger stakes in sectors that were once the exclusive preserve of state-owned enterprises, and selling shares in firms owned by local governments to private investors. Mr Xi has also started to overhaul the household-registration system, a legacy of the Mao era that makes it difficult for migrants from the countryside to settle permanently in cities. He has relaxed the one-child-per-couple policy, a Deng-era legacy that has led to widespread abuses.

via The rise and rise of Xi Jinping: Xi who must be obeyed | The Economist.

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