Economics | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

25/09/2013

China gets stake in Russian potash giant to secure supply

A few days ago, China acquired vast areas of farming land from Ukraine, now it is acquiring a secure source of fertiliser. It’s determined that the population gets fed!

Reuters: “China acquired a 12.5 percent stake in Russian potash producer Uralkali (URKA.MM) in a deal that could help Beijing secure stable supplies of the soil nutrient, put new pressure on prices and reduce the chances of a Russia-Belarus cartel being revived.

A general view of a Uralkali potash mine near the city of Berezniki in the Perm region close to Russia's Ural mountains August 26, 2013. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

The investment by China’s $575 billion sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp (CIC) CIC.UL is the latest twist in a saga that began when the world’s leading potash producer quit the lucrative sales partnership with Belarus in July and led to the company’s chief executive being jailed.

Under the deal, Uralkali said on Tuesday that CIC had received the stake in a bond exchange deal with Wadge Holdings Ltd, which belongs to three shareholders including oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.

The deal is a rare example of China, the world’s largest consumer of potash, acquiring direct ownership of Russian natural resource assets, although it is only the latest in a series of commodity-related investments by CIC.

It also coincides with speculation that Kerimov might sell his 21.75 percent holding over a dispute that has soured Russia-Belarus relations.

Uralkali sent the $20 billion global potash market into turmoil when it quit the marketing alliance with state-owned Belaruskali. Belarus hit back by arresting CEO Vladislav Baumgertner after talks with the country’s prime minister.

Some investors believe the Kremlin wants to repair the alliance to avert a possible collapse in the price of potash, which accounts for 12 percent of Belarus’s state revenue.

“I can see little chance that the government would allow the Chinese fund to acquire a much larger stake,” said Boris Krasnojenov, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow.

“There is no similar precedent in Russia, and the eventual buyer would probably be a Russian player.”

There are no negotiations to sell Kerimov’s personal stake to CIC, a source close to the businessman told Reuters.”

via China gets stake in Russian potash giant to secure supply | Reuters.

Posted in agriculture, China alert, Economics, food security | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Belarus, China, China Investment Corporation, CIC, climate, environment, politics, Russia, Uralkali

24/09/2013

Chinese tourist boom ripples out to more destinations

SCMP: !Chinese tourists are seeking more exotic locales for their trips as the popularity of most of their top 20 destinations soars, TripAdvisor said on Tuesday, reflecting the boom by the world’s highest-spending group of travellers.

The travel website said its data on customer searches showed people from mainland China still love to go to nearby Hong Kong and Macau for getaways and shopping, but are increasingly adventurous, with holidays in Asia, Europe and North America.

This new generation of Chinese outbound travellers is making their own decisions LILY CHENG, TRIPADVISOR CHINAY

“This new generation of Chinese outbound travellers is making their own decisions about where to go, where to stay and what to do by doing their own research online, going beyond the old stereotype of big buses of group tourists,” Lily Cheng, managing director of TripAdvisor China, said in a statement.

Hong Kong was the most popular destination search in July to August, with interest from Chinese travellers rising 50 per cent from the same period of last year, TripAdvisor said.

Phuket, a beach resort in Thailand, was in second place, with 3.5 times as many searches than a year earlier. Taiwan was third (up 4.5 times), Bangkok was fourth (up 3.7 times) and Paris was fifth (up 4.6 times).

Other popular places in the Chinese top 20 included Dubai, Seoul, Singapore, the Indonesian island of Bali, Rome, New York and London.

Four destinations had booming growth, with searches up by more than six times: Jeju Island in South Korea, Kyoto in Japan, Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

While tourism spending is on the rise globally, Chinese travellers are the most avid consumers and a big target market for operators of hotels, shops and attractions.

Barclays analysts said in July that spending by Chinese tourists rose 22 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 20 per cent in the first three months of the year, as global tourism spending grew 14 per cent.

Last year, more than 83 million Chinese travelled abroad – a number expected to soar to 200 million by 2020. Chinese spending on overseas travel was the highest in the world last year at US$102 billion, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation.

via Chinese tourist boom ripples out to more destinations | South China Morning Post.

Posted in Affluence, China alert, Economics, tourist | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, group tourists, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Tourism

23/09/2013

Wealthy Chinese seek US surrogates for second child or green card

SCMP: “Wealthy Chinese are hiring American women to serve as surrogates for their children, creating a small but growing business in $120,000 “designer” American babies for China’s elite.

Surrogacy agencies in China and the United States are catering to wealthy Chinese who want a baby outside the country’s restrictive family planning policies, who are unable to conceive themselves, or who are seeking US citizenship for their children.

Emigration as a family is another draw – US citizens may apply for Green Cards for their parents when they turn 21.

While there is no data on the total number of Chinese who have sought or used US surrogates, agencies in both countries say demand has risen rapidly in the last two years.

Tony Jiang and his three children at his house in Shanghai. Photo: Reuters

US fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies are creating Chinese-language websites and hiring Mandarin speakers.

Boston-based Circle Surrogacy has handled half a dozen Chinese surrogacy cases over the last five years, said president John Weltman.

“I would be surprised if you called me back in four months and that number hadn’t doubled,” he said. “That’s the level of interest we’ve seen this year from China and the very serious conversations we’ve had with people who I think will be joining us in the next three or four months.”

The agency, which handles about 140 surrogacy cases a year, 65 per cent of them for clients outside the United States, is opening an office in California to better serve clients from Asia which has easier flight connections with the West Coast. Weltman said he hopes to hire a representative in Shanghai next year.

The increased interest from Chinese parents has created some cultural tensions.

US agency staff who ask that surrogates and intended parents develop a personal relationship have been surprised by potential Chinese clients who treat surrogacy as a strictly commercial transaction.

In China, where surrogacy is illegal, some clients keep the fact that their baby was born to a surrogate a secret, going so far as to fake a pregnancy, agents say.

Chinese interest in obtaining US citizenship is not new. The 14th Amendment to the US constitution gives anyone born in the United States the right to citizenship.

You can basically make a designer baby nowadays JENNIFER GARCIA

A growing number of pregnant Chinese women travel to America to obtain US citizenship for their children by delivering there, often staying in special homes designed to cater to their needs.

While the numbers are unclear, giving birth in America is now so commonplace that it was the subject of a hit romantic comedy movie, Finding Mr Right, released in China in March.

Overall, the number of Chinese visitors to the United States nearly doubled in recent years, from 1 million in 2010 to 1.8 million last year, US immigration statistics show.

Weltman said that prospective Chinese clients almost always want to choose US citizenship for their babies, while other agencies pointed to a desire to have children educated in the United States.

Some wealthy Chinese say they want a bolt-hole overseas because they fear they will the targets of public or government anger if there were more social unrest in China. There is also a perception that their wealth will be better protected in countries with a stronger rule of law.

At least one Chinese agent promotes surrogacy as a cheaper alternative to America’s EB-5 visa, which requires a minimum investment in a job creating business of $500,000.

While the basic surrogacy package Chinese agencies offer costs between $120,000 and $200,000, “if you add in plane tickets and other expenses, for only $300,000, you get two children and the entire family can emigrate to the US,” said a Shanghai-based agent.

That cost still means the surrogacy alternative is available only to the wealthiest Chinese.”

via Wealthy Chinese seek US surrogates for second child or green card | South China Morning Post.

Posted in China alert, Economics, One-child policy | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Chinese language, Citizenship in the United States, current-events, EB-5 visa, Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, politics, Shanghai, United States, women in china

23/09/2013

Food security law may leave out many dalits, tribals

Times of India: “A good number of dalits and tribals may be left out of the ambit of the ambitious Food Security Act, with the socio-economic caste census reporting lesser number of households of the two communities than found by the decennial census, a fraught prospect that has led to jitters in the government.

As per the preliminary figures of socio-economic caste census (survey),1702 tehsils across 27 states have fewer SCs and STs than found in the decennial population census 2011. The census figures of SC/ST population exceed the survey numbers by 1%.

It implies that fewer SCs/STs would be part of the poverty list to be shortlisted by the much-awaited survey. Once finalized, the survey is to serve as the blue book of poor households for entitlement schemes and its first big use would be in the implementation of food security scheme that Congress has called a “game-changer”.

The discrepancy has been found in the poorest states like Bihar (124 tehsils), Madhya Pradesh (163), Odisha (132) as also in Andhra Pradesh (450) and Maharashtra (154). However, the absolute number of households in Andhra is not high because the tehsils are small in size, sources said.

According to sources, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off letters to 26 chief ministers and the administrator of Daman and Diu, seeking proactive initiative to detect omissions.”

via Food security law may leave out many dalits, tribals – The Times of India.

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

Tags: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Dalit, food security act, Food Security Act of 1985, Government, India, Jairam Ramesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, politics

22/09/2013

Ukraine to become China’s largest overseas farmer in 3m hectare deal

SCMP: “China will plough billions of yuan into farmland in Ukraine that will eventually become its biggest overseas agricultural project.

The move is a significant step in China’s recent efforts to encourage domestic companies to farm overseas as China’s food demand grows in pace with urbanisation.

Under the 50-year plan, Ukraine will initially provide China with at least 100,000 hectares – an area almost the size of Hong Kong – of high-quality farmland in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, mainly for growing crops and raising pigs.

The produce will be sold to two Chinese state-owned grain conglomerates at preferential prices. The project will eventually expand to three million hectares.

Ding Li, a senior researcher in agriculture at Anbound Consulting in Beijing, said the deal was a big move for China compared with earlier overseas agriculture.

In April 2009, China had slightly over two million hectares of farmland abroad, he said. “So three million hectares would mean a very big project.”

The agreement was signed in June between the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and KSG Agro, Ukraine’s leading agricultural company, XPCC said in a statement.

XPCC, also known as Bingtuan, is a quasi-military organisation established in Xinjiang in the 1950s to reclaim farmland and consolidate defences against the Soviet Union, whose “granary” at that time was, ironically, the Ukraine.

The statement did not reveal the value of the investment, but the Kyiv Post reported last month that it would be more than US$2.6 billion. The newspaper called it an “unprecedented foreign investment” in Ukraine’s agriculture sector.

This would make it China’s biggest reported lease or purchase of farmland overseas. The Beidahuang Group, China’s largest agribusiness, based in Heilongjiang province, and the Chongqing Grain Group have made similar moves to expand abroad.

The farming project was an important part of China’s food security programme and a response to the central government’s strategy of outsourcing the production of food to farms overseas, the statement said.

It would also help the XPCC expand, and provide jobs abroad for Chinese labourers and boost their incomes, it said.

China has made substantial agricultural investments elsewhere, notably in South America. Beidahuang acquired 234,000 hectares to grow soya bean and corn in Argentina, while Chongqing Grain paid US$375 million for soya bean plantations in Brazil and US$1.2 billion for land in Argentina to grow soya beans, corn and cotton.”

via Ukraine to become China’s largest overseas farmer in 3m hectare deal | South China Morning Post.

Posted in agriculture, China alert, Economics, food security | Leave a Comment »

Tags: agriculture sector, China, dnipropetrovsk region, farming project, Heilongjiang, quality farmland, raising pigs, Soviet Union, Soybean, Ukraine, United States, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

22/09/2013

US immigration bill to hurt Indian IT, ITES firms’ interests

Times of India: “As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepares to leave for his bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama, New Delhi has reiterated that the proposed immigration Bill being discussed in the US Congress will hurt Indian information technology (IT) companies by adversely impacting visas for highly skilled non-immigrant workers.

Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh said Indian IT companies have a certain business model and that the procedures that are being discussed in the US Congress would make it difficult this business model to be continued successfully.

“So, what we are trying to do basically is to flag our concerns in the manner in which this is going to impact on our highly-skilled non-immigrant workers. We are trying to flag the fact that some aspects of the proposed immigration reform would adversely impact visas for highly-skilled non-immigrant workers,” said Singh, briefing reporters about the visit.

In July, the US Senate had passed an Immigration Bill that changed rules governing H-1B and L-1 employment visas intended for high-skilled workers. The Bill will now be sent to the House of Representatives.

If passed in the current form, the Bill will make it mandatory for firms with temporary foreign employees to pay a sharp supplemental fee for each such non-US national. It may also prevent any firm from hiring people on H1-B visas if 50% of its employees are not Americans.”

via US immigration bill to hurt Indian IT, ITES firms’ interests – The Times of India.

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

Tags: Barack Obama, employment visas, House of Representatives, India, indian information technology, manmohan singh, New Delhi, prime minister manmohan singh, proposed immigration bill, proposed immigration reform, United States

20/09/2013

Indian govt approves 10% dearness allowance hike, to benefit 80 lakh government employees, pensioners

Times of India: “The government on Friday approved a proposal to hike dearness allowance to 90% from existing 80%, a move that would benefit about 50 lakh central government employees and 30 lakh pensioners.

“The Union Cabinet approved the proposal to increase dearness allowance to 90% at its meeting. The hike would be effective from July 1, this year,” a source said.

According to the source, the increase in DA to 90% would result in additional annual expenditure of Rs 10,879 crore. There would be additional burden of Rs 6,297 crore on exchequer during 2013-14 on account of this hike in DA.

This is a double digit hike in DA after about three years. It was last in September, 2010, that the government had announced a hike of 10% to be given with effect from July 1, 2010.

DA was hiked to 80% from 72% in April, 2013, effective from January 1, this year.

As per the practice, the government uses CPI-IW data for past 12 months to arrive at a number for the purpose of any DA hike.

The retail inflation for industrial workers between July, 2012 and June 2013 was used to compute the increase in DA.”

via Govt approves 10% dearness allowance hike, to benefit 80 lakh government employees, pensioners – The Times of India.

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

Tags: Cabinet of India, Consumer price index, Dearness allowance, economy, Government, Government of India

20/09/2013

The politics of Chinese dam-building: Opening the floodgates

The Economist: “CHINA has many good reasons not to build the $5.2 billion Xiaonanhai dam on the Yangzi river in Chongqing. The site, on a gentle slope that moves water along only slowly, is not ideal for generating hydropower. The fertile soil makes it one of China’s most productive regions, so it is densely populated with farmers reaping good harvests. And the dam (see map), which would produce only 10% of the electricity of the Three Gorges project downstream, could destroy a rare fish preserve, threatening several endangered species including the Yangzi sturgeon.

Yet it does not matter how strong the case may be against Xiaonanhai, because the battle against a hydropower scheme in China is usually lost before it is fought. The political economy of dam-building is rigged. Though the Chinese authorities have made much progress in evaluating the social and environmental impact of dams, the emphasis is still on building them, even when mitigating the damage would be hard. Critics have called it the “hydro-industrial complex”: China has armies of water engineers (including Hu Jintao, the former president) and at least 300 gigawatts of untapped hydroelectric potential. China’s total generating capacity in 2012 was 1,145GW, of which 758GW came from coal-burning plants.

An important motive for China to pursue hydropower is, ironically, the environment. China desperately needs to expand its energy supply while reducing its dependence on carbon-based fuels, especially coal. The government wants 15% of power consumption to come from clean or renewable sources by 2020, up from 9% now. Hydropower is essential for achieving that goal, as is nuclear power. “Hydro, including large hydro in China, is seen as green,” says Darrin Magee, an expert on Chinese dams at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state.

There is also a political reason why large hydro schemes continue to go ahead. Dambuilders and local governments have almost unlimited power to plan and approve projects, whereas environmental officials have almost no power to stop them.”

via The politics of dam-building: Opening the floodgates | The Economist.

Peking and Tsinghua universities to offer free courses online

SCMP: “Two of the mainland’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, Peking and Tsinghua universities, will start offering free online courses in partnership with EdX, a major open-course provider.

Peking University announced earlier this week it would make four courses, including electronic circuits and the study of folklore, available to students around the world through the EdX web platform starting on Monday. Tsinghua University will make available two courses – the history of Chinese architecture and principles of electric circuits, starting on October 18, according to an EdX schedule.

The introduction of Chinese-language courses from Peking and Tsinghua comes after the two universities signed a deal with EdX in May and spent subsequent months preparing the courses.

Li Xiaoming , an online and information systems professor overseeing the web offerings at Peking University, was previously quoted by mainland media as saying the university planned to offer about 100 courses through EdX within five years. EdX, a major provider of massive online open courses, or Mooc, was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. It has signed up 29 global universities – including Harvard, MIT and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – as partners.

Its competitor Coursera, which was founded in April last year by two computer science professors at Stanford University and which has more than 60 partner schools, signed up two additional mainland institutions, Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in July.

But neither institution has announced plans about which courses it would offer or when their programme would begin.

While it is free to access non-profit Mooc platforms, Coursera said it would charge students between US$60 and US$90 for exams proctored by a third party.

EdX said it also offered students the option of having their final exams proctored for a fee at official testing centres.

Cheng Fangping , a professor at Renmin University who specialises in tertiary education, said Chinese universities could not afford to be left out of the online education trend in an increasingly globalised world of higher learning.

Traditional universities should not regard such online courses as a challenge but an opportunity to boost their global competitiveness by devising courses that met international standards and by further diversifying and broadening their curriculum.

Cheng said that as the nation rose to prominence on the economic and political global stage, studying topics that focused on Chinese issues such as the environment, could become highly prized by people in many other countries.”

via Peking and Tsinghua universities to offer free courses online | South China Morning Post.

UK universities to offer free online courses (independent.co.uk)

Posted in China alert, Economics, education, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, chinese language courses, computer science professors, jiao tong university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, massachusetts institute of technology mit, Peking, Peking University, shanghai jiao tong, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua, Tsinghua University, United States

19/09/2013

Uncertain Times in India, but Not for a Deity

NY Times: “As this year’s monsoon season receded, onions were selling for an eye-popping 58 cents a pound, and inflation had accelerated to a six-month high. It has been a period of belt-tightening in India’s financial capital, a slow but sure blunting of hopes.

But you would hardly have known that if you were standing under a 25-foot, gemstone-encrusted statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh, who is believed to have the power to remove obstacles.

The idol, necklaces cascading from its neck, was unloaded at the edge of the Arabian Sea on Wednesday to be submerged in the water alongside its brethren: the Ganesh laden with 145 pounds of gold ornaments; the Ganesh that was fitted with a new satin loincloth each day of the 10-day festival marking his birthday; the Ganesh lounging under strobe lights and crystal chandeliers, one plump foot resting on a gold-dusted globe.

This year’s crop of Ganeshes — about 13,000 of them, according to the evening news — stood out for its gaudiness.

Narendra Dahibawkar, who heads an umbrella organization overseeing the city’s idol-producing groups, said spending on this year’s Ganeshes was up 10 percent over 2012. The number of visitors during the festival had reportedly risen between 10 percent and 30 percent across the city, with five- and six-hour waits to make a wish. Mr. Dahibawkar said he thought the underlying reason was worry.

“People are coming because they are insecure — about rising prices, about the way ladies are treated,” Mr. Dahibawkar said. “The government is not just to them. Only God.”

At midafternoon, the idols began trundling past the graceful, derelict facades of Marine Drive, past the King of Kings Printers, to the edge of the sea. Prancing beside them were men and women dusted with vermilion powder, so they looked like red ghosts.

Nikita Trevedi, 27, a pharmacist, watched dreamily as boys poled a raft heavy with idols out to the open sea and slid them below the surface of the water. It was a grander display than she had seen growing up in the 1980s.

“Belief is growing,” she said happily. “It’s like going back in time.”

The annual immersion of Ganesh became popular in the early 20th century as part of the Indian independence movement. It provided a way to bridge the gap between castes, and it served as a pretext for gathering without the interference of British forces.”

via Uncertain Times in India, but Not for a Deity – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Caste, Economics, India alert, religion, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Arabian Sea, Ganesh, Ganesha, India, Indian independence movement, Marine Drive Mumbai

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

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