This just shows how inter-linked are the affairs of China and America.
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30/04/2013
The American military is using Chinese satellites
29/04/2013
China: Military license plates no longer allowed on luxury cars, more strictly controlled
Good idea!
27/04/2013
* China agrees $8bn Airbus plane deal
BBC: “China has agreed to buy 60 planes from European firm Airbus, in a deal worth $8bn (£5.2bn) at list prices.
It is the first such deal since the European Union suspended the inclusion of foreign airlines in its controversial Emissions Trading Scheme.
China had voiced its opposition to the scheme, which charges airlines for the carbon they emit.
Last year, Airbus had alleged that China blocked firms from purchasing its planes amid the row over the scheme.
The deal was signed as part of a series of agreements during French President Francois Hollande’s two-day visit to China.
It includes an order for 42 Airbus A320 aircraft and 18 A330 planes.”
27/04/2013
* In China, the license plates can cost more than the car
Something like this used to be for Singapore care owners.
25/04/2013
* The Chinese Dream won’t go back to sleep
The Times: “One died in Boston, the other lost her home in Sichuan. Both symbolised the hopes of millions
Last week in different corners of the planet, the lives of two very important Chinese women were ripped apart: one on the streets of Boston, the other under the rubble of the Sichuan earthquake. Both women were living the Chinese Dream. And both could spell big trouble for President Xi Jinping.
Lu Lingzi was a 23-year-old mathematics graduate student at Boston University, who died in the marathon bombing. The hard-working daughter of hard-working, white-collar parents from Shenyang, she was a paragon of the generation that has emerged as China’s economy grows and the new middle classes replicate themselves for the first time in history. Not a single opportunity in Lingzi’s short life was squandered. She battled for internships at banks and accounting firms. The family saved every yuan so that their daughter could study in the United States.
The other woman is Wei Ruqun, a victim of last Saturday’s earthquake. She is alive but has almost nothing to live for. Now 47, Ruqun has toiled in a variety of factories since her teens as one of China’s 260 million migrant workers whose sweat and aspiration have fuelled the country’s industrial engine.
Her career, a diverse list of drudgery that includes assembling cheap goods for export to the West, has won her some tiny shavings from the Chinese economic boom, hard-won dividends of the version of capitalism that Beijing unleashed in the 1980s, which allowed hundreds of millions of peasants to imagine themselves as consumers for the first time. Over the decades Ruqun saved to buy a small house in the village where she was born. On Saturday, a few months after the dream house was finished, it collapsed in the earthquake with family members inside.
The two women’s fates — reported on TV and discussed on Weibo, China’s version of Facebook and Twitter — have humanised for many Chinese people social trends almost too big and fast-moving to think about in the abstract. By studying abroad, Lingzi was fulfilling an increasingly common middle-class dream. Her story has fascinated tens of millions of middle-class Chinese who know someone like her or want to do what she did. Ruqun is one of hundreds of micro-tragedies of the Sichuan quake. Barely an adult in China cannot imagine the agony of losing a house that represents your life savings.
The two women are important for the ease with which ordinary Chinese can empathise with them. But they are politically important too. Both are the creations and creators of what will soon be the largest economy on Earth. The loss of Lingzi and the shattering of Ruqun are personally terrible, but their significance lies in the fact that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of Chinese women like them: all patiently shaping individual aspiration into something real. Their two lives, though different in so many ways, are perfect products of China 2013.”
via The Chinese Dream won’t go back to sleep | The Times.
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- Local paper names Chinese victim in Boston blasts (bostonherald.com)
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25/04/2013
* China Unicom 1Q Net Jumps 89% on 3G, Fixed-Line Broadband Growth
WSJ: “China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. 0762.HK -0.18% said Thursday net profit surged 89% in the first quarter from a year earlier as its third-generation mobile communications network and fixed-line broadband businesses continued their rapid growth.
China Unicom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Chinese telecommunications carriers are scrambling to ramp up their networks to accommodate the rapid increase in data traffic in the world’s largest mobile market, as more people replace their basic cellphones with smartphones. China has already overtaken the U.S. as the world’s biggest smartphone market.
Fierce competition between China Unicom and its rivals China Telecom Corp. CHA +1.75% and China Mobile Ltd. 0941.HK +1.21% has led to increasing costs, as carriers spend more on building networks and subsidizing handsets to attract more valuable subscribers who pay for speedier wireless services. In the latest quarter, China Unicom said revenue growth outpaced that of costs.
China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile operator by subscribers after China Mobile, said net profit was 1.90 billion yuan ($308 million) in the period ended March 31, up from 1.01 billion yuan a year earlier. Revenue rose 15% to 70.6 billion yuan from 61.19 billion yuan a year earlier.
China Unicom, the first of China’s carriers to offer Apple Inc.’s AAPL -0.16% iPhone, has seen profitability rise on its efforts to offer high-end smartphones and attract users with more expensive cellphone plans. Still, the increasing popularity of low-cost smartphones has led to falling average revenue per user—a key metric of telecom carriers’ health. First-quarter average revenue per user for its 3G business fell to 78.2 yuan from 93.9 yuan in the same period last year.
Subsidies for 3G phones rose to 2.23 billion yuan in the quarter from 1.98 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Major local carriers are also preparing to launch faster fourth-generation networks. Capital expenditure for network infrastructure and subsidies for smartphones continue to put pressure on major local carriers, even though smartphone users are boosting their data communications revenue.”
via China Unicom 1Q Net Jumps 89% on 3G, Fixed-Line Broadband Growth – WSJ.com.
25/04/2013
* China moves cautiously ahead on nuclear energy
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “From 2005 to 2011, China rapidly developed its nuclear power capacity. In 2010 alone, it began operations at two new reactors and broke ground on 10 more, accounting for more than 60 percent of new reactor construction worldwide and making the Chinese nuclear industry by far the fastest-growing in the world. By the end of 2010, China had 14 nuclear reactors in operation with a total capacity of about 11 gigawatts electric, or GWe. That was still a relatively small amount — in contrast, the United States had 104 commercial reactors with a total capacity of about 100 GWe in 2010 — but China was pursuing ambitious plans to rapidly expand.
Then came the tsunami and earthquake that led to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in March 2011, the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. After Fukushima, China changed course dramatically, slowing the pace of nuclear development to focus on safety. The slower pace is reassuring, but to really be a leader on nuclear safety, China should speed up the adoption of new laws on nuclear energy and enhance the independence and authority of nuclear safety regulators.
Putting the Brakes On. According to a government plan issued in 2007, China planned to install a total nuclear capacity of 40 GWe by 2020, which would account for about 3 percent of electricity generation nationwide. Many officials and experts expected that the number would actually increase further, to more than 80 GWe.
In its initial, March 2011 reaction to Fukushima, though, China’s State Council, the nation’s governing body, decided to suspend approval of new nuclear power stations, conduct comprehensive safety inspections of existing plants, and review all nuclear projects including those under construction. In October 2012, after concluding the inspections and reviews, the State Council issued a new plan that represents a serious and cautious reevaluation of safety issues and the pace of development. Called the Medium- and Long-term Nuclear Power Development Plan (2011-2020), its proposals include:
A return to normal construction at a controlled and orderly pace.
Permission for a limited number of new nuclear power reactors to be built in coastal sites that have been comprehensively evaluated.
A ban on new inland nuclear power projects, because the government fears a shortage of cooling water should accidents occur at such plants.
A requirement that all new projects meet the safety standards of the world’s most advanced nuclear reactors, known as third generation or Gen III reactors. Compared to earlier technology, these new designs incorporate improved fuel technology, superior thermal efficiency, passive rather than active safety systems, and standardized designs aimed at reducing maintenance and capital costs.
Based on the new plan, China will only approve a few new reactor construction projects before 2016. China now expects to grow its total nuclear capacity to 58 GWe by 2020, rather than the more than 80 GWe previously expected.
The government resumed approval of new nuclear power projects in December 2012, just as the new plan was issued. Several inland nuclear power projects where significant preparation work had already begun will be suspended, with some of their equipment likely transferred to coastal sites. While the pace of Chinese nuclear development will slow in the near term, the country’s long-term goals haven’t changed significantly. China continues to emphasize nuclear power as a crucial part of its energy mix. A government white paper issued in October 2012 observed that “as nuclear power is a high-quality, clean, and efficient modern energy resource, its development is of great importance for optimizing the nation’s energy structure and ensuring national energy security.” The white paper put China’s nuclear energy target at 40 GWe by 2015.”
via China moves cautiously ahead on nuclear energy | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
24/04/2013
* Australia’s central bank to invest in Chinese bonds
BBC: “Australia’s central bank is planning to invest around 5% of its foreign currency reserves in Chinese government bonds, its deputy governor has said.
It will be the first time the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will invest in sovereign bonds of an Asian country other than Japan.
The RBA has foreign currency reserves of A$38.2bn ($39.2bn; £25.7bn).
Earlier this month, the Australian dollar became the third currency to trade directly with the Chinese yuan.
“This decision to invest in China is an important one,” Philip Lowe, deputy governor of the RBA said in a speech to the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
“It reflects the broader economic relationship between China and Australia and our increasing financial ties.
“It provides greater diversification of our investments and will help with our understanding of the Chinese financial markets,” he added.”
via BBC News – Australia’s central bank to invest in Chinese bonds.
22/04/2013
* China’s Shale-Gas Potential and Peril
Businessweek: “In China there’s a giddy feeling that the next energy gold rush is about to begin. Beneath the mountains of Sichuan province, the deserts of Xinjiang, and elsewhere, China contains twice the shale- gas reserves as the U.S., says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China’s national planners enthusiastically back boosting natural gas production, which accounts for just 4 percent of the country’s total energy mix now. The government wants to double that share by 2015. “There’s a lot of exuberance,” says Zhou Xizhou, who leads the research firm IHS Cera’s China Energy practice. “In Beijing, if you work in energy, you probably receive a shale-gas conference notice every week.”
The impact of a shale-gas boom in China will be enormous, with the potential benefits and likely environmental costs perhaps even greater than in the U.S. So far, though, the output in China has been a trickle because of the challenging geography and the monopolistic structure of China’s oil and gas sector. While about 200,000 of the horizontal wells used in fracking have been drilled in the U.S., China has about 60. China has 1,275 trillion cubic feet of shale-gas reserves, compared with 637 trillion cubic feet for the U.S.
The U.S. shale-gas revolution was launched largely on the flatlands of Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and other accessible areas. In China’s mountainous Sichuan basin, “the formations seem to be more faulted and folded, which makes it more difficult and less economic to drill long horizontal well bores,” says Briana Mordick, an Oil & Gas Science Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council and formerly a geologist at Anadarko Petroleum.
Sometimes the Chinese must cut new mountainside roads to move trucks and equipment to remote sites. With higher upfront costs, “it will be significantly more challenging in China to make the wells pay for themselves,” Mordick says. “The technical learning curve is very steep. What works in one place may not work in another.“
The inflexible structure of China’s state-controlled oil and gas industry hampers efforts to exploit reserves. “In the U.S., it was not the oil and gas majors that started the shale boom” but rather small wildcat operators “willing to accept a high-risk, high-reward proposition,” says Melanie Hart, an analyst on energy policy and China at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “In a market system, you can have many small and large players all specializing in different pieces of the process.””
via China’s Shale-Gas Potential and Peril – Businessweek.
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 