Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco (TSCO.L) has completed its exit from China with the 275 million pound sale of its joint venture stake to state-run partner China Resources Holdings (CRH).
Having struggled to crack the Chinese market, Tesco established the Gain Land venture with CRH in 2014, combining the British group’s 131 stores in China with its partner’s almost 3,000.
The disposal of its 20% stake allows Tesco to further simplify and focus the business on core operations, it said on Tuesday, adding that the proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.
The deal is scheduled to complete on Feb. 28.
Shares in Tesco were up 0.7% at 0816 GMT, extending its gains over the last year to 12.4%.
“This extra 275 million pounds of ‘forgotten value’ should be accretive to most street valuations,” said Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne.
After costly exits from Japan and the United States and the sale of its South Korean business, Tesco signalled in December a further retreat from its once lofty global ambitions by starting a review of its operations in Thailand and Malaysia – its last remaining wholly owned businesses in Asia.
A sale of its operations in Thailand and Malaysia would mean Tesco’s only remaining overseas operations, apart from Ireland, would be its central European division, comprising stores in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
The Asian exit could be one of the last acts of Tesco CEO Dave Lewis, who will be succeeded by Ken Murphy in October.
Bernstein’s Monteyne expects Tesco to start a 1 billion pound share buyback programme in its 2020-21 financial year.
“With this transaction and the possible sale of Thailand and Malaysia, Tesco’s biggest short-term concern could be how to efficiently return cash to shareholders,” he said.
Image caption The pack of cards cost £1.50 from Tesco
A factory in China has denied it used forced labour after a six-year-old girl found a message from workers inside a Tesco charity Christmas card.
The card supplier, Zhejiang Yunguang Printing, told China’s Global Times it had “never done such a thing”.
Tesco halted production at the factory on Sunday over the message, allegedly written by prisoners claiming they were “forced to work against our will”.
The Chinese foreign ministry said the allegation was “a farce”.
Speaking to the nationalist newspaper Global Times on Monday, a spokesman for the card supplier said: “We only became aware of this when some foreign media contacted us. We have never done such a thing.
The message – first reported by the Sunday Times – was found by Florence Widdicombe, who was writing cards to her school friends. She found that one of them – featuring a kitten with a Santa hat – had already been written in.
In block capitals, it said: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.”
The message in the card asked whoever found the message to contact Peter Humphrey, a British journalist who was himself imprisoned there four years ago.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Monday the allegation was “a farce” created by Mr Humphrey.
“Shanghai’s Qingpu prison has no such foreign prisoners undergoing forced labour,” Mr Shuang said.
Zhejiang Yunguang Printing’s factory manager, Shu Yunjia, told the BBC it had not outsourced any of its work to the Qingpu prison.
Media caption Florence Widdicombe was writing the cards last Sunday when she discovered the message
Florence, from Tooting in south London, said she was writing her “sixth or eighth card” when she saw “somebody had already written in it”.
“It made me feel shocked,” she said, adding that when it was explained to her what the message meant she felt “sad”.
Tesco added that it would de-list Zhejiang Yunguang if it was found to have used prison labour.
A Tesco spokeswoman said: “We were shocked by these allegations and immediately halted production at the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation.”
The supermarket said it has a “comprehensive auditing system” to ensure suppliers are not exploiting forced labour.
The factory in question was checked only last month and no evidence of it breaking the ban on prison labour was found, it said.
Sales of charity Christmas cards at the company’s supermarkets raise £300,000 a year for the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.
Tesco has not received any other complaints from customers about messages inside Christmas cards.
‘Very bleak life’
The message in the card urged the recipient to contact Peter Humphrey, who was formerly imprisoned at Qingpu on what he described as “bogus charges that were never heard in court”.
After the Widdicombe family sent him a message via Linkedin, Mr Humphrey said he then contacted ex-prisoners who confirmed inmates had been forced to work.
Media caption Peter Humphrey: “I think I know who it was but I will never disclose the name”
Mr Humphrey told the BBC that the cell block of foreign prisoners has about 250 people in it, who are living a “very bleak daily life” with 12 prisoners per cell.
He added that when he was in there, manufacturing labour work was voluntary – to earn money to buy soap or toothpaste – but that work has now become compulsory.
Mr Humphrey told the BBC: “I spent two years in captivity in Shanghai between 2013 and 2015 and my final nine months of captivity was in this very prison in this very cell block where this message has come from.
“So this was written by some of my cellmates from that period who are still there serving sentences.
“I’m pretty sure this was written as a collective message. Obviously one single hand produced this capital letters’ handwriting and I think I know who it was, but I will never disclose that name.”
It is not the first time that prisoners in China have reportedly smuggled out messages in products they have been forced to make for Western markets.
In 2012, Julie Keith from Portland, Oregon, discovered an account of torture and persecution by a prisoner who said he was forced to manufacture the Halloween decorations she had purchased.
And in 2014, Karen Wisinska from Co Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, found a note on a pair of Primark trousers reading: “Our job inside the prison is to produce fashion clothes for export. We work 15 hours per day and the food we eat wouldn’t even be given to dogs or pigs.”
Under the UN’s guidance for human rights and prisons, prisoners “should not be subordinated merely to making a profit either for the prison authorities or for a private contractor”.
British supermarket is investigating after newspaper report that six-year-old girl found message in card saying it was packed by Shanghai prisoners
Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco said it was “shocked by these allegations”. Photo: AFP
British supermarket giant Tesco suspended a Chinese supplier of Christmas cards on Sunday after a press report said a customer found a message written inside a card saying it had been packed by foreign prisoners who were victims of forced labour.
“We abhor the use of prison labour and would never allow it in our supply chain,” a Tesco spokesman said on Sunday.
“We were shocked by these allegations and immediately suspended the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation.”
donates £300,000 (US$390,000) a year from the sale of the cards to the charities British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.
The Sunday Times said the message inside the card read: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.
“Use the link to contact Mr Peter Humphrey.”
Peter Humphrey is a British former journalist and corporate fraud investigator.
Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng were both sentenced in China in 2014
for illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens and selling the information to clients including drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. The couple were deported from China in June 2015 after their jail terms were reduced.
The message inside the card was found by a six-year-old girl, Florence Widdicombe, in London, The Sunday Times said. Her father contacted Humphrey via the LinkedIn social network.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Humphrey said he did not know the identities or the nationalities of the prisoners who put the note into the card, but he “had no doubt they are Qingpu prisoners who knew me before my release in June 2015 from the suburban prison where I spent 23 months”.
Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, said it had a comprehensive auditing process in place.
“This supplier was independently audited as recently as last month and no evidence was found to suggest they had broken our rule banning the use of prison labour,” the spokesman said.
“If a supplier breaches these rules, we will immediately and permanently delist them.”
Sky News said the cards were produced at the Zheijiang Yunguang Printing factory, which is about 100km (60 miles) from Shanghai Qingpu prison.
The company, which prints cards and books for food and pharmaceutical companies, says on its website it supplies Tesco.
Two phone calls and one emailed request for comment to the company went unanswered after usual business hours on Sunday.
Humphrey and his wife said in their trial they had not thought they were doing anything illegal in their activities in China.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 