Posts tagged ‘Beijing’

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03/10/2012

* China firm sues Obama over blocked US wind farm deal

Is the Obama ban a military-defensive one or an economic-protectionist one?  Maybe the US law courts will be able to decide.

BBC: “A Chinese-owned firm in the US is suing President Barack Obama after he blocked a wind farm deal on national security grounds.

California wind farm, file picture

Ralls Corp, a private firm, acquired four wind farm projects near a US naval facility in Oregon earlier this year.

Mr Obama signed the order blocking the deal last week. The lawsuit alleges the US government overstepped its authority.

It is the first foreign investment to be blocked in the US for 22 years.

The block on the wind farms comes just weeks ahead of November’s US presidential election.

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua said “China-bashing” in order “to woo some blue-collar voters” was the reason for the decision.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Martin Patience

BBC News, Beijing

Mr Obama has been criticised by the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, for not taking a tough enough line with China over trade and investment practices.

Indeed, Mr Romney has said he will label China as a “currency manipulator” if he is elected.

US politicians have long alleged that China keeps its currency artificially low giving its exports an unfair advantage and, in turn, costing the US jobs. That is denied by Beijing.

But many Chinese officials are now used to the four-year election cycle when increasingly China has become the whipping boy.

One official who worked at the Chinese embassy in Washington told me that the heated rhetoric is not taken too seriously in Beijing.

While the US election is being followed in China, the focus here is the country’s own once-in-a-decade leadership transition, which will get under way next month.

The move forced Ralls Corp to divest its stake in the projects, which were located near restricted airspace used by the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility.

Ralls Corp’s complaint, filed on Monday, alleged that the US president had “acted in an unlawful and unauthorised manner”.

The firm, owned by two Chinese nationals, said in its suit that Mr Obama failed to adhere to the law to treat Ralls Corp on equal terms. The court documents were made public on Tuesday.

Issuing the order last week, the White House said: “There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Ralls Corporation… might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.””

via BBC News – China firm sues Obama over blocked US wind farm deal.

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29/09/2012

Suddenly, China’s aircraft carriers will increase by 100%!

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29/09/2012

* China Alters Its Strategy in Dispute With Japan

As the article below (and this one – https://chindia-alert.org/2012/09/27/japanese-car-plants-in-china-whos-feeling-the-heat/) demonstrates so clearly, today no country is an island. Economic inter-dependency means that compromise and pragmatism must win the day. However, the enmity between China and Japan goes back to the late 19th Century when Japan joined the eight nations that sacked Beijing, followed by the yet-to-be admitted by the Japanese atrocities of the Sino-Japan war.

We can only hope that common sense will prevail. From afar (in the UK) one cannot see why China and its neighbours, including Japan, cannot agree to sharing the bounty of the sea and that underwater. Why should lines drawn on a map dictate that oil, gas or whatever lies beneath belong to one nation and not another? But then I was trained as an engineer and not a politician or lawyer!

NY Times: “After allowing anti-Japanese demonstrations that threatened to spin out of control, China has reined them in and turned instead to hard-edged diplomacy over disputed islands in the East China Sea to lessen any potential damage the conflict might have inflicted on the nation’s softening economy and a delicate leadership transition.

With relations between the two Asian powers at a low point, China decided to go ahead with a scaled-back reception here on Thursday night to honor the 40th anniversary of the resumption of their diplomatic ties on Sept. 29, 1972. A member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, Jia Qinglin, attended with several other Chinese officials.

But Beijing sent a not-so-subtle message to Tokyo by not granting clearance to the plane that would have brought in an important Japanese guest, the chairman of Toyota. Other Japanese attended the event, though, and at the United Nations in New York, the two sides met in private and sparred in public.

Around the disputed islands in the East China Sea, called the Diaoyu by the Chinese and the Senkaku by the Japanese, a large flotilla of Chinese patrol boats was being monitored Friday by about half of Japan’s fleet of coast guard cutters, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.

The protests in more than 80 cities, including in urban centers where Japanese car dealerships and electronics plants were damaged, suggested that the Chinese leadership approved the outpouring of nationalism in part as insulation against criticism of the party itself during the transition of power that formally is scheduled to take place at the 18th Communist Party Congress, now set to begin on Nov. 8. But the protests threatened to turn against the Chinese government itself, diplomats and analysts said.

Even though China has overtaken Japan as the biggest economy in Asia, Beijing’s handling of the dispute, precipitated by the Japanese government’s decision to buy three of the islands from their private Japanese owners, highlighted the interdependence of the Chinese and Japanese economies, and the limitations on what the leadership could allow.

Notions of punishing Tokyo economically for buying the islands, whose status was left unclear after World War II, are unrealistic, said Hu Shuli, editor in chief of Caixin Media and one of China’s chief economic journalists. So many Chinese workers are employed at Japanese-owned companies, she said, that any escalation of tensions leading to a boycott of Japanese goods could lead to huge job losses.

This would be disastrous in an already shaky Chinese economy, Ms. Hu wrote in the Chinese magazine Century Weekly.

At a time when overall foreign investment in China is shrinking, Japan’s investment in China rose by 16 percent last year, Ms. Hu noted. The Japan External Trade Organization reported $12.6 billion of Japanese investment in China last year, compared with $14.7 billion in the United States.

Not just China, but all of Asia, could face a serious economic downturn if Japanese investments in China were threatened, said Piao Guangji, a researcher at the China Academy of Social Science.”

via China Alters Its Strategy in Dispute With Japan – NYTimes.com.

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Posted in China alert, economic inter-dependence, Economics, FDI, Politics, Territorial dispute | 3 Comments »

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25/09/2012

* China carrier a show of force as Japan tension festers

Reuters: “China sent its first aircraft carrier into formal service on Tuesday amid a tense maritime dispute with Japan, a show of naval force that could worry its neighbors.

China's first aircraft carrier, which was renovated from an old aircraft carrier that China bought from Ukraine in 1998, is seen docked at Dalian Port, in Dalian, Liaoning province in this September 22, 2012 file photo. China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, officially entered naval ranks on September 25, 2012 the country's Ministry of Defence announced, in a move that it said would help project maritime power and defend Chinese territory. REUTERS-Stringer-Files

China’s Ministry of Defense said the newly named Liaoning aircraft carrier would “raise the overall operational strength of the Chinese navy” and help Beijing to “effectively protect national sovereignty, security and development interests”.

In fact, the aircraft carrier, refitted from a ship bought from Ukraine, will have a limited role, mostly for training and testing ahead of the possible launch of China’s first domestically built carriers after 2015, analysts say.

But China cast the formal handing over of the carrier to its navy as a triumphant show of national strength — at a time of bitter tensions with neighboring Japan over islands claimed by both sides.

Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated sharply this month after Japan bought the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, from their private owner, sparking anti-Japan protests across China.

“China will never tolerate any bilateral actions by Japan that harm Chinese territorial sovereignty,” Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun said on Tuesday. “Japan must banish illusions, undertake searching reflection and use concrete actions to amend its errors, returning to the consensus and understandings reached between our two countries’ leaders.”

The risks of military confrontation are scant, but political tensions between Asia’s two biggest economies could fester.

For the Chinese navy, the addition of carriers has been a priority as it builds a force capable of deploying far from the Chinese mainland.

China this month warned the United States, with President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, not to get involved in separate territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and U.S. allies such as the Philippines.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in turn urged China and its Southeast Asian neighbors to resolve disputes “without coercion, without intimidation, without threats and certainly without the use of force”.

The timing of the carrier launch might be associated with China’s efforts to build up patriotic unity ahead of a Communist Party congress that will install a new generation of top leaders as early as next month.

Narushige Michishita, a security expert at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, said he thought the timing had nothing to do with the islands dispute.”

via China carrier a show of force as Japan tension festers | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/chinese-tensions/

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25/09/2012

If this article is correct, then it is good news, indeed. Mr Wen may yet achieve what he didn’t quite do while Premier for a decade. It all depends upon whether then new top two leaders (probably Xi and Li) are pro-reform or not.

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21/09/2012

* China’s Xi seeks to reassure Southeast Asia on sea dispute

Reuters: “China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping sought to reassure Southeast Asian leaders on Friday that his country wanted only peaceful relations with them, following months of growing tensions over the strategically located South China Sea.

China's Vice President Xi Jinping listens to U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (not pictured) in a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, September 19, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing

Speaking at the opening of a trade fair in southern China for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, Vice President Xi said China’s own prosperity could only be guaranteed by having good relations with its neighbors.

“The more progress China makes in development and the closer its links with the region and the world, the more important it is for the country to have a stable regional environment and a peaceful international environment,” Xi said.

“Having gone through numerous vicissitudes in modern times, we are deeply aware of the importance of development and how valuable peace is,” he added, according to state media.

Beijing’s assertion of sovereignty over a vast stretch of the South China Sea has set it directly against Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also lay claim to other parts of the region, making it Asia’s biggest potential military troublespot.

At stake are potentially massive offshore oil reserves. The seas also lie on key shipping lanes.

Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is one of the ASEAN leaders attending the trade fair, held in the city of Nanning.

Xi said China – currently also involved in a dispute with Japan over a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea -wanted the peaceful resolution for its diplomatic arguments.”

via China’s Xi seeks to reassure Southeast Asia on sea dispute | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/geopolitics-chinese/

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19/09/2012

# Profile: Xi Jinping – China’s next leader?

BBC News: “Xi Jinping is expected to be the next Chinese leader.

A file photo taken on 17 August, 2012 of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Vice-President Xi Jinping is widely tipped to become China’s next president and Communist Party chief.

Current leader Hu Jintao must retire as head of the party in 2012 and from the presidency in 2013, and Mr Xi’s current positions all suggest he is in place to assume the top jobs.

The 59-year-old, seen as a “princeling” – a term applied to senior officials who are thought to owe at least some of their success to family connections, is already on the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

He is also one of the vice-chairmen of the party’s Central Military Commission, which controls the army.

Analysts see this appointment – a position Mr Hu held before he secured the top post – as a key indicator that he is tipped for the top in the leadership change expected in coming weeks.

Path to the top

Born in Beijing in 1953, he is the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party’s founding fathers.

Xi Zhongxun was purged from the post of vice-premier in 1962 prior to the Cultural Revolution and eventually imprisoned. The young Xi Jinping was then sent to work in the countryside like most other “intellectual youth” of the time.

He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which has produced many of China’s current top leaders, including Hu Jintao.

Xi Jinping’s military appointment intensified assumptions he will succeed Hu Jintao

Joining the Communist Party in 1974, he served as a local party secretary in Hebei province and then went on to ever more senior roles in Fujian and then Zhejiang provinces.

He was named party chief of Shanghai in 2007 when its former chief, Chen Liangyu, was sacked over corruption charges. Shortly after, he was promoted to the party’s Standing Committee and, in 2008, became vice-president.

Xi Jinping is seen as pro-business, after working hard to attract foreign investment to Fujian and Zhejiang.

In 2005, when he was the Communist Party secretary in Zhejiang, he told media that “government should be a limited government”.

Whenever there are issues that the government was incapable of handling, he said, the public should be given back the power to tackle them.

Seen as having a zero-tolerance attitude to corrupt officials, Mr Xi has twice been drafted in to trouble-shoot major problems.

In Fujian he helped to clear up a corruption scandal in the late 1990s which involved the jailed smuggling kingpin Lai Changxing.

In 2004, he reportedly told officials: “Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.”

When, in June 2012, a Bloomberg investigative report examined the finances of his relatives, the company’s website was blocked in China – even though the report said there was no indication of wrongdoing by him or his family.”

via BBC News – Profile: Xi Jinping – China’s next leader?.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/

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18/09/2012

* In Africa’s warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese

reuters: “Malawians bill their country as the “Warm Heart of Africa” and pride themselves on a reputation for friendliness. But Jaffa Shaibu, a burly 32-year-old merchant in a clothes market in Salima, a dusty town near the shores of Lake Malawi, feels less than welcoming to the Chinese traders who have moved in over the past four years.

Liberian children hold Chinese flags before the arrival of China's President Hu Jintao in Monrovia in this February 1, 2007 file photo. REUTERS-Christopher Herwig-Files

“The way it looks, one day there will be a big fight with them,” Shaibu said. “One day there will be blood.”

Echoing a grievance heard across Africa, Shaibu and his colleagues in this town of 40,000 complain of Chinese businessmen with better access to cheap imports of clothes, shoes and electronics, and deeper pockets that allow them to reduce their margins.

That sentiment is part of a grass-roots backlash against Beijing’s increasing diplomatic and commercial clout in Africa.

In many ways, the relationship between the two has never been stronger. Bilateral trade has almost doubled over the past three years, to $166 billion in 2011 from $91 billion in 2009. In July, Chinese President Hu Jintao offered Africa $20 billion in cheap loans over the next three years. China, he said, would forever be a “good friend, a good partner and a good brother” to Africa.

But a growing number of Africa’s billion people are less enthusiastic.”

via Insight: In Africa’s warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese | Reuters.

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17/09/2012

* China, EU face dumping claim

China Daily: “Beijing said Brussels has agreed to begin dialogue and cooperation to resolve the multi-billion-dollar anti-dumping investigation towards China’s solar panel manufacturers.

But Brussels refused to go into details of such a stance, revealed by Chong Quan, China’s deputy representative for international trade talks, after three-hour intensive talks with senior officials of European Commission on Friday afternoon.

“They (Brussels) agreed (to hold dialogues) – and I found they are very candid and pragmatic,” Chong told China Daily. “I respect my negotiation partner.”

But when asked how strong Brussels’ intention is, Chong said: “I don’t know.”

Brussels was part of Chong’s three-stop mission to send a clear message from Beijing, which wants to solve this dispute through “consultation, dialogues and cooperation.” Before holding talking with Jean-Luc Demarty, the European Commission’s director general for trade, he was negotiating in Germany and has now moved on to talks in France.

EU trade spokesperson John Clancy refused to elaborate about the three-hour discussion in Brussels. Clancy said the European Commission has begun an “open” anti-dumping investigation on China’s solar panel exports, as it is required to do under the WTO framework and EU law.

He said input “from all stakeholders” is now welcome.

Clancy also confirmed that EU and Chinese trade officials discussed preparations for next week’s EU-China summit in Brussels.

Chong confirmed that China’s Minister of Commerce Chen Deming will be in Premier Wen Jiabao’s delegation that will attend the summit during a one-day visit to Belgium.

Wen and Chen are expected to urge Brussels to negotiate. Chong said both sides are eager to resolve this dispute through dialogue and both sides need to make every effort to avoid a trade war.

In the face of a severe economic slowdown and the magnitude of this dispute, Chong said: “Both of us will become losers if a trade war occurs and the situation is out of control.””

via China, EU face dumping claim |Economy |chinadaily.com.cn.

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17/09/2012

* For Beijing, expansion is not a big deal, it’s lots of them

The Times: “China’s slowing economy has failed to dent its global ambitions, with an increasingly hungry dragon scouring the globe for higher-value corporate deals, according to new research.

It made 177 outbound acquisitions worth a combined $63.1 billion last year, five times more than in 2005, the study by Mergermarket and Squire Sanders, the law firm, found. Deals are also growing in value, with the planned $15.1 billion takeover of Nexen, the Canadian oil sands explorer, by the state-owned CNOOC set to be China’s biggest-ever foreign acquisition, if it goes ahead.

Next month China will release its third-quarter GDP data, with some economists suggesting that growth could fall below the 7.6 per cent it brushed in the second quarter, despite assurances from Beijing that the economy would stabilise in the second half.

Natural resources and energy, the sectors most critical to China’s future growth, continue to dominate purchases, accounting for almost one in three M&A targets between 2011 and the year to date. Almost all these buyers are state-owned companies making investments at the behest of the Government.

Mao Tong, a Hong Kong-based partner at Squire Sanders, said: “We are seeing companies becoming more interested in making a strategic play, rather than just adding to their portfolio. These are big deals designed to position them in a global context.

“Even if the Chinese economy slows sharply, I think this will continue for a while. China is still the world’s most important manufacturing base, using huge amounts of iron ore, for example.”

China is eager to deploy its $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, mainly held in dollars, to counter the gradual depreciation of the currency and put its national wealth to good use. Yet the number of private sector deals is also expected to increase as the Government encourages state-owned banks to step up lending to the corporate sector.Britain is the favoured destination for Chinese dealmaking in Western Europe, accounting for a third of deals and two thirds of all outbound investment to the region, thanks to its reputation for transparency and a large number of Russian and Central Asian resources companies, Mr Mao suggested.

China has shown an increasing taste for European luxury brands, such as Shandong Heavy Industry’s buyout of the Italian yacht group Ferretti this year. Recent British brands going East include Weetabix, bought by the Shanghai dairy group Bright Food, and the $7.8 billion buyout of Northumbrian Water by Cheung Kong Infrastructure, a Hong Kong group chaired by Li Ka-shing.

The Dragon Index, a quarterly measure of China’s overseas direct investment by the private equity firm A Capital, which was released last week, hit an historic high in the second quarter, with ODI said to grow by 67 per cent between April and June on the previous quarter, to $24 billion.

André Loesekrug-Pietri, founder of A Capital, said: “State-owned enterprises remain the dominant force behind China’s ODI, with 90 per cent of the total deal value in the second quarter 2012.”

European companies accounted for 95 per cent of all non-resources deals in the quarter, the figures suggested. China’s share of US deals has slowed this year, owing to the sensitive political climate before the presidential election.”

via For Beijing, expansion is not a big deal, it’s lots of them | The Times.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/02/13/pattern-of-chinese-overseas-investments/

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