Posts tagged ‘London’

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12/02/2014

Electric private hire cars (made in China) launched in London | Fleet News

Private hire chauffeur operator Thriev has launched a fleet of 20 zero-emission, fully-electric BYD e6 cars in London.

Thriev is the first company to offer low-cost, zero-emission, chauffeured vehicles to corporate and private users in London. The BYD e6 is ideally suited for private hire operations, providing a range of up to 186 miles and the 20 private hire cars will be able to be recharged both at the depot and on the road thanks to British Gas.

The new fleet is the result of a shared ‘green city solution’ vision, to bring reliable, emission-free transport to London’s roads, replacing petrol and diesel powered vehicles with electric ones. The 20 BYD e6 vehicles operated by Thriev join two fully-electric BYD buses that are already in service with Go-Ahead Group on two central Transport for London routes.

The Thriev service will be supported by a brand new city-wide charging network installed by British Gas in addition to its own rapid charging stations. British Gas has been leading the delivery of the UK’s charging infrastructure for electric vehicles since 2010. The first rapid chargers, made by BYD and capable of charging an e6 to 80% in just 30 minutes, have already been installed at Thriev’s Edgware Road facility. As the service expands across the UK, creating one of the largest of its kind, it will eventually see each unit of electricity matched with a unit of 100% British renewable electricity.

via Electric private hire cars launched in London | Fleet News.

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08/02/2014

Arsenal kick Manchester United off top spot as No 1 team for fans in China | South China Morning Post

Arsenal has edged out Manchester United as China’s favourite football club, according to a recent survey.

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The majority of the 15,586 respondents chose the London-based Gunners as their favourite club team and Germany as their preferred national team.

Coventry University’s Centre for the International Business of Sport conducted the survey between September and November on Weibo.

Head of the centre Professor Simon Chadwick said, “Arsenal was a surprise. Although given that Chinese fans like the German national team, the fact that Ozil, Podolski and Mertesacker play for Arsenal make the result rather less surprising.”

The Gunners racked up 3,785 votes, compared with Man United’s 3,210. AC Milan came third with 2,204 votes, followed by Real Madrid (1,959) and Barcelona (1,930).

Arsenal is currently sitting at the top of the English Premier League standings.

via Arsenal kick Manchester United off top spot as No 1 team for fans in China | South China Morning Post.

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27/01/2014

500-year-old Chinese painting hints at football’s female origins – FT.com

So many of our best winter-flowering shrubs came to the UK from China. I have been following their route in reverse, thanks to the recent exhibition on Chinese painting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This remarkable show was so popular that it became difficult to see its long scrolls under glass among the queues of so many keen spectators. On my visit, I noted the paintings which related to gardens and flowers and vowed to study them more closely with the help of the expert catalogue. The show has now ended but the catalogue, edited by Hongxing Zhang, lives on in bookshops and is an essential addition to keen gardeners’ libraries. It has increased my initial pleasure.

Court Ladies in the Inner Palace (detail), circa. 1465-1509, by Du Jin

Which will surprise readers of the Weekend FT more, the discovery that Chinese court ladies played football in the garden in the 15th century, or the discovery that a Mr Tang was painted in that same era, reclining in a rattan garden chair beneath a tree and having a “pure dream”?

I hope the ladies are more unexpected. Mr Tang is not our respected David, House & Home’s agony uncle, taking a nap. He is Tang Yin who ranked as the top scholar in his province’s exams but came to grief when he sat the national exams in Beijing. He was alleged to have given a bung to the senior examiner’s assistant in order to see the papers in advance. There was nothing left for him but to become a Buddhist, paint and write poetry. He is shown in his chair beneath the branches of a Paulownia tree, his eyes closed. “The Paulownia shadows cover the purple moss”, the accompanying poem by Tang says. “The gentleman is at leisure, feeling an intoxicated sleep, For this lifetime, he has already renounced thoughts of rank and fame, The pure sleep should not have dreams of grandeur.” There is no sign that he has taken to advising correspondents on manners and etiquette. In my garden I have two Paulownias, hanging on to life despite the cold winter of 2013. In warmer counties like Hampshire these quick-growing trees sometimes even flower. Perhaps we should set a deckchair beneath them and snooze, remembering VAT inspections of the past.

The footballing ladies are truly surprising. One of them has a dainty foot extended and a big round ball in the air above it. Soccer is an English invention, but if you thought that the English male was the first person to put foot to an inflated ball, you are hundreds of years out of date. Chinese palace ladies were already practising their passing inside the bamboo fence. The ball was lined with an animal bladder and inflated from outside. What about the problem of bound-up feet? Foot-binding was widely imposed on classy women in the Ming period. These 15th-century footballers are moving freely, probably because the painting, as so often, is evoking a much earlier era. Their game was called cuju. If it goes back another 800 years to the Tang era, female footie is inarguably a Chinese invention. Some scholars even claim examples of it in the remote sixth century BC.

via 500-year-old Chinese painting hints at football’s female origins – FT.com.

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23/01/2014

Hardware startups: Hacking Shenzhen | The Economist

OH NO, NOT another accelerator, you may think. But this one is different. On the tables are not just the obligatory laptops and smartphones but circuit boards, cables, screwdrivers and a few items which look only vaguely familiar. One resembles a very old mobile phone with an oddly shaped knob attached to it. Another, a set of small blocks with switches and buttons, calls to mind a disassembled mixer in a recording studio. Yet another might be the microphone of a computer headset, but is mounted on a pair of glasses.

Even more surprisingly, the home of Haxlr8r (pronounced “Hackcelerator”) is not some co-working space in London or San Francisco but the 10th floor of an office building in Shenzhen. The city in the Pearl River Delta, close to Hong Kong, is the world capital of electronics: most of the planet’s digital devices are assembled in factories in and around the city.

Haxlr8r is living proof that, as Karl Popper once said, history repeats itself, but never in the same way. Just as with software services, new technology makes it ever easier to build new types of devices, most of them connected to the internet. The difference is that making hardware remains, well, hard—which is why Haxlr8r is in Shenzhen. That way its teams may avoid the fate of a first generation of hardware startups, mostly based in America. They put their ideas up on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the leading crowdfunding services, but then endured months of delay or never got as far as manufacturing their devices.

The technologies that allowed software services to be developed more cheaply and quickly were cloud computing, social networks and any number of digital services called application programming interfaces (APIs). For hardware the list includes all of the above plus 3D printers, sensors and microcontrollers which bridge the analogue and the digital worlds. The platform for most connected devices is smartphones. All these elements can be combined in countless ways, creating a Cambrian explosion not just in software but in physical electronic devices too.

via Hardware startups: Hacking Shenzhen | The Economist.

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22/01/2014

China’s Real-Estate Investment Boom Set to Continue in 2014 – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Chinese real-estate investors made a name for themselves abroad in 2013, picking up big-ticket projects from New York to London, and that momentum is poised to pick up this year.

“In the late 1980s, we noticed every second deal was done by the Japanese, and in the 1990s, it was investors from the Middle East,” said Alastair Hughes, chief executive officer of Asia Pacific at property consultancy Jones Lang LaSalleJLL +1.99%. “We’re seeing the beginning of such a wave in China.”

Chinese outbound commercial real-estate investment is estimated to exceed $10 billion this year, after it doubled to $7.6 billion last year from 2012’s $3.3 billion, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle. Rival brokerage Colliers International is more bullish, saying it expects Chinese investors to spend at least twice as much on overseas property assets this year as last year.

“Chinese investors are very active in every major market in the world, and part of that has to do with government policy on overseas investment becoming less restrictive,” Mr. Hughes said.

Aside from the stronger yuan, which makes purchases abroad cheaper, Chinese investors also are heeding the old adage don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

via China’s Real-Estate Investment Boom Set to Continue in 2014 – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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01/12/2013

China Poised to Surpass India in Gold Purchases – Businessweek

Yang Cuiyan, a 41-year-old housekeeper from Anhui province, is one reason China is poised to topple India as the world’s top consumer of gold. Standing outside Beijing’s busiest jewelry store, wearing a thick coat against the autumn chill, she clasps a gold necklace that cost her 10,000 yuan ($1,640), or five months’ wages. “I can put it on when I go back home to show everyone that I’m doing well.”

Yang is one of the legions of middle-aged Chinese women, respectfully referred to as aunties, who bought coins and jewelry this year. Gold purchases in the world’s second-largest economy will surge 29 percent in 2013, to a record 1,000 metric tons, according to the median of 13 estimates from analysts, traders, and gold producers in China surveyed by Bloomberg News. China’s purchases of gold climbed 30 percent, to 996.3 tons, in the 12 months through September, while sales in India rose 24 percent, to 977.6 tons, according to the London-based World Gold Council. India was No. 1 in 2012. Each country buys more gold than the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East combined.

Gold’s burnished appeal in China stems in part from a lack of alternative investments. While the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities rose 18 percent this year through Nov. 22, the Shanghai Composite Index slumped 3.2 percent. Policymakers clamped down on property investments in March to cool the housing market, ordering the central bank to raise down-payment requirements for second mortgages in cities with excessive price gains. “In China, you look around and see very few places to put your money,” says Duan Shihua, a partner at Shanghai Leading Investment Management. “With the share market down and the government nudging people away from real estate, gold will remain a favored choice.”

via China Poised to Surpass India in Gold Purchases – Businessweek.

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24/11/2013

Boris’s new best friend is living the Chinese dream | The Sunday Times

A black Range Rover with tinted windows pulls up at the entrance to Royal Albert Dock — a ragged stretch of land opposite City airport in east London. Xu Weiping descends from the car, flanked by three advisers, and proffers a hand.

Xu Weiping wants his development at London’s Royal Albert Dock to rival Canary Wharf

The Chinese property developer apologises in broken English for his lateness, but he does not look particularly flustered: there is a mild smile beneath the Ed Hardy sunglasses, which are emblazoned with gold dragons, and he keeps his white iPod earphones in.

Xu has spent the day hunkered down with architects from Terry Farrell and Partners, making changes to his vision for the 35-acre site.

“They are quite hard-working and they pay attention to detail,” he remarks through a translator as we drive to the nearby photoshoot. “But the difference between UK architects and their counterparts in China is that sometimes they are not bold enough.”

Xu is here to shake them up. Until this year nobody had heard of the diminutive 53-year-old, referred to reverentially by his assistants as Mr Xu — pronounced “shoo”. He was relatively unknown even in his home country, where he has built a sprawling office estate on the outskirts of Beijing.

Then, in May, Xu struck a deal with the London mayor, Boris Johnson, to spend £1bn turning the strip of east London into an Asian business zone to rival Canary Wharf. The spotlight instantly fell on him — and he seems to be enjoying it.

Apparently impervious to the icy wind whipping across Gallions Point marina, connected to the Thames, Xu poses for photographs in a light-weight Versace blazer and jeans. The colourful tie is from the Japanese fashion house Kenzo. Seeing my interest, Xu confers with one of his assistants, who nods and turns.

“There is a Kenzo shop in London where it’s always 60% off,” the young man says. “Mr Xu can actually let you know where it is — probably you do not know?”

via Boris’s new best friend is living the Chinese dream | The Sunday Times.

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24/11/2013

Union Jack in fashion as China banks on consumer spending | The Sunday Times

PAUL PRIESTMAN may employ only 40 staff at his London design consultancy, but in China he is one of the big boys. In August, he was appointed a director of CSR Sifang, part of China South Locomotive, the state-owned enterprise that is developing the world’s fastest train.

Many Chinese businesses are now seeking global design identities, a field in which Britain excels

Priestman, co-founder of Priestman Goode, is best known for his work on Virgin’s distinctive Pendolino tilting trains a decade ago. He is now helping CSR develop a global brand as it looks beyond the domestic Chinese market.

His appointment as creative director was a bold step. Few foreign nationals make it to the senior ranks of Chinese state-owned firms.

“It was a great accolade for British design,” said Priestman, 52. “We are helping to develop China’s design identity, which will be crucial in helping them to grow in international markets.”

Priestman Goode is in the vanguard of a “second wave” of investment in China. The first wave of European exports was led by Germany and its expertise in manufacturing; the second could be led by Britain’s strength in services.

As China rebalances its economy away from investment towards the consumer, these services are likely to be in high demand.

The reform plan unveiled this month by China’s ruling Communist party, the most radical blueprint for more than 20 years, should reduce inequality and boost incomes, unleashing spending by 1.4bn consumers.

As incomes rise, the Chinese will demand better financial services, healthcare, education and consumer goods — all sectors in which Britain excels.

Lord Sassoon, chairman of the China-Britain Business Council, who accompanied George Osborne on his trip to China last month, believes Britain has a unique opportunity.

“As the Chinese economy rebalances towards the consumer, they are very hungry for British creative ideas, whether in fashion and design or IT and technology,” he said. “On my visit with the chancellor, the excitement around British design was palpable.”

The creative industries will also be a key focus for David Cameron’s trade delegation to China next month. Priestman will be one of more than 20 business people accompanying the prime minister on the trip.

via Union Jack in fashion as China banks on consumer spending | The Sunday Times.

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16/09/2013

China’s wealthy increasingly attracted to Britain’s elite secondary schools

SCMP: “A decade after Bo Guagua, grandson to a revolutionary hero and son of fallen Communist Party leader Bo Xilai, became the first Chinese to attend Britain’s elite Harrow School, agencies promising access to Britain’s top independent schools are expanding rapidly to cope with rising demand from the growing pool of high-net-worth individuals from China.

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The London-based education consultancy Gabbitas opened its first office in Shanghai in 2009. Four years later, it also advises well-off parents in Guangzhou, Wenzhou and Dalian on how to get their children into secondary schools once reserved for British and continental European aristocracy.

Within five years the agency plans to open another 12 branch offices, said Sofie Liao, director of Gabbitas in China. Schools like Eton and Harrow “are getting more and more enquiries from Chinese families,” she said, anticipating annual growth rates of 10 to 15 per cent.

Liao’s biggest challenge is to lower parents’ expectations, she said. Parents “have to be realistic,” she said. They “tend to think, you register with Eton and then you need to pack your luggage and go there next year.”

These schools “have royalty, they don’t care how much money you have in your bank account or how many listed companies you have,” Liao said.

She said parents are signing up their children to join the UK’s exclusive schools at a younger age to increase their chances of being accepted. “The youngest students we have are pre-prep school age, two to three years old. They have to wait another 11 years before they can get in.”

“It’s a very long selling cycle,” said Jazreel Goh, director for education marketing at the British embassy in Beijing, adding that such agencies are unlikely to be challenged by the average Chinese rivals.

“The market is a very niche and specialised service. The bar for being a good boarding school agent is set quite high – you have to have the network of boarding schools and you have to know which might suit the applicant,” she said.

Goh estimated that there are about ten professional boarding school agencies in China. The trend she has seen is more upper-middle-class parents signing up with agencies to send their children to the UK.

Students from China, including Hong Kong, make up by far the largest group of foreign students studying at British independent schools, according to a census in January this year surveying more than a thousand schools by the British Independent School Council. Among the 25,912 foreign secondary school children in Britain, 9,623 or 37.1 per cent came from China.”

via China’s wealthy increasingly attracted to Britain’s elite secondary schools | South China Morning Post.

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30/08/2013

European Nations Woo Chinese Home Buyers With Visas

BusinessWeek: “Southern Europe’s cash-strapped governments are wooing wealthy home buyers from overseas by offering so-called golden visas to purchasers of high-end properties. Portugal, Greece, and Cyprus are offering temporary-residency permits to foreign investors, and Spain is about to kick off its program. The main targets are wealthy Chinese, who have been snapping up properties from Vancouver to London as Beijing tightens controls on real estate speculation on the mainland. Luis Hortelão, a broker with Re/Max in Lisbon, says his Chinese clients “know exactly what they want: a modern property to rent out during their absence and a visa to travel in Europe.”

Limassol, Cyprus

In Portugal buyers must pay a minimum of €500,000 ($670,000) for a property to be eligible for a five-year residency permit. A total of 102 visas has been granted since the program began last year, according to the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service, mostly to Chinese buyers. Edmund Zhao, a real estate developer from Hangzhou in eastern China, expects to receive his permit any day now after paying €700,000 for an apartment in the resort town of Cascais. Zhao must spend at least seven days in Portugal during the first year and 14 days every two years thereafter. His visa will also let him travel freely through the Schengen Area, made up of 26 European countries that have abolished immigration controls at their borders. “I want to move there with my wife and parents as soon as possible,” says Zhao, 38, who wants to send his future children to European schools.

Searches for Portuguese properties on Juwai.com, a Chinese real estate website aimed at international home buyers, rose more than threefold from January through April, says Andrew Taylor, its co-chief executive officer. Home prices in Portugal are less expensive than in some parts of China; €300,000 buys a 2,000-square-foot villa facing the sea, according to Wang Ning, a manager in the international property department at SouFun Holdings (SFUN), owner of China’s biggest real estate website. That amount buys a 730-square-foot apartment in central Shanghai.”

via European Nations Woo Chinese Home Buyers With Visas – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/05/19/the-world-turned-upside-down-how-workers-are-moving-from-piigs-to-brics/

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