Posts tagged ‘United States’

09/06/2014

Highlights – President Pranab Mukherjee’s address to parliament – Reuters

The new government will pursue an economic reform agenda that foresees introducing the goods and services tax, encouraging foreign investment and speeding approvals for major business projects, President Pranab Mukherjee said in a parliamentary address on Monday.

Mukherjee also said the focus of the Modi government would be to:

– contain food inflation

– improve supply side of agro-based products

– prepare contingency plans for sub-normal monsoons

– increase public and private investments in agriculture

– address issues in farm pricing and procurement

– set up IITs and IIMs in every state

– have zero tolerance against violence against women and will strengthen criminal justice system

– tackle illegal immigration and infiltration in the north east region

– roll out broadband highways in every village in next five years

– vigorously follow up issue of black money with foreign governments

– focus on social media as a tool for participative governance

– provide predictable, fair and stable policy environment

– make every effort to introduce goods and services tax

– encourage investment through foreign direct investment

– promote labour-intensive manufacturing, tourism for job creation

– move towards a single-window system of clearances to promote manufacturing

– fast-track investment friendly public, private partnership

– liberalise foreign direct investments in defence

– encourage private investments in defence production

– implement reforms in defence procurement

– take up modernisation and revamp of railways on priority

– chalk out infrastructure development programmes for high-speed rails, roads and airports

– launch comprehensive national energy policy and focus on increasing electricity generation

– urgently pursue reforms in coal to attract private investments

– operationalise international civilian nuclear pacts

– ensure every family has good house by 2022

– ensure 24×7 electricity supply by 2022

– follow zero tolerance towards extremism, terrorism and communal violence

– formulate clear rules for allocation of coal, minerals and telecoms spectrum

– work towards putting economy on high growth path

– engage energetically with neighbours, including China

– bring renewed vigour in its engagement with the United States

via India Insight.

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06/06/2014

Creativity advances as patent filings rise – China – Chinadaily.com.cn

An increase in overseas patent applications from Chinese applicants is a positive sign for China’s innovation and economy, World Intellectual Property Organization Chief Economist Carsten Fink said.

WIPO emblem.

WIPO emblem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the WIPO, China’s patent office became the world’s largest intellectual property office in 2012 in terms of the number of its patent applications, but Chinese patent applicants did not file their patents as frequently abroad in other countries as did those from the United States, Europe and Japan.

Fink said that a changing picture was observed as patent filings abroad by Chinese companies and research institutions have been growing rapidly.

The WIPO found in its new study that the growth of Chinese patent filings abroad increased significantly after 2000, with a five-year average annual growth rate of 40 percent between 2000 and 2005, and 23 percent since 2005.

“That is important because on the one hand, it signals that Chinese companies really operate on the world technology frontier, and (on the other hand) it also suggests that indeed they are pushing the world’s technology frontier. That is a good sign for China’s innovation system,” Fink said.

Fink stressed that overseas patent filings weighed heavily for China’s economy and could be a positive boost.

“That will help Chinese companies to transfer their business models from the past one that relied on low wages to another one that will rely more and more on new technologies, new products and new ideas,” he said.

via Creativity advances as patent filings rise – China – Chinadaily.com.cn.

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24/05/2014

India hits U.S., China with solar imports anti-dumping duties | Reuters

India will impose anti-dumping duties on solar panels imported from the United States, China, Taiwan and Malaysia to protect domestic solar manufacturers, according to a government statement seen by Reuters on Friday.

A man cleans panels installed at a solar plant at Meerwada village of Guna district in Madhya Pradesh June 18, 2012. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Files

The order, almost certain to anger India’s trading partners, sets duties of between 11 and 81 U.S. cents per watt and comes after a investigation which started in 2011. The ruling by a quasi-judicial body has to be published by the Finance Ministry before it takes effect.

The decision adds to India’s growing trade disputes just before Narendra Modi takes office as prime minister on Monday.

“Imposition of anti-dumping measures would remove the unfair advantages gained by dumping practices,” said India’s Anti-Dumping Authority in its order released on Thursday.

Local manufacturers have long complained that U.S., Chinese and Malaysian companies enjoy state subsidies and are selling their products at artificially low prices to capture the Indian market.

India also believes that anti-dumping duties imposed on Chinese solar producers by the European Union and the United States have further driven down the price of Chinese solar products, to the detriment of Indian suppliers.

India aims to raise its solar power capacity to 20,000 MW by 2022 from 1,700 MW currently. It imported solar products worth nearly 60 billion rupees ($1.03 billion) last year, according to an industry estimate. Domestic manufacturers got less than 2 percent of that business.

“India’s solar manufacturing is now bound to revive and further increase with both local and overseas participation ensuring a robust supply chain,” said H.R. Gupta of the Indian Solar Manufacturers’ Association.

Under the new duties, importers will have to bear additional costs of between 5 percent and 110 percent while importing solar cells and panels from the United States, Malaysia and China.

via India hits U.S., China with solar imports anti-dumping duties | Reuters.

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23/05/2014

Wal-Mart to open 110 stores in China as part of $100 million expansion bringing 19,000 jobs to world’s second-largest economy | Mail Online

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has announced plans to accelerate its expansion into China by adding as many as 110 stores over the next three years, resulting in an almost $100 million investment.

Re-adjustment: Wal-Mart Stores Inc is changing its approach, closing some big-box stores that never quite caught on with locals

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based firm wants to open the new stores in the world’s second-largest economy at the same time as closing 30 under-performing outlets over the next 18 months.

China is key to Wal-Mart’s international ambitions but it has stumbled in a market where consumers value safe and authentic food over the low prices for which the retailer is known.

The U.S. retailer, which operates about 400 units in China, said last October that it would open up to 110 facilities in the country between 2014 and 2016 and was looking to close 15-30 others over the next 18 months as part of a rationalization process in the country.

Its local rival, Sun Art Retail Group Ltd, said in March it would continue to maintain steady new store expansion after China’s top hypermarket operator posted a 15.2 percent rise in 2013 net profit with an expanding store network helping it shrug off an economic slowdown.

‘China presents one of the biggest opportunities for us around the world to grow our stores and clubs, so its really important,’ Doug McMillon, president of Wal-Mart’s international business, said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Wal-Mart already has 400 outlets across China and Wal-Mart is looking to develop a larger presence in the country’s largest center’s while building bigger stores in third- and fourth-tier cities.

via Wal-Mart to open 110 stores in China as part of $100 million expansion bringing 19,000 jobs to world’s second-largest economy | Mail Online.

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21/05/2014

Does China Pose a Threat to Global Food Security? It Says No – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Twenty years ago, environmental advocate Lester Brown got in hot water with Beijing for writing a book called “Who Will Feed China?”

China was displeased with the suggestion in his book that the country’s growing population and water scarcity could drastically burden the world’s food resources. Beijing publicly criticized the author – then began a series of reforms including improving farming techniques and adopting a national policy of self-sufficiency in grain consumption that vindicated Mr. Brown’s arguments. It paved the way for a gradual rapprochement with the American, now 80.

Détente is over.

On Wednesday, China’s agriculture ministry issued a statement again criticizing Mr. Brown. It took umbrage with an essay he wrote titled “Can the World Feed China?” a riff on his earlier book. The essay details Mr. Brown’s concerns that rising domestic pressures on food consumption could result in spiking food prices and political unrest as China joins in a global “scramble for food.”

It isn’t clear why Mr. Brown was singled out for criticism; many analysts have in one form or other also articulated these trends, though arguably not as directly or pungently. But the move underscores how increasingly sensitive China is to the growing impression that it can’t feed itself and that its acquisitions of global food assets are posing a risk to food security for the rest of the world. China has been keen in recent years to head off any impression that it’s on a global grab for natural resources.

Mr. Brown wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The government is unhappy with the notion it’s being blamed for sharpening global competition for food. Mr. Brown’s essay said China’s rising grain imports  mean “it is competing directly with scores of other grain-importing countries.” He also warned that China’s purchase last year of U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods “was really a pork security move.” So too, he said, was China’s deal with Ukraine to provide $3 billion in loans in exchange for corn. “Such moves by China exemplify the new geopolitics of food scarcity that affects us all,” he wrote.

Not likely, ministry spokesman Bi Meijia said in the government’s statement. Mr. Bi said 97% of China’s grain consumption comes from its own output, not imports.

“On the issue of food security, China not only does not pose a threat to the world, but makes a contribution to global food security,” he said. China intends to continue its existing policies, he said.

Mr. Bi said rising grain imports aren’t due to domestic shortages, but because global prices are lower than domestic prices. The ministry also pointed out that imports accounted for just 2.6% of domestic grain production volume in 2013, and just 4% of global output.

via Does China Pose a Threat to Global Food Security? It Says No – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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14/05/2014

How Small U.S. Businesses Can Court Customers in China – Businessweek

Question: What are Chinese consumers looking for in an online shopping experience? What would you describe as the main reason websites aimed at Chinese consumers fail?

How Small U.S. Businesses Can Court Customers in China

Answer: News about Chinese tech companies making their way to Wall Street has been raising awareness about the vast potential Chinese market for U.S. small businesses. China is definitely interested in American-made goods. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your website is appealing to these new customers.

First, as I discussed recently, you need a website in Chinese. Make sure the site is created by a native Mandarin speaker who can convey the culture of your brand without a clunky verbatim translation that will fall flat, says James Chan, president of Asia Marketing & Management.

The main obstacle to selling online in China is the pervasive fear of being cheated or of buying a pirated product. “You need to find the best way of making a Chinese customer in front of a computer comfortable with the fact that you really have a brick-and-mortar company on American soil,” Chan says.

Pictures are a must: an exterior shot of your office or shop, a map showing your location, and pictures of you and your staff. A video of you talking about your business and its history (include Chinese subtitles) and giving a tour of your premises will go a long way. “Some companies ship orders with a certificate that says, ‘This product is made in America,’” Chan says. “Others will wrap the product in their city’s American newspaper for that day. Anything that authenticates you will help.”

Your site should also feature lots of good pictures of your products. “Use different angles, show different colors, and give detailed written descriptions as well,” advises Stanley Chao, managing director of All In Consulting, and author of Selling to China: A Guide to Doing Business in China for Small- and Medium-Sized Companies (2012). “Seeing is believing for the Chinese.”

Anything you can think of that would allow a wary Chinese customer to feel comfortable with your company will help: Your mailing address, your e-mail address, your telephone number. It will cost some money, but if you can, hire a customer service representative who speaks Chinese and can answer telephone queries or at least provide online chat support. “Also, always include 100 percent-guaranteed refunds, or even an added incentive where they get a small credit for the inconvenience of returning something they did not like,” Chao advises.

The piracy problem has prompted Chinese shopping sites such as Taobao.com to institute multilayered customer rating systems for every product, Chan says. You most likely cannot replicate that, but you can include comments on your site—in Mandarin and English—from your Chinese customers. “If others successfully bought your products, then [Chinese customers will think] maybe you are trustworthy.”

Being a small business will put you at a disadvantage in the minds of most Chinese consumers, Chan says, so if your company has any connection to a celebrity or an iconic American brand—such as a major corporation that buys your products, sells them in its retail outlets, or uses your services—trumpet that connection on your site, with pictures, if possible. “Maybe you make a food product that has been served at the White House, or your shoes were worn by an American celebrity,” he suggests. That will appeal to some shoppers in China. “Just make sure you’re being truthful,” Chan says.

Company websites fail in China for the same reasons they fail in the U.S.: They’re done on the cheap, so they are marred by misspellings, ugly design, bad photos, and technical glitches. “I’ve noticed that successful sites are updated frequently, so users want to come back to check for new information, special deals, or more products. This also shows that the site is active, it’s busy, and there are real people behind it,” Chao says.

The bottom line: Take care of your Chinese customers, and they will recommend your company to their friends, show off your products proudly, and visit your store when they’re vacationing in the U.S. When they do, get pictures and put them on your website, Chan says: “If you can build a history in China, where there are millions of people buying and selling online, you’ll win big business there.”

via How Small U.S. Businesses Can Court Customers in China – Businessweek.

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06/05/2014

China’s Military Recruits Monkeys to Protect Air Force Base – China Real Time Report – WSJ

The Chinese air force has a new secret weapon to protect one of its bases: macaques.

These fuzzy new recruits have been called upon after numerous methods to rid a base of an abundance of migrating birds—from sending  soldiers scampering high up into trees to training eagles and setting up sound and light effects—fell flat. Birds are a headache world-wide in the aviation industry because they can get stuck in the engines of aircraft.

Soldiers have trained the monkeys, according to the official People’s Liberation Army-run news portal, to scamper up trees and rip down the birds’ nests, with one monkey able to destroy six to eight birds’ nests per day. Two macaques have cleared about 180 nests in the month since the PLA adopted them, according to the report.

The macaques’ odor is also said to repel the birds from rebuilding their nests at the same spots, according to a local expert whom the report quotes.

via China’s Military Recruits Monkeys to Protect Air Force Base – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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02/05/2014

Freedom of information: Right to know | The Economist

IN THE summer of 2013 Wu Youshui sent an open government information (OGI) request to every provincial-level government in China. Mr Wu, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Hangzhou, wanted to know about the fines imposed on violators of the one-child policy. Each year provincial governments collect billions of yuan from couples who have too many children, but how this money is spent is not public knowledge. That leaves the system vulnerable to corruption, says Mr Wu. To expose misconduct and spur public debate, he used the legal mechanism of the OGI regulations, China’s version of a freedom of information act.

When the regulations took effect in 2008 it marked, on paper at least, the beginning of a profound change in how the Chinese government handles some kinds of information. A culture of secrecy had for decades been the mainstay of the authoritarian state. But in the modern era absolute opacity can cause discontent that threatens stability. The government’s failure to disclose information about the spread of SARS, a respiratory disease, in 2003 hurt its standing at home and abroad. A government operating in “sunshine”, as state media have put it, could regain citizens’ trust and, the party hoped, help ease tensions.

The OGI regulations set up two ways of accessing government information. Government offices at local and central level had to issue findings of interest, such as plans for land requisitions or house demolition. The information was to be published on official websites and community bulletin boards and in government journals. Departments also became answerable to citizens. A response to a public request had to come within 15 days. This created a new way for people to contact and monitor the government, says Jamie Horsley of the China Law Centre at Yale Law School. At the last nationwide count, in 2011, roughly 3,000 requests had been filed to central-government departments and 1.3m others to offices at the provincial level. Over 70% led to the full or partial release of information, on everything from pollution to food safety to the tax on air fares. “It is as if there has been a pent-up demand and now people are pushing for the information,” Ms Horsley says.

In an important case in 2012 the All-China Environment Federation, a non-profit organisation with links to the government, took an environment-protection bureau in Guizhou province to court. The bureau had twice failed to give a good answer to an OGI request about a dairy farm that was discharging waste. The court ordered the release of the information within ten days. Such rulings against government departments, once rare, are becoming more common. In 2010 the chance of a citizen winning an OGI-related lawsuit in Beijing was 5%, according to research from Peking and Yale Universities. In 2012 courts ruled with the plaintiff in 18% of cases.

On April 1st the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued new guidelines, requiring that officials pay more attention to disclosing information. The guidelines come as the government is curtailing freedom of expression online and in the press.

Inevitably, plenty of information remains off limits. Article Eight of the regulations says disclosure must not endanger state, public or economic security or social stability, an open-ended list that prompts utmost caution from compliers. State and commercial secrets—however vaguely defined—are out-of-bounds. Last June Xie Yanyi, a Beijing lawyer, applied to the public security ministry for information about the surveillance of citizens. He received a note saying such details were not covered by the law. China’s regulations are more restrictive than those elsewhere. In America a request in the public interest suffices. In China, people must prove a personal need.

Government departments, at all levels, still do not release everything they should. But Mr Wu, the lawyer, found they are less able to opt out without a good reason. Guangdong province’s Health and Family Planning Commission initially rebuffed his OGI request, saying “internal management issues” prevented compliance. Mr Wu tried again. On April 1st Guangzhou Intermediate Court ruled in his favour. The commission was ordered to reprocess his request. He awaits word of its decision.

via Freedom of information: Right to know | The Economist.

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02/05/2014

Agriculture: Bring back the landlords | The Economist

CHINA’S Communist Party has always had a problem with big landowners. In Communist culture, they are synonymous with evil. In January on the country’s most-watched television show—a gala at lunar new year—viewers were treated to a scene from a Mao-era ballet featuring young peasants fired with zeal for revenge against a despotic rural landlord. Some critics rolled their eyes about such a throwback to the party’s radical past, but few complained about the stereotyping of landowners. Yet when it comes to letting individual families control large tracts of farmland, Communist Party leaders are beginning to have a change of heart.

Since January last year the term “family farm” has come into vogue in the party’s vocabulary. It refers not to the myriad tiny plots, each farmed by a single family, that are characteristic of the Chinese countryside; but to much larger-scale operations of a kind more familiar elsewhere, such as Europe or America. The trigger for this was the term’s use in a Communist Party directive known as “document number one”, the name traditionally given to the party’s new-year policy pronouncement on rural issues. It said the consolidation of household plots into family farms should be given “encouragement and support”.

On his first trip outside the capital after being appointed prime minister in March last year, Li Keqiang visited a 450-hectare (1,110-acre) family farm in the coastal province of Jiangsu. He said that boosting production was impossible on the tiny plots that most rural households farm (the average is less than half a hectare). “It can only be done through concentrating the land into larger farms”, Mr Li said. With more government support, “the earth could yield gold”, he told residents; a notion that would surprise the 260m people who have left the countryside to work in cities over the last three decades. Many villages are now home mainly to the elderly and left-behind children. During a visit to Switzerland two months later Mr Li again stopped by at a family farm (of a more modest 40 hectares). Chinese media said he wanted to pick up tips from Europe’s “advanced experiences” in running them. Chen Xiwen, a senior party policymaker on rural affairs, was even quoted as saying last year that he would like China to have vast “family farms like America’s”, but that he was worried about the impact on rural employment if farmland were to be managed by so few hands.

As is often the case whenever party policy appears to shift in the countryside, reality on the ground had long been changing before official rhetoric began to catch up. (Peasants started dismantling Mao’s disastrous “people’s communes” before the party began formally doing so in 1982.) The exodus from the countryside has allowed entrepreneurial farmers to build up their holdings by renting land from neighbours who no longer need it. They have not been able to buy it since all rural land is owned “collectively” by villagers. But they have been allowed to take over the right to farm it, and keep any profits. The party does not harp on about evil landlords of yore, since the new big-farmers are, legally speaking, merely tenants. In March last year the agriculture ministry took its first survey of family farms, though it has yet even to define the term precisely. It found there were already 877,000 of them, with an average size of around 13 hectares. They covered 13% of China’s arable land. Since 2008 the area of farmland rented out to other farmers has more than tripled.

via Agriculture: Bring back the landlords | The Economist.

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02/05/2014

Maybe China’s Currency Isn’t Undervalued After All – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Note to rest of the world: Stop bugging China on undervaluation of its currency.

The World Bank’s re-estimation of global pricing is leading to a second day of questioning of economic verities. Yesterday, a number of publications used the new numbers to pronounce that the U.S. would next year lose its century-long ranking as the world’s number one economy. (China Real Time came to a more nuanced—and skeptical—conclusion.)

Today, two economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, perhaps the world’s top econ think tank, used the numbers to conclude that the Chinese yuan was no longer undervalued, as it has been for decades.

“This estimate is of potential historic significance,” conclude Martin Kessler and Arvind Subramanian. “The end of Chinese mercantilism—and relief for the rest of the world—may be in sight,” they write in a Peterson blog post.

To review, the World Bank re-estimated the size of different economies using a calculation known as purchasing power parity (PPP), which tries to estimate relative wealth by looking at differing prices in different countries for the same goods or services. Such comparisons usually show that developing countries aren’t as poor as they seem.  For instance: A haircut in Beijing costs far less than a haircut in Boston, which means the wealth of a Chinese person with a full head of hair –- let’s call him Mr. Wang—is greater than usually understood.

Cheaper in China: haircuts. Not cheaper: iPhones, BMWs and other imports. Reuters

But Mr. Wang doesn’t buy things in PPP; he buys them using actual currency. When he leaves the hair salon and buys an import, say a U.S. iPhone or a German car, his yuan are converted into dollars or euros at the current exchange rate. Given that Chinese earn far less money than Americans or Germans on average, exchange rate comparisons accentuate the gap between developing and developed nations. Most comparisons of international power are done using the prevailing exchange rate, not PPP.

Now, back to the value of the yuan.

Messrs. Kessler and Subramanian use the new PPP calculations to estimate that between 2011 and March 2014 China’s per-capita GDP grew about 13 percentage points faster than the U.S., which they say should translate into a currency appreciation of around 3.2%. Since the actual appreciation was 7%, that suggests the yuan appreciated too rapidly during that period and made up for some of the time when the yuan didn’t strengthen rapidly enough.  “The renminbi in 2014 is thus fairly valued,” they conclude.

Any estimate of a currency’s valuation is a black art. Different economists use different methods and come up with different conclusions, especially if there isn’t an obvious undervaluation or overvaluation.

It’s hardly surprising that many countries accuse the others of deliberately undervaluing their currencies, and use estimates of currency valuation to make their point. Nearly every government has the same strategy for growth — export more — and a cheap currency helps exporters.

via Maybe China’s Currency Isn’t Undervalued After All – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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