Beijing Smog Closes Highways as Travelers Return After Holiday

Beijing Smog Closes Highways as Travelers Return After Holiday

Air pollution in Beijing, China’s capital city, reached a heavy level today with smog causing flight disruptions and the closure of expressways in the nation’s northern region at the end of a week-long holiday. Air quality index readings for most of Beijing’s urban areas were above 200 as of 8 a.m. today, indicating a level of heavy pollution, according to data on the website of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. Police closed six expressways linking the capital city to Shanghai, Tianjin and Harbin yesterday, and 47 flights at Beijing Capital International Airport were affected. Millions of Chinese travelers will be seeking to return home today, the last day of a week-long holiday that started Oct. 1. Some parts of the expressways linking Beijing to Shanghai and Tianjin were still closed as of 9:40 a.m. because of haze, according to Beijing Capital Highway Development Group Co., which operates the highways. Read more of this post

Berkshire Hathaway’s unit TTI buys third Israeli company: Ray-Q; Deal for aerospace connectivity maker closed seven years after purchase of Iscar

Berkshire Hathaway buys third Israeli company: Ray-Q

Deal for aerospace connectivity maker closed seven years after purchase of Iscar.

By Yisrael Fischer and Ora Coren | Oct. 6, 2013 | 5:00 PM |  2

U.S.-based electronic components distributor TTI is acquiring the Israeli electronics company Ray-Q Interconnect, it announced over the weekend. The financial specifics of the purchase were not disclosed. TTI is wholly-owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The acquisition still requires approval from Israeli regulatory authorities. This would be Berkshire Hathaway’s third acquisition in Israel, following the 2006 deal to buy blades-maker Iscar for $6 billion all told. (The second tranche of that deal was completed in May of this year.) The Iscar purchase had been Buffett’s first acquisition outside North America. Also in 2006, Berkshire Hathaway unit CTB International acquired a controlling interest in AgroLogic, which develops technology for agriculture. Read more of this post

Taking stock of the private banks rush in China

Taking stock of the private banks rush

Xinhua

2013-10-07

Chinese private firms have rushed to apply to set up private banks under government regulations designed to open up the much-hyped market. But the nascent sector still has a long way to go before better serving the real economy and facilitating financial reform. Over 20 listed private companies on China’s A share market have so far tried or showed interest in establishing private banks, causing related shares to surge for a string of days. Read more of this post

Macy’s Rethinks Web Plans in China; Retailer Puts Online-Expansion Effort on Hold Amid Economic Slowdown

October 6, 2013, 2:12 p.m. ET

Macy’s Rethinks Web Plans in China

Retailer Puts Online-Expansion Effort on Hold Amid Economic Slowdown

KATHY CHU

Macy’s Inc. has shelved an online-expansion plan in China, the latest retailer to do so as economic growth slows in the world’s second-largest economy. The company had planned to begin online sales of a private-label brand in China in the spring, after buying a minority stake last year in Chinese retail company VIPStore Co. Macy’s, one of the largest U.S.-based department-store operators, has put those plans on hold because it needs to learn more about Chinese shoppers, not because it is concerned about China’s slowing economy or appetite for luxury goods, said Macy’s spokesman Jim Sluzewski. Read more of this post

Company cashes in on business of sounds; China’s first sound property rights exchange, www.vocc.cn, went online officially in Hefei, Anhui, on July 1

Company cashes in on business of sounds

Updated: 2013-10-06 07:07

By Shi Jing in Shanghai ( China Daily) Read more of this post

China’s ‘Golden Week’ losing its luster; Critics say the holiday causes traffic chaos, large crowds and high levels of stress

‘Golden Week’ losing its luster

Updated: 2013-10-06 08:58

By He Na and Tang Yue ( China Daily) Read more of this post

Animation more than a fantasy; It took Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio to make the blockbuster Kung Fu Panda – and both the martial art and animal are Chinese icons

Animation more than a fantasy

Updated: 2013-10-05 09:30

By Eric Jou ( China Daily) Read more of this post

A Bureaucrat’s Tricky Task: Reignite Chinese Growth

October 6, 2013, 11:01 p.m. ET

A Bureaucrat’s Tricky Task: Reignite Chinese Growth

Liu He Is Piecing Together an Overhaul to Guide the Country for the Decade to Come—Just As Weakness Rears Up

BOB DAVIS and LINGLING WEI

BEIJING—When then-U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon flew to Beijing in May to set up a China-U.S. summit, he didn’t schedule a meeting with one of the most important men shaping China’s future. Chinese leader Xi Jinping quickly made clear that was an oversight. “This is Liu He,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Donilon, pointing to a tall, scholarly looking aide by his side. “He is very important to me,” Mr. Xi said, according to officials familiar with the interchange. Liu He is leading the development of the latest blueprint for China’s economy, to be unveiled next month at a closed-door session of the top 450 Communist Party officials. Read more of this post

Why ‘Mittelstand’ matters to Korea

2013-10-06 11:08

Why ‘Mittelstand’ matters to Korea

Merck discusses success of German small and medium enterprises
By Kim Da-ye
Merck, a leading liquid crystal supplier, is surely not a “Mittelstand” company, a German term for a small and medium enterprise (SME). Founded in 1668, the firm employs some 38,000 people in 66 countries, and posted 10.74 billion euros in sales in 2012. But when it comes to the spirit of the company, Merck wishes to stay with its Mittelstand roots.
“We still behave like a medium-sized company. We want to act like an entrepreneur and act like Mittelstand. That would be ideal,” says Roman Maisch, vice president of the performance materials division at Merck, in an interview with The Korea Times’ Business Focus. The German “Mittelstand” refers to more than 3.6 million small- and medium-sized firms, which together produce more than half of the country’s gross domestic product and employ roughly 15.5 million as of 2012, according to the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Read more of this post

Nearly half of districts in Korea’s FEZs face possible default

Nearly half of districts in FEZs face possible default

2013/10/07 14:27

SEOUL, Oct. 7 (Yonhap) — Nearly half of all individual districts in the country’s eight free economic zones (FEZs) may be undesignated even before they ever take off, partly due to their failure to attract investors, a lawmaker said Monday, citing related data. According to Rep. Oh Young-sik of the main opposition Democratic Party, 46, or 46.9 percent, of 98 districts in eight FEZs still lack any development plan. Read more of this post

Local cities dream to renaissance; the nation’s top leading IT and game companies have relocated their headquarters to Jeju Island

2013-10-02 17:14

Local cities dream to renaissance

By Kim Ji-soo
In terms of size, the city of Tongyeong in South Gyeongsang Province is a medium-sized one with a population estimated at about 140,000. The city is absent the high-rises one might see in Seoul or Busan, with the large modern E-mart building being one of the most conspicuous edifices. The food the seaside city boasts of ― honey-dipped fried red-bean round donuts, dried sweet potato porridges, the numerous fish dishes ― are truly local. But so many names, legendarily etched in Korean cultural history, hail from the area, giving it an aura to contend with. There is the late novelist Park Kyung-ni, the musician Yoon I-sang, and artists Lee Joong-sup and Jeon Hyuk-lim, to name just a few. Read more of this post

Hallyu in the Sixties

2013-10-06 17:38

Hallyu in the Sixties

Michael Duffy
Long before the current international craze for K-pop, and before Gangnam Style’s 1.7 billion hits on YouTube, there was another Korean act that achieved considerable success in the United States if on a slightly more modest level than Psy. This was the Kim Sisters —Sook-ja (the eldest), Mi-ja, and Ae-ja. The sisters came from a distinguished musical family; their father, Kim Hae-song, had been a popular singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist from the 1920s, and their mother, Lee Nan-young, recorded one of the most popular songs of Korea’s Japanese colonial period, “Mokpoeui Nunmul” (Tears of Mokpo). Following its release in 1935, the record sold over 50,000 copies, a huge number for the time. Read more of this post

40 Korean companies caught for stashing away $945.5mn in tax havens

40 companies caught for stashing away $945.5mn in tax havens

2013.10.07 15:10:42

The Korea Customs Service (KCS) said Monday its extraordinary investigation into illicit capital outflows into tax havens, which started in June, found that 40 companies were engaged in illegal foreign currency transactions, siphoning off national wealth of 1.0 trillion won ($945.5 million) overseas. 13 of the 40 companies were reported to have been responsible for illegal foreign currency transactions totaling 738.9 billion won, according to online press media Korea Center for Investigative Journalism (KCIJ).  Of 182 Koreans listed as culprits by the KCIJ, the customs agency verified backgrounds of 160 people and first looked into 26 companies suspected of having been engaged in illicit export and import deals. Meanwhile, the KCS confirmed five of the 40 companies evaded corporate tax payment worth 15 billion won and informed the National Tax Service the inquiry’s outcome. The customs agency will be notifying the national tax agency a full result once the allegations against the remaining 35 companies are verified.  Baek Un-chan, commissioner of the KCS, said “this extraordinary probe was conducted in cooperation with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, National Tax Service and Financial Supervisory Service, and is expected to significantly contribute to bringing underground economy to a legitimate market and ensuring fair taxation.” The investigation found that five companies manipulated export and import prices and stashed away 630.1 billion won in tax havens.