Why “Made in China” Still Suggests Low Quality

Why “Made in China” Still Suggests Low Quality – Economic Observer Online –

By Huang Ming (黄鸣), vice president of the International Solar Energy Society and president of Himin Solar Energy.
Issue 635 , Sept 2, 2013 
Due to a low industrial entry threshold and a lack of compulsory safety standards, China’s rising solar energy industry is now showing signs of chaos and disorder. There are between 5,000 and 6,000 manufacturers in this industry, but the top 20 combined have a market share of less than 30% of the total. Thousands of these enterprises either collapse or change hands every few years, leaving their clients without service — and solar panels rotting on roofs. Read more of this post

The Global Stake in China’s Anti-Corruption Reform

The Global Stake in China’s Anti-Corruption Reform

Michael J. Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.

10 September 2013

STANFORD – The recent trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China: the corruption and abuse of power by some government and party officials. Until his fall, Bo, a former Politburo member and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, was a potential candidate for China’s ruling seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. Read more of this post

Taking China’s SOEs Back to Their Roots; The giant companies were originally owned by the people, and recent graft scandals show the need for a return to that ideal

09.10.2013 17:16

Taking SOEs Back to Their Roots

The giant companies were originally owned by the people, and recent graft scandals show the need for a return to that ideal

By Wang Yong

A recent corruption scandal that brought down Jiang Jiemin, head of the regulator of state-owned assets, is but another reminder of the alarming corruption problem at state-owned enterprises (SOEs). If left alone, the trend will eventually lead to a breakdown. The central government’s current iron-fisted approach is essential to preventing the problem from spreading. However, it is not a solution to the underlying problem. Read more of this post

Property regains top spot as driver of wealth for China’s richest; One in four members on the rich list made their money in China’s real estate industry, overtaking manufacturing as the most common source of wealth

Property regains top spot as driver of wealth for China’s richest

12:36am EDT

By Adam Jourdan

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s property industry reclaimed its spot as the number one source of income in the past year for the mainland’s wealthy, according to the China Rich List published annually by Hurun Report Inc. One in four members on the rich list made their money in China’s real estate industry, overtaking manufacturing as the most common source of wealth. Six out of the top 10 made their money in the construction sector. Read more of this post

Half of China’s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock. And now drug-resistant genes are showing up in Chinese farms

Half of China’s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock

And now drug-resistant genes are showing up in Chinese farms. Sound familiar?

By Tom Philpott | Tue Sep. 10, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Newsflash, from a recent Public Radio International [1] report: China’s teeming factory meat farms have a drug problem. To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals there get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people. A research team led by scientists from China and Michigan State University recently found “diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms,” as the title of the paper [2], published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, put it. According to a recent analysis [3] by a Beijing-based agribusiness consulting firm [4], more than half of total Chinese antibiotic consumption goes to livestock. Read more of this post

Foreign firms turn to FX swaps to fund Chinese operations

Foreign firms turn to FX swaps to fund Chinese operations

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Saikat Chatterjee and Michelle Chen

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Foreign companies are increasingly using cross currency swaps to fund onshore operations in China rather than raising money via the Dim Sum bond market in Hong Kong. Multinational companies said that they could raise more money, more quickly and more cheaply by borrowing in dollars and swapping the money into yuan than if they borrowed directly in yuan through the offshore yuan-denominated bond (Dim Sum) market in Hong Kong. Read more of this post

Early China iPhone launch gives smugglers a run for their money

Early China iPhone launch gives smugglers a run for their money

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Yimou Lee and Lee Chyen Yee

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s millions of Chinese fans will celebrate the near-simultaneous launch of the latest iPhone in China and the United States, but one group will have little to cheer – the smugglers. An early launch of Apple’s latest smartphone in China is expected to stifle a thriving grey market worth billions of dollars a year built around smuggling from Hong Kong, where in the past the U.S. tech giant’s gadgets have gone on sale months before they reach official channels in the mainland. Read more of this post

Crackdown on Bloggers Is Mounted by China

September 10, 2013

Crackdown on Bloggers Is Mounted by China

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — These are bad times to be a Big V in China. Big V, for verified account, is the widely used moniker for the most influential commentators on China’s growing microblog sites — online celebrities whose millions of fans read, discuss and spread their outpouring of news and opinions, plenty of which chastise or ridicule officials. And the Communist Party has turned against them in the most zealous crackdown on the Internet in years. Read more of this post

China-Style Obamacare for 1 Billion People Saves Toddler

China-Style Obamacare for 1 Billion People Saves Toddler

Toddler Wang Xiaobu was struck down in July by a motorcycle outside her home amid the rice terraces of Languan, a village deep in the mountains of the poorest part of Guizhou, China’s poorest province. The 3-year-old was rushed by her parents past chicken coops and duck pens to the village clinic, a home doubling as a bare-bones dispensary. Xiaobu’s bloodied head was bandaged by an attendant who lacked the skills and equipment to stitch her wound or check for internal bleeding. Read more of this post

China’s baijiu, drink of generals, pushed to bargain bin

China’s baijiu, drink of generals, pushed to bargain bin

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Adam Jourdan

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Nearly three-quarters of a century after it was hailed for helping China’s Red Army survive the tortuous Long March, fiery grain liquor baijiu has fallen down the ranks, hit by a crackdown on luxury spending that has clouded its prospects. For decades, famed baijiu makers Kweichow Moutai Co Ltd and Wuliangye Yibin Co Ltd enjoyed fat profit margins that once dwarfed those of Apple Inc, helped by the Communist Party’s penchant for a brew that fuelled many a business deal and smoothed over countless egos. Read more of this post

China’s Richest Man Wang Hunts Hotel Management Companies in U.S.

China’s Richest Man Wang Hunts Hotel Management Companies

By Bloomberg News – Sep 10, 2013

Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and owner of the country’s biggest commercial land developer, said he has hired two investment banks to buy hotel management companies, mostly in the U.S. He is also in talks with overseas movie theater chains following his $2.6 billion purchase of the second-largest U.S. cinema operator AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. last year, Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forumheld in Dalian, where Wang started his business. He didn’t name the investment banks or targets. Read more of this post

Asian central banks brace for Fed’s move, Indonesia seen most at risk

Asian central banks brace for Fed’s move, Indonesia seen most at risk

Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:12am EDT

By Choonsik Yoo

SEOUL (Reuters) – As global markets tremble in anticipation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will decide next week to begin tapering its monetary stimulus, four central banks in the Asia-Pacific with very different comfort levels are likely to hold interest rates steady at policy meetings on Thursday. Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and New Zealand have all been buffeted by stormy markets since May, when the Fed first hinted that it could finally begin calling time on the easy money go-round that has lasted almost five years. Read more of this post

Indonesia-Philippine Growth Gap Widens as Rupiah Spurs Rate Rise

Indonesia-Philippine Growth Gap Widens as Rupiah Spurs Rate Rise

Indonesia faces pressure to add to its most aggressive monetary-tightening cycle since 2008, underscoring a widening divergence in its growth outlook with the Philippines in a reversal of fortunes for the two economies. Bank Indonesia will probably raise its deposit facility rate tomorrow a fourth time this year, according to seven of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, with the rest forecasting no change. Analysts see the key reference rate rising as high as 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2014 after staying at 7 percent this week. The Philippines will hold its benchmark at 3.5 percent the rest of the year, surveys showed. Read more of this post

Go-It-Alone Pensions Grab Attention of Australian Banks

Go-It-Alone Pensions Grab Attention of Australian Banks

Playing a Saturday competition round at the eucalyptus-fringed Whittlesea Golf Club north of Melbourne, Gary Hunt told his three golfing partners that he’d been to a seminar on how to manage his own pension and was thinking of doing it. Turns out, two of his fellow Australians — a retired school teacher and the owner of a tree-cutting business — already did — as do almost a million others. Read more of this post

Asia’s LNG Market Poised for Price Alternatives, IEA Chief Says

Asia’s LNG Market Poised for Price Alternatives, IEA Chief Says

By Chou Hui Hong – Sep 10, 2013

Asia’s liquefied natural gas market is poised to introduce alternatives to oil-indexed pricing as supply expands from new sources, according to the International Energy Agency. “When you have a more flexible gas market, with more gas being brought to Asia, it will certainly help” lead to new gas-pricing methods, Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, said in Tokyo today. Read more of this post

Japan ponders Fukushima options, but Tepco too big to fail

Japan ponders Fukushima options, but Tepco too big to fail

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Linda Sieg

TOKYO (Reuters) – Fukushima nuclear plant operator Tepco Electric’s response to the world’s worst atomic disaster in a quarter century has been called ad hoc and more concerned with cost than safety, but 30 months later, the utility is still in charge. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in the centrepiece of Tokyo’s successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics, said he would be personally responsible for a plan to cope with the legacy of the March 2011 disaster in which a massive earthquake and tsunami caused triple meltdowns, spewing radiation and forcing some 160,000 residents to flee their homes. Read more of this post

Indonesia vows to turn crisis into opportunity

September 11, 2013 7:18 am

Indonesia vows to turn crisis into opportunity

By Ben Bland in Jakarta

Indonesia’s central bank will on Thursday come under pressure to hike interest rates for the second time in two weeks in a bid to prop up the rupiah, which has been caught in the global emerging market sell-off. The currency’s slump against the dollar is not the only problem faced by Indonesia’s policy makers, both in government and the nominally independent central bank. Economic growth is decelerating, inflation is rising and investors are anxious about next year’s presidential election, which will see the first transfer of power in a decade. Read more of this post

Children Left Behind as Indonesia Moves Forward; “Indonesia is the second ranking country in the world where 63 million people don’t have toilets”

Children Left Behind as Indonesia Moves Forward

By Anushka Shahjahan on 9:00 am September 11, 2013.

Successful economic development in recent years has failed to lift the livelihoods of children in Indonesia, participants in a conference in Jakarta agreed on Tuesday, arguing that specific programs are needed to protect children and ensure that they benefit from economic growth. The two-day conference began on Tuesday, with delegates from 15 countries coming together to discuss child poverty and social protection. Representatives from governments and civil society groups also shared lessons learned from successful policy changes that helped to accelerate the reduction of child poverty in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Read more of this post

Tax-Free Corporate Debt Returning 13% Lure Buyers After Rout: India Credit

Tax-Free Debt Returning 13% Lure Buyers After Rout: India Credit

Tax-free corporate bonds returning the equivalent of 13 percent are helping lure investors back as India’s debt market emerges from an unprecedented rout amid confidence in new central bank governor Raghuram Rajan. Rural Electrification (RECL) Corp. sold 10-year (GIND10YR) securities in late August at 8.01 percent, or about 180 basis points below regular notes. For buyers, the return is the same as that from taxable debt that pays 12.1 percent. National Housing Bank’s 15-year issuance offered the equivalent of a 12.8 percent yield. Both companies scrapped plans for conventional bond sales last month as borrowing costs surged amid a cash crunch created by the central bank to shore up the rupee. Read more of this post

India Passenger Vehicle Sales Poised for First Drop Since 2002

India Passenger Vehicle Sales Poised for First Drop Since 2002

India’s automakers’ body forecast the first annual drop in passenger vehicle sales in more than a decade as an economic slowdown damps demand for cars and SUVs.

Local deliveries of cars, including sport-utility vehicles and vans, may decline this year for the first time since the 12 months ended March 2002, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers said at a news conference yesterday. The group had in April forecast a 5 percent to 7 percent increase. Read more of this post

Gold Curbs Help India’s Biggest Provider of Gold-Backed Credit Contain Bad Debt Surge

Gold Curbs Help Muthoot Contain Bad Debt Surge: Corporate India

Gold’s recovery from a two-year low in India is providing relief to finance companies that are struggling with record bad loans spurred by a decline in the value of their collateral.

Delinquent debt at Muthoot Finance Ltd. (MUTH), India’s biggest provider of gold-backed credit by market value, will drop from a record in the three months ending Sept. 30, said Managing Director George Alexander Muthoot. Indian gold futures surged to an all-time high last month after the rupee’s plunge forced the government to raise taxes to curb imports of the metal by the world’s biggest consumer. Read more of this post

After Goldman’s oil burned, banks face day of reckoning on commodities

After Goldman’s oil burned, banks face day of reckoning on commodities

Updated 36 minutes ago

By David Sheppard

NEW YORK – On a sunny summer morning last month, a quiet Sacramento suburb was suddenly shaken by an explosion at the Elk Grove refinery, a small industrial plant that produces asphalt. Local firefighters rushed to battle the blaze, which was generating a “substantial” plume of black smoke and alarming local residents living just a few hundred feet away. A number of them called 911 to report the incident, said Consumnes Fire Department Deputy Chief John Michelini. Read more of this post

Sri Lanka chases the Chinese bandwagon

Sri Lanka chases the Chinese bandwagon

Sep 10, 2013 10:21am by Demetri Sevastopulo

As the world waits for the US Federal Reserve to start “tapering” its $85bn monthly bond purchase programme – the prospect of which has hit many emerging market currencies including the Sri Lankan rupee – Cabraal is heading to China to attract more investment to the south Asian economy. “The Chinese are the people who have the cash now, so building up relationships with them is very important,” Cabraal (pictured) told beyondbrics as he prepared to fly to China after an “Invest in Sri Lanka” forum in Hong Kong. Read more of this post

Rent Hikes Push Myanmar’s Poor Into Homelessness

Rent Hikes Push Myanmar’s Poor Into Homelessness

By Agence France-Presse on 1:29 pm September 10, 2013.
Yangon. Soaring rents in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon have seen hundreds of poor families shunted from their homes, forcing them to turn to charity as their last buffer from life on the streets. Political transformation, which has swept the country since the quasi-civilian government took power in 2011, has seen sanctions lifted from the former pariah state and stoked rising investment interest in the perceived frontier market. Read more of this post

Malaysia Attempts to Spur Private Equity

Sep 10, 2013

Malaysia Attempts to Spur Private Equity

JASON NG

Malaysia is taking baby steps in trying to kick-start its private-equity industry, after years of cheap credit and a buoyant stock market limited its growth. The government, which aims to reduce the domestic economy’s dependence on state-owned companies, is encouraging private-equity financing to help small businesses expand, and the country’s largest state-run pension fund is leading the way by allocating more funds to private-equity investments. Read more of this post

Wall Street bond-trading desks are shrinking as banks hold more capital. The liquidity they provided may be missed

September 10, 2013 7:31 pm

Markets: The debt penalty

By Tracy Alloway in New York

Wall Street bond-trading desks are shrinking as banks hold more capital. The liquidity they provided may be missed

When Lawrence McDonald traded junk bonds at Lehman Brothers, he was one of a dozen traders and more than 20 salespeople on the floor. Five years after the bank’s collapse, the old Lehman desk has been folded into Barclays. But the combined Lehman-Barclays bond department is a far smaller operation than the one Mr McDonald knew. Across Wall Street, bond-trading desks have been shrinking. So has the amount of company money they are allowed to use in their daily business of buying and selling corporate bonds. “I know one trader who used to have $2bn of balance sheet. He now has $20m of balance sheet,” says Mr McDonald, now a strategist at Newedge, the broker. Read more of this post

Volcker Rule to Curb Bank Trading Proves Hard to Write; Regulations Remain Unfinished Three Years After Approval

September 10, 2013, 7:55 p.m. ET

Volcker Rule to Curb Bank Trading Proves Hard to Write

Regulations Remain Unfinished Three Years After Approval

SCOTT PATTERSON and DEBORAH SOLOMON

Hours after being sworn in as Treasury Secretary in February, Jacob Lew pulled regulators into a conference room and delivered a blunt message: Get the Volcker rule done. On Tuesday, half a year later, Mr. Lew found himself leading another meeting with regulators about the still-unfinished rule. The Volcker rule, a centerpiece of the sweeping overhaul of financial regulation known as Dodd-Frank, is an attempt to protect the financial system from risk. It is simple in concept. Banks are prohibited from making investment bets with their own money. Read more of this post

Swedes Face Forced Deleveraging as Debt Loads Swell to Record

Swedes Face Forced Deleveraging as Debt Loads Swell to Record

Sweden is looking into the option of forcing households to start amortizing their mortgages in an effort to prevent debt loads rising from a record. “We want to make clear that the next step, should we judge that we have to take it, rather is amortization than something else,” Martin Andersson, director-general at the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, told reporters yesterday after a parliament hearing in Stockholm. “If household debt accelerates, as we’ve seen before, well, then we must do something.” Read more of this post

Mortgage Lenders, Home Buyers Feel Rate Squeeze

Updated September 9, 2013, 7:31 p.m. ET

Mortgage Lenders, Home Buyers Feel Rate Squeeze

Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Warn of Slowdown

ROBIN SIDEL and SHAYNDI RAICE

A rise in interest rates is slamming homeowners’ demand for mortgages, prompting large and midsize banks to cut jobs and warn investors of declining profitability in the home-loan business. Wells Fargo & Co., the nation’s largest mortgage company by loan value, on Monday told investors at a conference that it expects mortgage originations to drop nearly 30% in the third quarter to roughly $80 billion, down from $112 billion in the second quarter. Read more of this post