China’s health system faces a funding crisis, with the average cost of a single hospital admission almost equivalent to annual per capita income, citing a report published in the medical journal The Lancet. The report found that the average cost of a single hospital admission was more than twice the average per capita annual income [...]
Three children in eastern China have died from hand, foot and mouth disease. This marks the second outbreak of the toddler virus this year. The three victims were all less than one year old and from Jian’ou City. A flare-up of the virus in southern China killed at least 42 people in April and May [...]
China’s industrial growth in September hit a six-year low at 11.4% from a year ago, with economists anticipating further declines. The figure, which was below the 12.8% recorded in August, was caused by a manufacturing ban for factories near Beijing in the runup to the Olympic Games, as well as slackening global demand due to [...]
Beijing will raise substantially the price it pays for various grains for its national reserves in the latest move to narrow the income gap between its urban and rural residents. The policies, announced Monday by the National Development and Reform Commission, will also see the government boost investment in food productivity, with the goal of [...]
Citic Pacific, the Hong Kong-listed arm of conglomerate China International Trust and Investment Corp, is facing about US$2 billion in foreign exchange losses due to unauthorized one-way bets against the US dollar. Citic Pacific engaged in hedging contracts that bet on the rise of the Australian dollar and Euro, in a botched attempt to hedge [...]
China Mobile’s third quarter net profit rose by 26% year-on-year to US$4 billion, but failed to meet analyst expectations as the Olympic games slowed demand from business clients. Revenues rose by 14% to US$15.4 billion. The network operator added 7.25 million users in September, for a third-quarter total of 66.8 million and a total subscriber [...]
China is preparing a raft of measures - likely to include interest rate cuts and an increase in infrastructure spending - in order to spur economic growth. “Concrete fiscal, credit and trade measures will be issued soon,” a spokesman from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Li Xiaochao was quoted as saying. The NBS on [...]