More than 2,000 years after China built the Great Wall to keep barbarians at bay, investors are still surprised at Beijing’s unfriendliness toward foreign creditors. From 2003 through 2007, more than US$100 billion poured into China through complicated offshore structures in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong. Much came [...]
China thus far has remained an oasis of relative economic stability in an uncertain global economy. A weaker domestic economy aside, a host of data suggests China may have turned the corner. If this rebound is sustained, Beijing can claim to have delivered on its policy objectives far quicker than any of its global counterparts. [...]
English by Wang Gang, Viking US$24.95 Brothers by Yu Hua, Pantheon Books US$29.95 Adolescence is often viewed as a time of great chaos in a young person’s life. Combine that with the external strife of the Cultural Revolution and you have a breeding ground for strong narrative. It is from this fertile terrain that two [...]
How can private health care in China capture more of the middle class?
China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile operator by subscribers after China Mobile said Wednesday its first-quarter net profit totaled US$523.13 million. Revenue in the three months ended March 31 was US$5.56 billion, the company said in a statement on its first quarterly earnings figures since it transformed into a nationwide telecommunications operator with fixed-line, broadband [...]
China has dropped its long-standing opposition to Taiwan participating in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual assembly, paving the way for the island to attend a United Nations meeting next month for the first time since 1971. The WHO has invited Taipei to participate in the World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva as an observer [...]
China rejected foreign media reports pointing to the country as the source of the deadly swine flu outbreak, dismissing them as attempts to tarnish the nation’s image. “The reports that are saying that the swine flu epidemic in Mexico originally came from China are groundless,” the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement, stressing that [...]
China Cosco Holdings, the world’s largest operator of dry-bulk vessels, posted a quarterly loss and said accumulated first-half profit may more than halve from last year as a slowing economy pummels commodity-shipping demand. The US$491 million net loss compared with a profit of US$899.7 million a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 63% to [...]
China Investment Corp (CIC), the country’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, appointed a new private equity head as part of its latest internal restructuring to boost investment performance. CIC made an internal announcement to its staff late on Tuesday that Hu Bing, who was mainly responsible for CIC’s fixed income investment and trading desk, had [...]
China Mobile has agreed to invest US$525.16 million in one of Taiwan’s leading telecoms service providers, the first direct investment on the island by a mainland state-owned company in six decades. The planned purchase of a 12% stake in Far EasTone and a seat on the board, comes as new laws allowing mainland companies to [...]
