1st January 09

HAPPY 'WESTERN' NEW YEAR!! 

The Australian

Chinese steel trio to forge ahead with supermerger

CONSOLIDATION in China's steel industry has taken a huge step forward with the announcement of a merger between three major producers to create one of the country's biggest listed steelmakers by output. The merger of the three firms, which share the same parent company, fits in with the Government's push to make its steelmakers bigger and stronger to improve the sector's efficiency, as well as to reduce pollution and energy consumption at a time of slowing economic growth amid the global financial crisis.

The Age

Beijing-Taipei ties on the mend

Chinese President Hu Jintao called yesterday for military exchanges with Taiwan, in another sign of rapidly improving ties between the former arch enemies. "The two sides can pick the right time to engage in exchanges on military issues and explore setting up a military and security mechanism to build mutual trust," Mr Hu said.

The International Herald Tribune

Former head of Chinese dairy pleads guilty in scandal

The former chairwoman of one of China's biggest dairy producers pleaded guilty on Wednesday to selling tainted powdered baby formula and acknowledged for the first time that the company knew of the problem months before alerting local officials to what has become one of the country's biggest food-safety crises, according to the state-run news media.

Two of China's quake victims rebuild their lives

LUOCHEN VILLAGE, China: Li Wanzhi has learned to do certain things with just one arm. Dressing herself, for example. That was easy. Washing clothes was something else entirely. For that, she needed the help of her mother-in-law. Her husband, Wang Zhijun, was in good shape, by comparison. He had all his limbs, even though he and his wife had been trapped together in the rubble of their apartment building for 28 hours … "Sometimes when we think of that night, we say, 'Let the past be the past,"' Li said with a faint smile. "We feel we've already started a new life."

Kaixin – Perhaps that is the message for this ‘western’ new year – ‘Let the past be the paste, we have already started a new life’.

Chinese court jails 11 in Microsoft piracy ring

A court in southern China convicted 11 people on Wednesday of violating national copyright laws and participating in a sophisticated counterfeiting ring that for years manufactured and distributed pirated Microsoft software throughout the world. The case is considered by some legal experts to be a landmark because it involved a joint anti-piracy effort by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and China's Ministry of Public Security.