3rd February 09

The Australian

Rio eyes $32bn Chinalco deal as one-step debt solution

RIO Tinto and Chinalco are setting up a mammoth $US20 billion ($31.7 billion) deal that would give China stakes in Australia's largest iron ore operations and key aluminium projects, while solving Rio's debt problems in one fell swoop.

Global crisis not yet at bottom: China

CHINESE Premier Wen Jiabao said the global financial crisis hasn't yet bottomed and warned that governments shouldn't take actions that harm other countries. "The crisis has not yet hit the bottom, and it is hard to predict what other problems there will be down the path," he said in a speech at Cambridge University.

The Age

Beijing warns military to deter instability
John Garnaut, Beijing

PRESIDENT Hu Jintao and his generals have ordered the military to obey the Communist Party "at any time, under any circumstances", as China enters its most politically fraught year in 20 years.
Chinese officials yesterday warned of more social instability as they raised their estimate of newly unemployed migrant workers to 20 million, triple the number a month ago.

Chinalco deal could open more investment doors

Malcolm Maiden

Pressure on the Government over Chinese bids for Australian resources companies last year stemmed directly from an anomaly that a Rio-Chinalco deal could help remove. Japanese groups were in on the ground floor for the development of some of Australia's biggest and best resources export projects, acting as both shareholders and customers. Those potentially conflicting roles need to be managed carefully, but Japanese investment has been a crucial catalyst for the development of provinces …

Kaixin – So, over the past three and a bit decades the west has been busily creating money out of thin air and borrowing it to throw one of the biggest parties in history. No need to work, those busy Chinese will do it for us. One long holiday. Alas, all holidays have to come to an end, and this one has. As we leave our Ferrari behind us and trudge home we look over the dusty road and see a vision. All the time we were on holiday the Chinese had been converting their inexhaustible supply of cheap labour for real money, and, horror of horrors, saving it. Definitely unsporting of them. Now as the west tries to come to grips with the deflating of their debt economies they go in search of partners with real money. Yes, they trudge across their dusty road to the paved roads of China and give away huge chunks of their companies.

Note, the Chinese aren’t using debt to invest, they are using real money. The west has gone from being taken for a ride by their central banks to hitching a ride from those thrifty Chinese.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Protester hurls shoe at Chinese PM

In a clear echo of the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at then US president George W Bush in Baghdad in December, the Western-looking man shouted "this is a scandal" as he interrupted Wen from the back of the auditorium. … After the interruption, Wen reproached the demonstrator. "This despicable behaviour cannot stand in the way of friendship between China and the UK," he said, receiving a round of applause from the audience

The International Herald Tribune

Concern as money moves out of China

In Beijing, an online real estate brokerage has organized a 40-person buying tour to real estate foreclosure auctions in the United States this month, and it had so many applicants that it had to turn away nearly 400 people. In Shanghai, cash-rich Chinese companies are buying high-yield bonds of American companies in distress, and bringing home fewer of the dollars they earn abroad from exports.

20 million migrant workers in China can't find jobs

The Chinese government offered a telling indicator Monday of the slowdown in its once galloping economy, announcing that more than one in seven rural migrant workers had been laid off or were unable to find work, twice as many as estimated just five weeks ago. About 20 million of China's total estimated 130 million migrant workers - whose low-cost labor underpins the manufacturing sector - have had to return to rural areas because of lack of work, according to a survey conducted by the Agriculture Ministry that was cited at a briefing.

Investors look for a compromise between U.S. and China

China has just ushered in the Year of the Ox, which is typically associated in the lunar calendar with calm, fortitude and success through toil. That's just as well, for China and the United States will need great calm and fortitude if they are to repair, through hard work, the damage done by the accusation of the new U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, that Beijing manipulates its currency.

Wen says China showing signs of recovery

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, said on Sunday that he saw signs of recovery in the final days of 2008 after growth in China slowed abruptly but indicated that further stimulus measures might be needed. The global financial crisis has hit demand for Chinese exports, fanning fears of social unrest as factories are closed and millions of migrant workers lose their jobs.

Asia Times Online

Beijing strikes out against Tibetan
By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - China is preparing for the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising - which saw the Himalayan territory's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, flee into exile - with a "strike hard" campaign and propaganda on the evils of feudal oppression in pre-1949 Tibet.