10th April 09

The Australian

US steel industry files anti-dumping suit against China

THE US steel industry filed an anti-dumping suit against China that covers $US2.7 billion ($3.8 billion) of imports. The suit alleges that steelmakers there unfairly dumped specific types of tubular and pipe steel in the US market last year.

The New York Times

Chinatown

Peter Eng

HONG KONG — She’s an immigrant of the most traditional, stubborn sort, my mother, who recently turned 86 . Although she arrived in the United States from Hong Kong more than 40 years ago, Lai Wau Chiu Eng still speaks little English. Like my father, she had little interest in learning except for the few pidgin phrases they needed to run their “Chinese hand laundry” in New York.

Asia Times Online

China's unreal estate
By Chan Akya

Polygamy is one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. - Oscar Wilde.

The memorable quote from the misogamist Wilde strikes not so much at the absence of women across the Chinese population as a direct result of the one-child policy; that is a subject of a future discussion. Rather, it is an introduction to the unintended consequences of frequent government meddling in the economy that is all too often represented in the shorthand to the policy of pegged exchange rates.

Hong Kong trams change driver
By Olivia Chung

HONG KONG - A judder of concern rippled through Hong Kong's small band of conservationists this week when developer Wharf Holdings handed over 50% of its interest in the city's ancient electric tram system to French conglomerate Veolia Environnement along with the prospect of the entire operation changing hands at some future date.