9th July 2010

The Lion Awakes 

News at a Glance

今天的中国新闻

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China News Archive

From 2008

China Daily

Marriage, Money and Morals

From arranged marriages to blind dates, building a family in China is an evolving process driven by political change, economic development, and social trends, all intrinsically linked under the umbrella of globalization.

The Marriage Law passed in April 1950 was regarded as a landmark achievement for building a family, the basic unit of society, on the foundation of free will and equal rights since it formally ended the traditional practice of arranged or forced marriage across the country. However in a society dominated by political ideologies and concepts of class, marriage-making was featured as a strong pledge of securing revolution, rather than a natural binding of love. It was taken as granted that people could get married before they even know each other and the union helped people to better participate into the class struggle and realize revolutionary goals.

In 1980, the Marriage Law had its first major amendment, adding "broken relationship" as a precondition of divorce. One year later, the newspaper Market published the first marriage-seeking ad since 1949, and a new breed of matchmaking came to life in China.

China Daily

China not currency manipulator: US Treasury

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced that it has decided not to label China a currency manipulator in a semi-annual currency report released Thursday.

"Treasury has concluded that no major trading partner of the United States met the standards identified in Section 3004 of the Act," the Treasury Department said in its semi-annual report sent to Congress on international economic and exchange rate policies.

Hot money inflows put govt in a quandary

Beijing - The government is facing pressure to curb abnormal capital inflows into the country, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said on Thursday, even as analysts warned that such pressures would remain given the expected gradual appreciation of the currency.

The rampant dollar carry trade, the interest rate difference between the yuan and the dollar, and expectations of yuan appreciation are causes of such capital inflows, the foreign exchange regulator said in a statement.

"The task of promoting the balance of international payments remains challenging," it said.

The interest rate difference between the two currencies is about 2 percentage points, which encourages cross-border carry trade. China's decision to make the yuan more flexible against a basket of currencies on June 19 has fanned expectations that the yuan would appreciate gradually against the dollar.

While analysts said the yuan's value would not change dramatically against the dollar in the short term, it would continue to rise gradually.

China: Yuan to be kept 'basically stable'

BEIJING - China will keep its currency at a "basically stable and reasonable" level and financial pressure for the yuan to rise is easing due to Europe's debt woes, the country's foreign exchange regulator said Thursday.

Washington and some other trading partners complain China's yuan is undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair advantage. Beijing announced in June it would allow more flexibility but ruled out any big changes.

Market pressure for a stronger yuan is easing because investors are buying more dollars as a hedge against the European debt crisis, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in a statement. It said the inflow of currency has eased since May.

Collective contracts sought for workers' rights

SHANGHAI - Collective contracts as part of an effective negotiation mechanism between workers and employers will help mitigate labor unrests that have hit parts of the country recently, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) said on Thursday.

Green norms for overseas investment soon

BEIJING - The government will soon come out with environmental protection guidelines for domestic companies planning overseas investments, ministry officials said on Thursday.

According to experts, the guidelines will enhance the nation's "soft power" in the global arena and foster more investment deals.

Domestic companies that have overseas operations will have to take adequate steps to protect the environment and shoulder more corporate social responsibility (CSR), they said.

The new rules will help improve the quality of overseas investments and are called Chinese Overseas Direct Investment Environment Protection Guidelines, said Yang Zhaofei, director-general of the Department of Policies, Laws and Regulations under the Ministry of Environmental Protection

Resource tax set to boost local economy

BEIJING - China's decision to extend the pilot resources tax to all western areas of the country will squeeze excessive profits out of the country's resource producers through higher tax costs and will promote the efficient extraction of natural resources in the long run, analysts said.

On Thursday, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner, announced a plan to extend the pilot tax scheme introduced last month in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to all 12 provinces and autonomous regions in the west and soon across the entire nation.

Development in the west crucial to China: Govt

BEIJING - A decade after China started its Western Development Program, the gap between its target regions and the eastern areas remains vast, a senior official said.

Du Ying, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), likened the regions' development to "the shortest board" of the barrel at a news conference on Thursday.

The comparison referred to a well-known saying that the amount of water a barrel can contain is determined by the shortest, rather than the longest, stave of the cask.

"The entire country will not develop well if the western regions do not develop well," Du said, adding that the area is integral to national stability.

Global firms may list in China next year: official

BEIJING - China may allow overseas companies to sell stock in Shanghai next year, opening the world's largest market for first-time share sales and advancing the city's bid to become an international financial center.

"The preparation work is proceeding quite nicely," said Fang Xinghai, director general of Shanghai's financial services office. Asked when overseas companies will be allowed to list on the city's stock exchange, Fang said, "sometime next year, I hope".

Global Times

Farmers battling to preserve land

Wang Yongchao, 40, felt he was duped into leasing his farm to the local government four years ago, which in turn handed it over to a private company that built chemical factories where rice, wheat and corn used to grow.

The farmer, like thousands of others in the country, is angry that land set aside for farming has been used illegally to help local officials boost revenue through profitable development projects.

However, Wang has decided to set an example by going after the local authorities in Tangdian township, Jiangsu Province, and the factory owner in court, and wherever he can get help to recover his 4 mu (0.26 hectare) of land.

Editorial - India competes with China the wrong way

Although India has publicly assured that it is not banning Chinese  telecom products, a recent Indian media report revealed that its government has a blacklist, which actually bars 25 Chinese telecom manufacturers in the name of security precautions.

The Chinese embassy in India Wednesday confirmed this.

Telecom equipment produced by big Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE have been exported to many countries and regions in the world and worked perfectly well without complaints about security glitches. Then why these worries in India when it comes to Chinese products, while other foreign brands such as Nokia and Siemens were given a green light?

International News Sources

Caixin Online

Steelmakers Add Coal to Global Shopping List

Domestic coking coal supplies can't meet the rising demands of Chinese steelmakers, encouraging them to shop abroad

Coking coal, a critical ingredient for iron and steel production, is no stranger to Chinese miners. Long veins of the valuable bitumen snake beneath the surface of Shanxi Province, Inner Mongolia and other parts of the country.

The Wall Street Journal  China RealTime Report

Full Text of Treasury Report on China’s Economic Policies

The following is the section on China in the Semi-Annual Report on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies, which the U.S. Treasury sent to Congress on Thursday.

U.S. Declines to Label China a Currency Manipulator

 WASHINGTON -- The U.S. opted against declaring China a currency manipulator Thursday, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner instead shifting the focus forward on the yuan's future appreciation.

"What matters is how far and how fast the renminbi appreciates," said Mr. Geithner in a statement, referring to the other name for China's currency.

He pledged to "closely and regularly monitor" the currency's appreciation and consult with Congress in ongoing efforts to expand U.S. exports to China.

The Treasury's decision once again to decline to declare formally that ...

The New York Times

Letter from China
Pollution? What Pollution?

BEIJING — Every day, the weather page of the popular New Beijing News gives lots of helpful advice, should readers wish to exercise early in the morning, climb a mountain or wash their car. But like other major newspapers in one of the most polluted cities in the world, it doesn’t tell them something really important: how clean is the air?

U.S. Says Renminbi Still Needs to Rise

The United States Treasury Department says China’s currency, the renminbi, “remains undervalued” and needs to rise more, but it stopped short of branding the country a currency manipulator.

Draft Avoids Condemning North Korea in Ship Attack

UNITED NATIONS — Key Security Council members have agreed on a statement, presented to the council on Thursday, that condemns the sinking of a South Korean warship that left 46 sailors dead, but avoids singling out North Korea for the attack.

The Australian

US tiptoes around China yuan debate

THE US opted today against declaring China a currency manipulator in a decision that angered Congressmen on both sides of US politics.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner instead shifted the focus on to the yuan's future appreciation.

The Age

Now China is set to go ahead with its own resources tax
JOHN GARNAUT

CHINA is set to impose a nationwide resources tax that will shift revenue from corporations to local governments and raise the price of energy.

The measures have been billed as a way of curbing environmental destruction and retaining value from the resources boom in impoverished but minerals-rich parts of western China.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Green giant on the march menaces China

China has sent a flotilla of more than 60 ships to head off a massive tide of green algae approaching the coast of Qingdao in the north-east

Asia Times Online

China's time to draw the line
By Antal E Fekete

Milton Friedman's theory of floating exchange rates, on which the international monetary system has been based since 1971, has given rise to a coercive regime in the sense that International Monetary Fund (IMF) statutes forbid member countries from stabilizing the value of their currencies. A country attempting to do that is branded "a currency manipulator" and is threatened with trade sanctions.

The prohibition is understandable. It is designed to protect the scheme whereby the US dollar balances of the surplus countries are stealthily embezzled.

Antal E Fekete has since 2001 been consulting professor at Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 1996, Professor Fekete won the first prize in the International Currency Essay contest sponsored by Bank Lips Ltd of Switzerland.

Kaixin - A Must Read

    
China flexes its naval muscle
By Peter J Brown

China this week again used the East China Sea as a setting for military maneuvers and exercises that it knew would rattle the United States and its allies. After recently calming Japanese concerns about rising tensions in this area, China shut down all vessel traffic in a large zone off the coast of Zhejiang as the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) conducted a series of live fire drills.

    
China focuses on 'far sea defense'
By Joseph Y Lin

The Chinese People's Liberation Army's modernization plans are in full swing, with signs emerging that the leaders are departing from their long-held emphasis on the army in favor of the air force and the navy. By enhancing the role of these two services, China could extend its power projection capability into the Pacific, while reducing the size of its total military force.

    
China tackles mental health woes
By Mitch Moxley

Following the recent spate of attacks on schools, Beijing is finally taking action to aid the estimated 100 million people suffering from some form of mental illness by building new clinics and launching a campaign to raise awareness of the issue. But providing effective treatment will be an uphill struggle in a country where the subject has long been taboo.

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