China Readings for September 30th

  • “跑路”成问候语 金融恐慌弥漫温州_金融频道_财新网 – 最近一段时间,有关温州民企老板“跑路”的消息时有传出。记者接触的多位温州当地人说,现在“人人自危”
  • The China Beat · Maternal Migration in China – “I had to leave our son back in the village when he was two months old,” the 20-something sitting across from me explained on the hard-seat train heading from Shanghai to Xi’an. “I had to get back to work. This will be the first time I’ve seen him in five months”.

    The young woman had met her husband when working at a restaurant in Shanghai in her late teens and decided to get married soon thereafter. Their marriage has been problematic; both live more or less equal distances from their hometowns, one to the north, one to the south. Because of their low-paying jobs and status, taking care of a child in the city where both of them live and work was out of the question.

  • Time to teach those around South China Sea a lesson – No South China Sea issue existed before the 1970s. The problems only occured after North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976 and China’s Nansha and Xisha Islands then became the new country’s target.

    Unfortunately, though hammered by China in the 1974 Xisha Island Battle and later the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Vietnam’s insults in the South China Sea remained unpunished today. It encouraged nearby countries to try their hands in the “disputed” area and attracted the attention of the US so that a regional conflict gradually turned international.

    China, concentrating on interior development and harmony, has been ultimately merciful in preventing such issue turning into a global affair so that regional peace and prosperity can be secured.

    But it is probably the right time for us to reason, think ahead and strike first before things gradually run out of hands.

    It seems all the countries around the area are preparing for an arms race.

  • Exclusive: Justice Department probing Chinese accounting | Reuters – The FBI has an embedded agent in an SEC working group on Chinese companies that enter the stock market through so-called reverse mergers with U.S. shell companies.

    Officials from the SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) are due to meet with their Chinese counterparts in Washington, D.C. in October for a second round of talks on joint inspections of auditing firms in China.

    "Not having proper accounting and reliable audit review for publicly traded companies with operations in China is just not acceptable. We have to find a path to resolution of this issue," Khuzami said. "It is … a big issue for us."

  • Squeeze on developers cheers China – FT.com – big win for those shorting this sector. like Chanos//

    The financing problems affecting Chinese real estate developers could help an overheating sector let off steam and prevent a dramatic property market collapse, according to senior government officials.

    Investors have reacted with alarm to signs that Chinese developers are struggling to fund their operations, fearing they could presage a collapse of the sector that would affect the entire country and hit one of the last remaining sources of growth for the global economy. The stocks and bonds of Chinese property developers have been battered this year, with the sell-off accelerating in recent weeks.

  • China’s great leap towards superpower status with space station test launch | World news | The Guardian – The launch of the unmanned Tiangong 1 module comes in a year when the US has wound down its space shuttle fleet
  • U.S. Threatens Sanctions On Chinese Banks Over Iran – China Real Time Report – WSJ – A top U.S. Treasury official said Wednesday that Washington could impose sanctions on China’s biggest banks if they are caught doing business with an Iranian insurance company on the U.S. blacklist, AFP reported.
  • The Staggering Stats of China’s Mobile Sector [Infographic]
  • Exclusive: Lockheed lobbies anew for new Taiwan F-16s – Yahoo! News – vietnam interested?//

    Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) is helping arm U.S. lawmakers for a renewed push to sell its new F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, not just the Obama administration's planned $5.3 billion upgrade of old ones.

    A Lockheed Martin official last week emailed an unsigned memo to lawmakers on Capitol Hill titled "Taiwan — The Benefit of New F-16 C/Ds," two congressional staff members said.

  • Bolton and Blumenthal: Time to Kill the Law of the Sea Treaty—Again – WSJ.com – The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)—signed by the U.S. in 1994 but never ratified by the Senate—is showing some signs of life on Capitol Hill, even as new circumstances make it less attractive than ever. With China emerging as a major power, ratifying the treaty now would encourage Sino-American strife, constrain U.S. naval activities, and do nothing to resolve China's expansive maritime territorial claims.

    At issue is China's intensified effort to keep America's military out of its "Exclusive Economic Zone,"

  • Insight: Velvet glove trumps iron fist in south China land riot – Yahoo! News – leaders been rounded up?//

    It was an unusual scene for a Chinese riot — there was not a single policeman in sight.

    In the southern village of Wukan, debris and smashed furniture littered the courtyard of a ransacked government office several days after villagers clashed with officials over illegal land requisition.

  • Kazakh-China diary: Ablai Khan, train gauges and a piece of paper-lowy interpreter
  • DoD Buzz | China’s ability to make quality jet engines – the West, in its rush to supply the booming Chinese aviation market may be helping to develop China’s military edge:

    – Joint ventures with jet engine market leaders like General Electric (GE) have the potential to give the Chinese aerospace industry a 100 piece puzzle with 90 of the pieces already assembled. Enough is left out so that the exporting companies can comply with the letter of the export control laws, but in reality, a rising military power is potentially being given relatively low-cost recipes for building the jet engines needed to power key military power projection platforms including tankers, AWACS, maritime patrol aircraft, transport aircraft, and potentially, subsonic bombers armed with standoff weapons systems.

    – While already a significant source of potentially damaging technology transfer, the imperative to prioritize quarterly profits today over long-term profits and strategic concerns may be exacerbated as long-term military spending constraints in Europe, Japan, and now even the U.S. may drive Western aeroengine manufacturers even further into Chinese joint ventures to replace revenue.

  • China’s bid for media power | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com – This vision of a new world order closely echoes Beijing’s often-voiced obsession with soft power. China wants a “right to be heard”; it is misunderstood; and the Western media describe the country in a biased way, Chinese officials complain frequently.

    The astonishing thing is that some of the most powerful men of global media have agreed to sit down and be used as props in Beijing’s show.

    Eleven heavyweight media executives including New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, BBC director-general Mark Thompson and AP president Tom Curley attended the summit and discussed things such as the protection of intellectual property rights, journalists’ safety, the media’s role in disasters and media cooperation in the new media era.

  • Subprime Crisis Sweep Wenzhou as Bankrupt Bosses Flee-Caijing
  • China’s runaway bosses spotlight underground loan market – Yahoo! News – A string of Chinese entrepreneurs have gone into hiding to avoid repaying loans, according to state media reports, highlighting a credit squeeze on private firms and the dangers of steep interest rates in China's vast and growing informal lending market.
  • Special Report: "Rats" and "black mouths" gnaw at China stocks – Yahoo! News – Even before China's great stock market bull run of 2006-2007, Wang Jianzhong had become known as China's "god of stocks" for his prescient picks.

    Such was his influence at the market's peak that reports by his company, Beijing Shoufang Investment Consulting, republished in dozens of influential newspapers and websites, were themselves often cited as a reason for a particular share price rising.

  • China Economic Watch | Is the Renminbi Getting Close to Equilibrium? – Over the past several years, the Chinese government has frequently argued that the renminbi is steadily moving towards an equilibrium exchange rate.

    China’s financial authorities made this claim in their responses to both the 2010 and 2011 IMF Article IV Reports.

    What is implied by this rapid pace of productivity growth is that the real effective exchange rate should have been increasing even more rapidly during this period and therefore the renminbi might have quite a ways to go before reaching equilibrium.

  • Seeking Shelter – Council on Foreign Relations – Authors:
    Jerome A. Cohen, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia Studies
    Yu Han, U.S.-Asia Law Institute
    September 28, 2011
    South China Morning Post
    Criminal justice has always been a preoccupation of the Chinese people and their governments. The August 30 publication by the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) of a draft comprehensive revision of China's Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) has opened yet another chapter in the struggle to protect society against crime while protecting individuals against arbitrary state power.
  • Jimmy Choo aims for 50 new Chinese stores by 2016 – Telegraph – British shoe brand Jimmy Choo is planning to open 50 new stores in China in the next five years as it seeks to capitalise on the voracious demand for luxury goods among the East's new super-rich.
  • 住建部专项督察:保障房跃进隐现设计缺陷 – 宏观 – 21世纪网 – 本报记者独家获悉,住建部有关业务司局在8月底和9月初分别对各地保障房建筑质量问题进行督察,发现了若干问题,其中很多是因为设计缺陷而存在的。

    住建部住宅产业化促进中心副主任文林峰9月28日在“2011年·中国首届保障性住房设计竞赛”颁奖典礼上对本报记者透露,出于促进保障房质量和降低成本的考虑,住建部推出了保障房部品采购信息平台。

  • North Korea’s Next Purchase: One Investor Hopes Coke Is It – Forbes – Investor Gabriel Schulze–tall, blue-eyed, American–walked into the conference room at the Yanggakdo International Hotel for his business meeting with the North Koreans. A towering edifice separated from the rest of Pyongyang by a ring of water, the Yanggakdo has an air of secrecy appropriate to the moment: Schulze was here, on only his own authority, to bring Coca-Cola to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

    “We warmly welcome you, the Coca-Cola delegation, with Mr. Schulze as your leader,” said Park Chol Su, the president of North Korea’s Taepung International Investment Group. “I hope this will be a good opportunity to make progress in the relations between the U.S. and Korea.”

  • 专家:南海动武时机成熟 锁定菲越以战止战_军事_环球网 – 摘要:南海地区的战争势能在蓄积。时间不在中国一边,中国应该以地区合作与开发主导者的姿态,以更加优惠的条件和西方石油公司竞争,参与油气开发,同时对其侵犯我海域的采油行动,进行先礼后兵的劝阻。不要担心小规模的战争,那正是释放战争势能最好的方式。小仗打几下,大仗就可以避免。
  • Chinese think tank also serves as spy arm – Washington Times – When Vice President Joseph R. Biden met a group of five Chinese “think tank” experts in Beijing on Aug. 20, the meeting at the U.S. Embassy was billed in his official schedule as simply a round-table discussion with academics.

    But a recent CIA report reveals the vice president was one of a long list of current and former U.S. and foreign officials who exchanged information with Cui Liru, one of the five experts identified as a longtime Ministry of State Security (MSS) intelligence officer working undercover as the head of China’s most important intelligence-analysis group.

    Mr. Cui is head of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, known as CICIR (pronounced “kicker”). CICIR has a long history of supplying information to the CIA through agency-paid U.S. consultants who are dispatched yearly to CICIR’s offices in Beijing for discussions, according to U.S. officials.

  • Inside China – Washington Times – The lead article the Chinese Communist Party newspaperGlobal Times on Tuesday contained an alarming call for a declaration of war against Vietnam and Philippines, two nations that in recent weeks launched the loudest protests against China’s sweeping maritime sovereignty claims over the South China Sea.

    Headlined “The Time to Use Force Has Arrived in the South China Sea; Let’s Wage Wars on the Philippines and Vietnam to Prevent More Wars,” the article was written by Long Tao, a likely pseudonym literally translated as “The Dragon’s Teaching.” The name refers to the third chapter of the famous Chinese ancient military classic “Six Secret Military Teachings” that, among other things, promotes the idea that the best way to establish military awesomeness is to kill the highest-ranked dissenters.

  • Special Report: "Rats" and "black mouths" gnaw at China stocks – Yahoo! News – Even before China's great stock market bull run of 2006-2007, Wang Jianzhong had become known as China's "god of stocks" for his prescient picks.

    Such was his influence at the market's peak that reports by his company, Beijing Shoufang Investment Consulting, republished in dozens of influential newspapers and websites, were themselves often cited as a reason for a particular share price rising.