"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
- Bordeaux Goes Unsold, Price Qualms Damp $18.7 Million Sales – Bloomberg – Lots of first growth Bordeaux, including Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and Chateau Margaux, went unsold in a $18.7 million test of demand for fine wine.
Wealthy Chinese and other collectors focused on the very best older vintages and Burgundies such as DRC Domaine de la Romanee-Conti at Hong Kong weekend auctions, passing on other lots in anticipation of further price declines this year. - Newsmaker – Long Trek From Clerk to Chairman of China’s AgBank – NYTimes.com – SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The new chief of Agricultural Bank of China brings no-nonsense flair and a strong track record in bank overhauls to the helm of the lumbering Chinese lender where he started out years ago as a filing clerk.
Jiang Chaoliang, President of China Development Bank since 2008, is to become chairman of AgBank.
He returns to lead a company that was his first employer in banking, having worked his way up from a clerk distributing files and newspapers two decades ago to head its international business by the late 1990s.
- 拉菲酒价暴跌“连累”造假商人惨丢订单 – 消费·传媒 – 21世纪网 – lafitte prices off 45%, hurting the counterfeiters. end of another china bubble?
- beijing claims pm2.5 reductions « livefrombeijing – I couldn’t find this data on the Beijing EPB website to verify, so if anyone out there does find an original source please let me know. It is a little strange that numbers for 2000 and 2005 are reported, since the Beijing EPB claims to have only monitored PM2.5 since 2006, but let’s ignore that for a moment and assume that CCTV has reported this accurately. This would be the first time that I’ve seen official PM2.5 numbers reported by the Beijing EPB, so they are worth examining. Specifically, let’s look at two questions:
1) Is this declining trend correct?
2) Are these absolute numbers credible? - Apple Beijing Shop Pelted With Eggs as IPhone Debut Botched – Businessweek – Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. At 7:15 a.m., people began chanting “Open the door!” and “Liars!” after an unidentified man said over a bullhorn that the phone wouldn’t go on sale today, without giving an explanation. The store stayed closed “for safety reasons,” Wu said. Beijing police temporarily cordoned off the shop after it was pelted with eggs by the crowd.
“This is a debacle,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based retail advising company, said in a phone interview today. “Everybody knows there will be massive numbers of people when Apple has this kind of a launch. This shows very poor retail management ability.”
- Amazon.com: Sustaining China’s Economic Growth After the Global Financial Crisis (9780881326260): Nicholas R. Lardy: Books –
- Russia’s Mail.ru Launches Its Own Twitter After China’s Microblog Explosion | mocoNews – Russia’s big Mail.ru portal is trying to ape Chinese companies’ microblog boom by launching its own Twitter clone, Futubra.
Alisher Usmanov, who owns almost a third of Mail.ru Group, also owns a majority of DST Global, which took a stake in Twitter itself with a 2011 investment.
Twitter has two million Russian-speaking users after translating its site to Russian last year, according to Yandex (via RIA). But the example of China, where microblogs – or, “weibo” – have exploded, shows indigenous services have gained more traction than foreigners.
- Analysis: China developers launch funds to bridge finance gap – Yahoo! News – China's fledgling real estate investment fund market could see a surge of activity in 2012 as property developers launch their own vehicles in a desperate bid to bridge an estimated $111 billion financing gap in the year ahead.
- Thai Police Charge Terror Suspect After Finding Bomb Materials – Businessweek – Thai police charged a Swedish- Lebanese man suspected of plotting a terrorist attack in Bangkok after finding bomb-making materials in a building on the capital’s outskirts.
Atris Hussein, 47, was charged with possessing illegal substances after being detained on Jan. 12 in connection with a plan to attack tourist sites frequented by Americans and Israelis, said Charamporn Suramanee, the assistant police chief. Thai police have linked him and a second suspect still on the run to the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.
- China Data, Part 2: Slowing Growth « Patrick Chovanec –
- China Agency: Microblog Explosion Over – China Real Time Report – WSJ – The number of Chinese people using Twitter-like microblogs at the end of 2011 nearly quadrupled from a year earlier, but the era of high growth for microblogs in China may be over.
- Chinese scalpers hire migrant workers to wait in line for iPhone 4S | ChinaHush –
- Eight Questions: Nick Lardy, ‘Sustaining China’s Economic Growth’ – China Real Time Report – WSJ –
- Three trends on China’s internet in 2011 – China Media Project –
- Culture | Porsche Owner Stages Sit In Protest Outside Porsche dealership | China Car Times – China Auto News – One Porsche owner was clearly upset with his recent 2.7 million RMB Cayenne purchase, after owing the SUV for just two months the owner found a string of problems with the super-SUV and tried to talk things over with the dealer in Shenzhen city, without a solution being found the owner towed the Cayenne to the dealership and staged a loud protest outside the dealership.
- 12 Trends to Watch for in Asia in 2012 – Evan A. Feigenbaum – International – The Atlantic –
- 北京通州新城5年将开工8000万平方米_中国经济网――国家经济门户 – Beijing moving forward w lans 2 develop the Tongzhou "New City"
- 业内称大部分房企都在裁员 最高裁员比例60%_中国经济网――国家经济门户 – no surprise, big layoffs in china's real estate industry
- 乌坎村党总支部成立__鲜橙互动 南都网 南方都市报 新闻互动网站 南都数字报 – 摘要：1月15日，陆丰市乌坎村党员大会召开，宣布村党总支部正式成立。省工作组随后在群众通报会上介绍了村党总支成立情况，村委会重新选举筹备小组在会上宣布成立。
- 洪波涌起：人民群众给凤凰网女记者上了一课_乌有之乡 –
- China Telecom to Buy Network Access in Britain – NYTimes.com – Virtual mobile network operators — those who buy and resell calling, text and Internet services from actual network operators — have come and gone.
Nevertheless, China Telecom, the Chinese equivalent of the former Ma Bell in the United States or BT in Britain, said this month that it would introduce a similar service in Britain.
By the end of March, the company said, it plans to sell prepaid calling, text and data service to 600,000 Chinese living in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the 600,000 who visit Britain each year.
- 保持思想纯洁，坚守精神家园_重要文章_求是理论网 – 2 commentaries last week in people's daily on Hu Jintao's 6th plenum speech. #
- 保持纯洁性，让党更加坚强有力_重要文章_求是理论网 – 2 commentaries last week in people's daily on Hu Jintao's 6th plenum speech. #
- Chinese Premier Wen takes aim at land seizures | Reuters – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has called for farmers' land rights to be protected and criticized a widespread policy of moving villagers into apartment blocks so their land can be merged into larger blocs or developed.