The China Business Blog is pleased to support the upcoming Chatham House conference on “Building China’s Communications and Information Future”. It will be held in London on 23 and 24 October, 2006 in Association with the Asia-Pacific Technology Network and the China Europe International Business School. The Chatham House website notes: Technology is at the [...]

There has been a lot written about corruption in China over the past week, following the detention of Shanghai Party boss Chen Liangyu – and it is a subject very worthy of inclusion in the “Don’t Quote Me” series. My choice is from an article “The Unpublished Lang Xianping Interview” on the EastSouthWestNorth blog, and [...]

Xu Yifan, Deputy Director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), has “predicted” (maybe he has already drafted the report?!) that China’s GDP growth will be 10 percent this year (following 10.2 percent in 2005, and 10.9 percent in the first six months of 2006). China Daily reports: • “NBS statistics show the growth rate [...]

A new report (via China Daily) notes that China is becoming less competitive: “China has slipped six places to 54th in the *World Economic Forum’s (WEF) global competitiveness rankings”. The report notes problems such as weakness in the banking sector, low penetration of technologies (such as the internet and PCs), challenges for mass education, and [...]

Ok, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But I have been introduced to a clever new service, “LanguageBridge” from London Translations, that allows for 24/7, on-demand telephone interpreting. You set up an account, call the hotline, an interpreter connects with the person you want to speak to in China, and [...]

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson – fresh from his China trip, and with the new “China-U.S. Economic Dialogue” under his belt – has reportedly (via Bloomberg) told the stick-wielding senators (Schumer and Graham) to back off, and offers some good advice: • Threatening China (with punitive 27.5 percent import tariffs) is ``not the right way [...]

While there have been one or two questions about academic ethics in China recently, there is no question that there are a lot of clever academics – and that they are busy. In a meeting the other day I spoke to someone who had been tasked with selecting some academic papers for a big international [...]

China Merchants Bank (China’s sixth-largest lender) climbed by 25 percent on its US$2.4 billion listing in Hong Kong the other day (according to the FT), indicating that investors still hungry for Chinese banks. But that was just an appetizer. The main dish will be the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), with a massive [...]

Following the recent reforms of the stock market in China, one of the big questions is…will they or wont they merge the A and B share markets? It is not the first time this has been suggested, and the punters have got it wrong before, but new rumours have resulted in recent gains for the [...]

While China rallies the troops to protect the family silver (as in the Xugong / Carlyle and other cases ), a report in Forbes (referring to The Standard) indicates that China Telecom may be close to selling a stake to “strategic foreign investors”. “NTT DoCoMo, Verizon and France Telecom have emerged as potential suitors, while [...]