China Economy Forum

[TaiShang]

IMF revises stance on China’s growth prospects
September 24, 2014, 5:38 pm

The Brics Post

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said China’s economy will likely grow faster in 2015 than previous estimates. The global lender says the country’s growth will likely be “well above” 7 per cent next year.

The comments suggest a possible upgrading of the IMF’s upcoming forecast for the country for 2015 from its 7.1 per cent estimate made in July. The IMF has a 7.4 per cent growth forecast for China for this year, slightly below the government’s official target of 7.5 per cent.

At the same time, the IMF also says it doesn’t expect China’s cooling property market to become a serious problem and sees “a gradual adjustment” rather than a hard landing.

Chinese authorities have ruled out major stimulus to fight short-term dips in growth, indicating the slowdown was an expected consequence of their reform drive.

Earlier in June this year, the IMF had urged Chinese authorities to avoid further stimulus measures and concentrate on curtailing financial risks instead.

China and other emerging economies are asking for more powers at the world body.

The US Congress is yet to sign off on the IMF funding to complete 2010 reforms that would make China the IMF’s third-largest member and revamp the IMF board to reduce the dominance of Western Europe.

 

[cirr]

It looks though the state policy of “Buy more from Brazil，less from Australia” is being put to practice。

September 26, 2014 5:47 pm

Vale in deal with China Merchants Group to expand large ore fleet

By Lucy Hornby in Beijing

Brazilian miner Vale reached a deal on Friday to expand its fleet of extremely large ships for carrying iron ore, following a truce with China’s largest shipping company that raised the prospect of the vessels being allowed to dock at Chinese ports.

The very large ore carriers or VLOCs – dubbed Valemax in the shipping industry – were developed by Vale to help reduce its shipping costs, which are higher than its two Australian rivals, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, because of Brazil’s greater distance from Asian customers.

But only the maiden ship had docked in China in 2011 when the Chinese Ministry of Transport banned them from Chinese ports, citing technical issues.

VLOCs are expected to be allowed back into Chinese ports this year after Vale reached an agreement this month with Cosco, China’s largest shipping group.

Cosco had previously lobbied against VLOCs having access to Chinese ports, but Vale has agreed to transfer ownership of four of these vessels to the Chinese company. Cosco will also commission the building of a further 10 VLOCs.

Vale will charter all 14 VLOCs from Cosco over the next 25 years. It has similar charter agreements with other shipping companies for 15 of the 31 VLOCs in the Vale fleet.

Meanwhile, China Merchants Group, a Chinese conglomerate, will build 10 VLOCs and charter them to Vale over 25 years, Vale said on Friday.

China’s shipping industry had lobbied against the VLOCs while freight rates were at their height, forcing Vale to transfer ore to smaller ships at ports including Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Lower shipping costs stemming from its use of VLOCs will help Vale stay competitive as a growing glut in world iron ore mining capacity causes prices to drop.

As iron ore output grows, an economic slowdown in China is depressing steel demand.

 

[TaiShang]

Now that's an superb and amazing management of mass human movement through modern and clean transportation infrastructure. Indians should spend more about their stinky infrastructure instead of falling daily in love with their hoooly democracy.

****

China's railways report record daily passenger volume

Nearly 11.73 million train trips were made on Wednesday, China's National Day and the first day of a week-long holiday, up 13.5 percent year on year and marking a record high, said the China Railway Corporation on Thursday.

Traffic in major cities rose significantly on Wednesday. Nearly 1.22 million passengers left Beijing by train, an increase of 14.1 percent from a year ago. Nearly 2.36 million left Shanghai, up 9.5 percent, and 1.48 million left Guangzhou, up 17.1 percent.

On Wednesday, the Chinese railway operator dispatched 5,312 trains, including 444 additional trains to accommodate the holiday rush, to guarantee all passengers reach their destinations.

On Thursday, 9.4 million train trips are expected, and the corporation plans to run 381 additional trains.

The China Railway Corporation forecast a record high of more than 90 million train trips during the 10-day travel rush starting on September 28.

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese economy plays vital role globally: WTO economist

The Chinese economy is a vital player in global landscape and its rapid growth is a huge motor for global expansion, a senior economist with the World Trade Organization (WTO) has told Xinhua.

"Since the middle of the last decade and calculated on a purchasing power parity basis, China has contributed more to global growth than any other economy in the world," said Robert Teh, acting director of the Economic Research and Statistics Division of WTO, in a recent written interview with Xinhua.

He said that China, being a major exporter and importer, provides a large and affordable supply of goods that improve the life of consumers and households worldwide, and serves as a major source of demand for the rest of the world.

China is the largest market of exporters from Least Developed Countries (LDCs), with 23 percent of LDCs' total exports going to China in 2012, up from 9 percent in 2000, Teh said.

China also played an important role in the global commodity markets, accounting for about 20 percent of non-renewable energy resources, 23 percent of major agricultural crops, and 40 percent of base metals, he said.

The increases of Chinese demand for food and primary commodities have been a big reason for higher commodity prices that have benefited exporters of these products, he added.

As for China's role in global supply chains, he said China is both a leading exporter and importer of intermediate goods, accounting for roughly 14 percent of world exports of non-fuel intermediate goods and 13 percent of imports of non-fuel intermediates.

The new Chinese leadership has outlined its vision of giving the decisive role to market forces in the allocation of resources, Teh said.

"We also expect a shift toward internally generated demand. This means there is ample scope for efficiencies to be wrung from the economy thus providing a solid and sustainable basis for future growth," he said.

"Even if growth slows somewhat as China's economy matures, greater reliance on domestic demand could mean a better quality of life for Chinese citizens, since it would provide them with increased consumption opportunities," he added.

 

[TaiShang]

Facebook, YouTube refuse to delete terror material: agency
2014-10-02

In a campaign aimed at cracking down on online content with ****, scams, terrorism and violence, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center received complaints about videos that promote jihad from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement - part of an international terrorism network listed by the United Nations Security Council - in the world's largest tech and social media websites including Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook and YouTube have made little effort to delete such information and hardly any content has been removed since its report of these gruesome videos, said the organization under the Internet Society of China.

Security analysts said China has seen a sharp rise in terrorist attacks, and files on the Internet are one of the causes.

Terrorist videos and audios released by ETIM spiked from 32 in 2012 to 109 in 2013, while attacks rose from two to seven over the same period.

Nearly all terrorists had watched or listened to videos and audio products before they carried out their atrocities, said Li Wei, an anti-terror specialist, when commenting on the latest multiple-explosion attack in Xinjiang on Sept 21.

Meanwhile, terrorists are using slick techniques to spread their content online.

In a report by the Guardian, the Islamic State's media arm even latched onto the huge interest in the Scottish independence referendum to distribute extremist material on Twitter and YouTube.

Wang Xin, an analyst from the Internet Society of China, said sophisticated strategies used by terrorist groups should prompt government departments to work even closer with social media companies.

However, since Facebook and YouTube have been blocked by China's firewall, improving their relationship with the Chinese government may not be easy.

 

[cirr]

Heck！These Americans just can't keep away from piling their capital onto China。

I say Go Home！

GM to invest $14bn in China

Updated: 2014-10-02 11:25

By Jack Freifelder in New York(China Daily USA)

General Motors'CEO Mary Barra talks with media on Wednesday at a conference for investors and financial analysts at GM's Milford Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan. Barra announced that the company will invest $14 billion in China over five years for new manufacturing plants. Provided To China Daily

General Motors Co (GM) said it will invest $14 billion in China over the next five years and open five new manufacturing plants to increase annual sales to nearly 5 million vehicles in the world's largest car market.

The company's plans for China also include introducing 60 new models or refreshed vehicles, including nine new models from GM's flagship luxury brand Cadillac, GM CEO Mary Barra said on Wednesday.

Barra, GM President Dan Ammann and other members of the company's executive team, gave a presentation to investors and financial analysts at a GM facility in Milford, Michigan, that centered on some of the company's biggest initiatives through the end of the decade.

Tim Dunne, director of automotive industry analytics for California-based global market research firm JD Power and Associates, said that GM's investment in China is "necessary" for the company going forward.

"This is a substantial investment in China," Dunne said Wednesday in an interview with China Daily. "GM is still among the forefront in China in terms of annual vehicle sales volume, and when people look at GM [in China] everyone is expecting vehicle sales to grow there. Competitors in the market are not standing still, so everyone is kind of on an accelerated pace."

GM was one of the first companies to establish an R & D center in China, so developing vehicles specifically for the China market has also given GM a bit of cachet with different entities in China, Dunne said.

"GM and its competitors are investing in manufacturing, distribution, marketing and the R & D (research and development) aspect, and China is a hyper-competitive market so you can't let up because things can change very quickly," he said

GM's operations in China include two foreign enterprises, 10 joint-venture partnerships and more than 50,000 employees in the world's second-largest economy.

GM said recent data shows the company and its joint-venture partners sold a record-breaking 3.1 million vehicles in China last year.

Barra said it is imperative for the company to be on the cutting edge of technological integration when it comes to their new models, so that GM can become the world's "most valued automotive company".

She also said some of the high-tech advances that GM plans to make - including the introduction of high-speed mobile broadband vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity in some models, and a highly automated, hands-free highway driving technology called Super Cruise - "unlock so many things that haven't been done in the past".

Dunne, with JD Power, said he was intrigued by GM's plans to introduce more technology into its vehicles in the near future.

"Nobody goes anywhere without being connected, so GM talking about introducing more connectivity in their vehicles is where the car market is going and it's spot on," Dunne said.

Michael Ward, a managing director with Sterne Agee, a Birmingham, Alabama-based brokerage firm, said GM "reconfirmed our expectations" during its presentation on Wednesday.

"GM hit on all metrics at its investor presentation in Detroit: product and earnings momentum, record results in North America, further upside in China and improved capital allocation to shareholders," Ward wrote in a research note released following Wednesday's event.

Despite some problems since the start of Barra's tenure in January, including ignition switch issues linked to the deaths of 23 individuals, GM's CEO said she remains optimistic that the company will be able to leverage its potential into increased business in a number of markets.

"The whole interaction with the customer is changing, and how they want to buy cars and interact with the vehicle are very important trends," Barra said. "It starts with the customer and every chance to connect with a customer is an opportunity to build a stronger relationship."

"When you look at General Motors, we have the resources, we have the technical talent and we have the global footprint," she said. "It's about execution and that's what we're focused on."

jackfreifelder@chinadailyusa.com

 

[cirr]

Made quite a few bobs trading Fosun Pharmaceutical stocks on the Shanghai stock exchange last year and this。

China’s Fosun to Invest in European, Japanese Insurers

By Zachary Tracer and Ye Xie | September 30, 2014

Fosun International Ltd., the investment arm of China’s biggest closely held conglomerate, is considering making more bets on insurers outside its home country, Chief Executive Officer Liang Xinjun said.

“We prefer investing in insurance companies in Europe and Japan,” Liang said in an interview yesterday in New York. “We have opportunities to invest in insurance companies at very reasonable prices.”

Fosun, which counts Liang and billionaire Guo Guangchang among its founders, is seeking to use funds from policy sales to make investments. The firm is emulating the model used by Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest man, to build Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Liang said.

“We’d like to increase the percentage of insurance flows in our assets,” Liang said. “Insurance flow is low-cost, long- term and very sustainable capital.”

Liang said he favors insurers in Japan and Europe because valuations are “very reasonable.” Low interest rates in both places have helped push down company values, he said.

Fosun bought an 80 percent stake in the insurance unit of Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depositos SA this year for about 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion). The Shanghai-based company also has a Hong Kong reinsurer, a life-insurance venture in China with Prudential Financial Inc. and a stake in a property- casualty operation in the country. In August, Fosun agreed to buy 20 percent of specialty commercial insurer Ironshore Inc. for about $460 million.

Fosun Group

Fosun International is the publicly traded investment arm of Fosun Group. The business also owns European fashion labels, New York’s One Chase Manhattan Plaza, and the Studio 8 filmmaker. Fosun has advanced 23 percent this year in Hong Kong trading.

Buffett is chairman and CEO of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire, which has a market value of about $341 billion. In his first decades as CEO, Buffett focused on using premiums from insurance units to buy stocks. He later began acquiring whole companies, and now Berkshire derives most of its earnings from operating businesses in industries from energy and manufacturing to transportation and retail.

Moody’s Investors Service kept Fosun’s credit outlook at negative this month, saying that its “aggressive” investments raise debt levels. Adjusted net debt increased to 7.1 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for the year ended June 30, from 6 times in 2013, according to Moody’s.

The company is rated at Ba3, three steps below investment grade. Liang said leverage will decline because the expansion of the insurance business will provide enough cash flow to finance future investments without loading up on debt.

 

[Jlaw]

Lol...nah, must be fake news. Some Viets, indians and a few Americans tell me American companies are leaving Hins for great Vietnam and india.

 

[cirr]

BNEF: China dominated US$55 billion of global clean energy investment in Q3

02 October 2014

China invested US$12.2 billion in solar energy in the third quarter of this year alone.

Driven to a greater extent by a “solar boom,” China contributed US$19.9 billion to a global total of US$55 billion invested in clean energy in the third quarter of this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

BNEF issued figures today for worldwide clean energy investment, based on tracking of data transactions and projects. The firm claims to have found that in the July to September period of this year, clean energy investment rose by 12% over the third quarter of 2013. In that period, US$48.9 billion was invested.

In the first three quarters of the year, BNEF says, a total of US$175.1 billion has been invested. BNEF believes this will contribute to a “bounce-back” this year in overall investment levels after two years of seeing them fall. The figures did show however, that the third quarter of 2014 was slightly weaker than the second, which BNEF qualified by explaining that this is “generally” the case. The second quarter saw US$65.2 billion invested this year.

China’s input was the single biggest contributor to worldwide investments, constituting over a third of the total. Solar investment in China in the third quarter, from July to September was US$12.2 billion, which represented a huge 63% year-on-year jump from the equivalent period of last year, when the figure stood at US$7.5 billion.

BNEF cited the completion of a number of large-scale grid-connected PV projects in China as a strong contributing factor in this success. BNEF predicts that China will install between 13GW and 14GW this year, broadly in line with the forecasts of other analysts including Deutsche Bank’s Vishal Shah. Shah predicted between 13GW and 15GW would be installed in the Asian country this year, while I.H.S Research has called the figure at 13GW. China’s national deployment target for PV this year is 13GW, split between distributed generation and large-scale projects.

Finlay Colville of NPD Solarbuzz, in discussion with PV Tech senior news editor Mark Osbourne for a recent in-depth look at the global market, stressed the importance of political will in driving deployment in China. Looking ahead to discussions on which end-market would be the biggest in 2016, Colville said China was more capable of scaling up to such a challenge than any other country.

“…if Beijing wishes to have the largest PV end-market in 2016, then have the largest end-market it will. China has the bandwidth to create this outcome, more than any other country.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Japan also made a strong showing, hitting US$8.6 billion in the quarter, again dominated by solar, BNEF said. A number of examples of huge asset investment deals driving the global market quoted by BNEF include over a billion dollars into a single 231MW project in Japan. A recent report by NPD Solarbuzz had said the Asia-Pacific region could install 17GW in total this year. Another Solarbuzz analyst, Ray Lian, predicted China and Japan would dominate demand, adding about half of the world’s new PV capacity this year.

Europe’s clean energy investment levels, in contrast, showed “the continuing troubles of the sector”, BNEF said. In Italy, the solar sector’s woes with retroactive subsidy cuts impacted on the country’s investment levels, while policy uncertainty in the UK had a similar effect. Europe’s overall investment appears to have fallen in the opposite trajectory to China’s corresponding rise - while China’s third quarter figures went from US$7.5 billion in Q3 2013 to US$12.2 billion in Q3 2014, Europe’s Q3 2013 figure of US$12.1 billion fell to US$8.8 billion for the same period of this year.

The US meanwhile saw a modest rise, from US$5.7 billion in 2013’s third quarter to US$7.3 billion in this year’s. BNEF also highlighted investment performances as notable in India (US$2 billion) and Canada (US$1.9 billion). PV Tech reported this week that the US and India could be on the brink of a deal to invest US$1 billion in renewable energy.

BNEF pointed out that figures for previous years had had to be adjusted to include newly uncovered information, but claimed historical trends were not affected.

 

[cnleio]

China need GM combustion gas turbine tech much more than GM cars.

 

[Aepsilons]

Welcome, China ! Please, come do business !

 

[JSCh]

Facebook, YouTube refuse to delete terror material: agency
2014-10-02

In a campaign aimed at cracking down on online content with ****, scams, terrorism and violence, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center received complaints about videos that promote jihad from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement - part of an international terrorism network listed by the United Nations Security Council - in the world's largest tech and social media websites including Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook and YouTube have made little effort to delete such information and hardly any content has been removed since its report of these gruesome videos, said the organization under the Internet Society of China.

Security analysts said China has seen a sharp rise in terrorist attacks, and files on the Internet are one of the causes.

Terrorist videos and audios released by ETIM spiked from 32 in 2012 to 109 in 2013, while attacks rose from two to seven over the same period.

Nearly all terrorists had watched or listened to videos and audio products before they carried out their atrocities, said Li Wei, an anti-terror specialist, when commenting on the latest multiple-explosion attack in Xinjiang on Sept 21.

Meanwhile, terrorists are using slick techniques to spread their content online.

In a report by the Guardian, the Islamic State's media arm even latched onto the huge interest in the Scottish independence referendum to distribute extremist material on Twitter and YouTube.

Wang Xin, an analyst from the Internet Society of China, said sophisticated strategies used by terrorist groups should prompt government departments to work even closer with social media companies.

However, since Facebook and YouTube have been blocked by China's firewall, improving their relationship with the Chinese government may not be easy.

Their hypocrisy is revealed again to the Chinese people.

 

[TaiShang]

Their hypocrisy is revealed again to the Chinese people.

That reveals the government's wisdom not to allow these terror and separatism sponsors a chance in the Chinese market.

It is not that YouTube never delete videos, but, when it is related to China, they are somehow the most tolerant and democrat.

 

[Beidou2020]

That reveals the government's wisdom not to allow these terror and separatism sponsors a chance in the Chinese market.

It is not that YouTube never delete videos, but, when it is related to China, they are somehow the most tolerant and democrat.

Youtube is owned by Google. Google is basically a spy agency for the American regime.

 

[TaiShang]

China's exports jump 15.3% in September, China.org.cn

China's exports saw the fastest growth in 19 months, expanding by 15.3 percent from a year ago to 213.7 billion U.S. dollars in September, customs data showed on Monday.

Imports increased 7 percent year on year to 182.7 billion U.S. dollars and total foreign trade volume rose 11.3 percent to 396.4 billion U.S. dollars, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said.

The growth rate in imports in September also marked the highest level since December 2013, according to GAC.

Trade surplus in September more than double from last year to 31 billion U.S. dollars, compared with 49.8 billion U.S. dollars seen in August.

For the January-September period, China's foreign trade added 3.3 percent year on year to reach 3.16 trillion U.S. dollars, with exports up 5.1 percent at 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars, imports up 1.3 percent at 1.46 trillion U.S. dollars.

Trade surplus in the first three quarters expanded by 37.8 percent from previous year to 231.6 billion U.S. dollars.