China Economy Forum

[Brotherhood]

Construction of Jiaozhou Bay bridge passes inspection - People's Daily Online June 28, 2011

Vehicles are seen on the Jiaozhou Bay bridge in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, June 27, 2011. The construction of Jiaozhou Bay bridge passed the inspection on Monday. The bridge, with a total investment of more than 10 billion yuan (about 1.544 billion US dollar) and a length of 36.48 kilometers, will greatly shorten the time from downtown Qingdao to its outlying regions. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

Photo taken on June 27, 2011 shows the toll gate of Jiaozhou Bay bridge in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. The construction of Jiaozhou Bay bridge passed the inspection on Monday. The bridge, with a total investment of more than 10 billion yuan (about 1.544 billion US dollar) and a length of 36.48 kilometers, will greatly shorten the time from downtown Qingdao to its outlying regions. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

Vehicles move towards the Jiaozhou Bay bridge in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, June 27, 2011. The construction of Jiaozhou Bay bridge passed the inspection on Monday. The bridge, with a total investment of more than 10 billion yuan (about 1.544 billion US dollar) and a length of 36.48 kilometers, will greatly shorten the time from downtown Qingdao to its outlying regions. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

 

[Brotherhood]

Full steam ahead for high-speed rail patents overseas - People's Daily Online June 28, 2011

China's railway sector will stick to its strategy to explore high-speed rail markets overseas, a railway ministry spokesman said.

"Since we have stepped out, we won't withdraw," Wang Yongping, spokesman with the Ministry of Railways, told a news conference on Monday, in answer to a question about how China would deal with obstacles in exporting its high-speed rail technologies.

China is now filing patent applications for its high-speed railway technologies in regions including the United States, Brazil, Europe, Russia and Japan, which is an indispensable step for tapping overseas markets, according to Li Jun, director of the general affairs office of the transport bureau under the ministry.

He told China Daily in a written reply on Monday that 21 patent applications have been filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in these regions. The subjects of the applications are technologies including the high-speed trains' assembly, hull and bogies.

So far, eight of the 21 applications have passed a preliminary examination and entered the next stage related to the examination of the application and issuance of patent, he said.

At home, 1,902 applications concerning high-speed railways have been filed, among which 1,421 patents have been issued.

The efforts are expected to pave the way for CSR Corporation Limited, one of China's two manufacturers of high-speed trains, to enter the US market.

US President Barack Obama in February unveiled a six-year, $53-billion spending plan for high-speed rails. According to previous reports, at least seven companies are now competing in the US market, including CSR.

Last December, CSR and General Electric (GE) signed a joint venture agreement to make high-speed trains in the United States.

Liu Gang, deputy director of the equipment department of transport bureau under the ministry, told the news conference that CSR and GE are now in discussions about transferring CSR's high-speed train technologies to GE.

"If there should be anything standing in the way, it is the US' progress in implementing its plan," he said, adding that the two sides have decided to expand cooperation to the sector of slower trains.

Zhou Li, another official with the ministry's transport bureau, also told the conference that CSR and GE had carried out research concerning the intellectual property rights of CSR's high-speed trains.

Property rights experts from home and abroad and GE's legal consultants studied some 200 patents and concluded that none will generate disputes for the deal, Zhou said.

CSR Qingdao Sifang Co Ltd partnered with Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 2004 to produce a 200-km/h train that Kawasaki transferred to China. Based on the platform, the company developed a 300-km/h train and later the CRH380A train with a top speed of 380 km/h, which will operate on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway starting this Thursday.

Ma Yunshuang, deputy general manager and technology director of CSR Qingdao Sifang Co Ltd, told China Daily earlier that after experiments and upgrades to suit China's rail system, the CRH380A is totally different from the train prototype imported from Japan.

"Our technologies may originate from foreign countries, but it doesn't mean that what we have now all belongs to them. We have added our knowledge gained from experiments to the train and made designs to satisfy our needs, so the new train is not theirs anymore."

Source: China Daily

 

[Brotherhood]

China signs $4.3 billion deals with UK - People's Daily Online June 28, 2011

Trade deals worth 4.3 billion U.S. dollars, including a 2.46 billion U.S. dollars agreement on building a "clean coal" plant between China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group and British Seamwell International Ltd, were signed as Premier Wen Jiabao met British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday.

During talks at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the British prime minister, the two leaders signed 12 agreements and restated their desire to double bilateral trade to 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2015.

On human rights, Wen said at a news conference that there should not be any "finger-pointing" at China over the issue.

British gas company BG Group signed an agreement with Bank of China that allowed for up to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars of new funding options to support BG's growth plans.

The Chinese poultry market will be reopened to UK exports, which were halted after a bird flu outbreak at a farm in eastern England in 2007, and Britain will supply breeding pigs to China, the British media reported.

The agreements will help British companies work with China in several key areas, including architecture, civil engineering, remote sensing satellite and research and development.

Analysts noted that Britain is scrambling to catch up with European rivals France and Germany in striking trade deals with China.

Cameron visited China in November, the same month that France secured contracts for French companies worth 19.1 billion U.S. dollars.

British exports have increased 20 percent since Cameron's visit, and London is seeking deals to enable British businesses to branch out beyond Beijing and Shanghai into fast-growing regional cities.

When asked about the fact, at a joint news conference, that Chinese money is funding the next generation of railways in the UK, Cameron said he welcomes investment from abroad. On whether he had raised human rights during the talks, Cameron said: "Britain and China have such a strong and developed relationship. We have a dialogue that covers all these issues, and nothing is off limits in the discussions that we have."

Wen said that on human rights, China and the UK should "respect each other, respect the facts, treat each other as equals, and resolve differences through dialogue".

Wen stressed that China has been pursuing "political structural reform and improvement of democracy and the rule of law" as well as economic growth.

The two leaders also discussed cultural and educational exchanges between China and the UK and global issues such as international security, Libya and climate change.

Wen said China was talking to both sides in Libya because the conflict would only be resolved by Libyans themselves, adding: "Foreign troops may be able to win a war, but they can hardly win peace."

Wen said that China and the UK will set up a high-level cultural exchange mechanism and offered two pandas to Edinburgh Zoo as gifts.

The summit builds on Cameron's visit to China last year, which secured a range of commercial and government arrangements, including a Rolls Royce deal worth 1.2 billion U.S. dollars.

This was followed by the visit to the UK by Vice-Premier Li Keqiang when deals worth 2.6 billion U.S. dollars were concluded in January.

Kerry Brown, senior fellow at London-based Chatham House, told China Daily that the key points for the UK are having deeper trade links with China, being partners on environmental issues as well as in high-tech areas, and attracting more Chinese investment.

"China is now a much bigger economy than the UK, and this has happened in a very short period of time. So the UK has to pick its strategic interests with China very carefully, because in many ways it is now a much smaller player," Brown said.

The UK wants to encourage China to further develop its financial sector, an area of British expertise, and to work together on creative industries, Brown added.

Duncan Freeman, senior research fellow from the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said that there are a number of areas where the UK and China can cooperate.

Both sides need to commit themselves to ensuring that their economies remain open to trade and investment and guarantee that stable long-term growth is achieved through sustainable policies, Freeman said.

Wen addressed the Royal Society in London on Monday afternoon.

He arrived in Berlin late on Monday and will hold a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday.

Source:China Daily

 

[Brotherhood]

China placing priority on biotechnology - People's Daily Online June 28, 2011

industry is expected to generate 1 million jobs and reduce emissions of the most common pollutants by 10 percent, said Ma Hongjian, deputy director of China National Center for Biotechnology Development. (Photo / China Daily)

China will spend 2 trillion yuan ($308.5 billion) on science and technology, making biotechnology a major priority, in the next five years, Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong said at the ongoing 2011 International Conference for Bio-economy (Bio Eco 2011).

The Chinese Government will work to further combine biotechnology with economic development and with improving ordinary people's livelihood, Liu said.

"The development priorities of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) - biopharmacy, bio-engineering, bio-agriculture and biomanufacturing - will bring benefits to Chinese people."

In the next five years, China will further use biotechnology to prevent disasters or alleviate the harm caused by them, to protect the environment, to employ "green" construction methods and to control climate change. Meanwhile, the latest innovations in biotechnology should be relied on to guarantee domestic standards are met for nutrition, hygiene, healthcare, food and drug safety and disease diagnosis and prevention, Liu stressed.

Liu's opinion was echoed by Percy W. Misika, a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative in China. Misika contended that the energy shortage is getting increasingly severe in the world. Biotechnology should be employed in campaigns to make food safer and to combat climate change.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the Chinese Government will spend 20 billion yuan on innovative medicine, on the cultivation of new varieties of genetically modified organisms and on the prevention and control of viral hepatitis and other infectious diseases, according to Ma Hongjian, deputy director of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development.

Biotechnology has become a strategic pillar industry for China. From 2011 to 2015, it is expected to generate 1 million jobs, extend people's life expectancies by one year and reduce the infant mortality rate to 12 percent, as well as reduce emissions of the most common pollutants by 10 percent, Ma elaborated.

Huang Xingguo, mayor of Tianjin municipality, said the city has become a center for the production of biotechnology products in China.

Bio Eco 2011 is being held in Tianjin from Sunday to Tuesday. Sponsored by both the Tianjin Municipal government and 14 state ministries, the conference has the motto: "Develop the bio-economy, improve people's livelihoods".

Source:China Daily

 

[Brotherhood]

Economy Volumes set to rise at Shanghai Port - People's Daily Online June 28, 201

Shanghai International Port (Group) Co expects the volume of business in the Port of Shanghai to rise by about 10 percent a year during the next five years.(Photo / China Daily)

Shanghai port, the world's busiest for containers, expects business volumes to rise about 10 percent annually for the next five years. That will come as manufacturers open plants in western and inland China in search of lower-cost labor.

Rising production in these regions has benefited Shanghai because of increasing cargo volumes along the Yangtze River, said Chen Xuyuan, president of the harbor operator Shanghai International Port (Group) Co, in a June 23 interview. The river, Asia's longest, stretches 6,397 kilometers across China before meeting the East China Sea at Shanghai.

The Yangtze River Delta "will continue to be the main region driving China's economic expansion", Chen said. The river handled 1.34 billion tons of cargo in 2009, more than triple the volume in 2000, according to government data.

Shanghai's container traffic may rise 12 percent this year, enough to retain its crown for cargo-box volumes over Singapore, Chen said.

Volumes leapt 16 percent in 2010 as the end of the global recession triggered a surge in shipments of Chinese-made auto parts, furniture and toys to the United States and Europe. "Last year, we saw incredible growth," Chen said. "This year, traffic is growing at a more normal and healthy pace."

Shanghai handled 12.7 million containers in the first five months of this year, compared with 12.1 million by Singapore.

Apple Inc supplier Foxconn Technology Group and Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Ltd. are among the companies to have opened factories in inland provinces because of lower wages and government incentives. The government has encouraged the trend to spread economic growth beyond coastal regions including the Pearl River Delta in Southern China.

Shanghai last year surpassed Singapore as the world's busiest container port.

Source:China Daily/Bloomberg News

 

[Brotherhood]

State-of-the-art library opens for China's blind - People's Daily Online June 29, 2011

The Beijing-based Chinese National Library for the Blind opened a new location on Tuesday that features Braille books, audio-books and exhibitions.

The library, founded in 1994, had been hampered by lack of space and outdated facilities at its previous location, according to a notice posted by the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF) on its official website.

The new location has 28,000 square meters and is divided into many sections that includes training and exhibition areas.

The new library boasts a collection of over 50,000 Braille books, large-lettered books and audio-books.

It also features state-of-the-art technology to aid blind people in reading, such as a special reading device that contains a scanner and a speaker.

Readers scan a page of book and put the storage card into a speaker, then the book will be read aloud.

Yu Shixiang, a blind masseur in Beijing, said this tool enables the blind to read any book.

Facilities in the library are designed in a user-friendly way for blind people.

"The tables are specially designed for us, as Braille books are quite heavy, and tables are adjusted low," Yu said. "There are also places for us to store our canes."

Zhang Haidi, chairwoman of the CDPF, said blind people in China now have access to a fantastic library where they can learn in order to keep pace with modern life and improve their lives.

China has 12.33 million visually impaired people, according to the CDPF.

Source: Xinhua

 

[Brotherhood]

Partnership formed for homegrown C919 plane - People's Daily Online June 29, 2011


The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd (COMAC), which is undertaking the construction of large domestic passenger jets, began its first joint venture on Tuesday with a foreign company in the hope of using world-class manufacturing techniques in the production of the homegrown C919 airplane.

The partnership between the Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co Ltd (SAMC), a subsidiary of COMAC, and the United States-based Eaton Corp, a company specializing in systems used to control and distribute energy, is among 17 strategic agreements COMAC has reached with various aviation companies.

The Eaton SAMC (Shanghai) Aircraft Conveyance System Co Ltd will be situated in the Shanghai Pudong Lujiazui Software Park and will concentrate on the design, development and manufacture of the fuel and hydraulic conveyance systems needed for COMAC's production of the C919, said Lu Xiao'an, the director of the new venture.

The conveyance system will transport fuel through a network of pipes running throughout the plane. The design of the system will thus have a direct effect on an aircraft's performance.

Craig Arnold, vice-chairman and chief operating officer of Eaton, said the official opening of the joint venture is an important addition to the international cooperation taking place on the C919 project.

"We are greatly honored to be a part of this important project and to be a part of the growing aviation industry in China," Arnold said. "Together we will utilize the best civil aviation technology, world-class manufacturing capabilities, and proven management practices to create a globally competitive company."

Eaton has a long history of supplying fuel and hydraulic conveyance systems and currently collaborates with Boeing, Airbus and other aircraft manufacturers.

SAMC will be the controlling party of the new venture, holding 51 percent of the shares. The remaining 49 percent will go to Eaton, and the amount of registered capital in the venture will total $18 million.

According to Jin Zhuanglong, general manager of COMAC, the venture was granted a business license in March and is dedicated to developing techniques required for designing and building conveyance systems for the global civil aviation market.

The design stage of the C919, which will be the first Chinese-made trunk-line passenger aircraft, will be completed by the end of next year and the aircraft will make its maiden flight in late 2014 before being delivered to buyers in 2016.

So far, COMAC has received more than 100 orders for the C919, said Jin.

Once in service, the C919, the equivalent of the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320, is expected to lessen the country's dependence on foreign aircraft manufacturers.

Source:China Daily

 

[Martian2]

China opens 'marathon' bridge
TelegraphTV - 35 minutes ago
The 26.4 mile-long Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, the world's longest bridge over water, opens for traffic in China.

 

[Brotherhood]

Some pictures following up the excellent video of Martian2: The Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. The bridge, world's longest cross-sea bridge:

Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge comes on stream - People's Daily Online June 30, 2011

Photo taken on June 29, 2011 shows an aerial view of Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. The bridge, world's longest cross-sea bridge with length of 36.48 kilometers, connects the urban district of Qingdao City to its Huangdao district. The bridge will shorten the route between the two centers by 30 km, cutting travel time down from over 40 minutes to around 20 minutes, said Han Shouxin, deputy director of the city's traffic management committee. Previously, the longest cross-sea bridge in the world was the 36-km-long Hangzhou Bay Cross-sea Bridge that connects the cities of Jiaxing and Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province. The Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge comes on stream on Thursday morning. (Xinhua)

 

[Brotherhood]

World's longest gas pipeline operates in China - People's Daily Online June 30, 2011

China's second east-west natural gas pipeline went into operation on Thursday.

The pipeline, connecting central Asia and China, will send natural gas from Turkmenistan to East China's Pearl River Delta after passing through 15 of the country's provinces.

The pipeline is the world's longest, with a total length of 8,700 km. The pipeline was built with 142.2 billion yuan ($21.98 billion) in investments.

Source: Xinhua

 

[Brotherhood]

China's minimum wage to grow over 13% annually over next 5 years - People's Daily Online June 30, 2011

China's minimum wage will grow by an average rate of at least 13 percent over the next five years, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said on Wednesday.

Minimum wages in most parts of the country will reach more than 40 percent of the average income of local urban residents by 2015, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

During the first quarter this year, 13 provinces raised their minimum wages amid rising inflationary pressure and growing concern over China's widening wealth gap. The increases averaged 20.6 percent.

The statutory minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen is 1,320 yuan (about 203 U.S. dollars), the highest level in China, while Beijing has the highest hourly rate of 13 yuan, the statement said.

The ministry also vowed to reduce income disparity between different industries over the next five years.

China aims to increase urban and rural per capita net income by more than 7 percent per year in real terms over the five years to 2015.

Source:Xinhua

 

[acetophenol]

China Opens World's Longest Sea Bridge — and Three Other Record-Breakers

Three of the bridges – including the two longest ever built – are part of the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway which made its first commercial trip earlier today. The Jiaozhou Bay bridge, which is the world's longest over-water bridge at 26.4 miles, also opened today. This bridge connects the port city of Qingdao to the suburban Huangdao on the other side of the bay. China, with the world's largest population, deals with often-crippling transportation congestion issues, so the government has spent billions of dollars in recent years to alleviate these issues.
(PHOTOS: Flooding in China)
“It is a magnificent and very advanced bridge,” Li Qun, the local Communist party secretary, said at the bridge's opening ceremony, according to the Telegraph. “It is another stepping stone in the city's smooth and rapid development.”
Cost figures for the Jiaozhou Bay bridge, which is expected to carry 30,000 cars a day, vary widely: State-run CCTV reported that the cost was more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) and the Xinhua news agency put the cost at $2.3 billion, and some estimates have put the cost at more than $8.8 billion.
For that cost, the Jiaozhou Bay bridge is seriously sturdy. The Guinness Book of World Records announced that "the earthquake- and typhoon-proof bridge ... is designed to withstand the impact of a 300,000-ton vessel."
Although the bridge will be free to use for the next month, government officials indicated that they plan to eventually charge a toll of 50 yuan ($7.70). The bridge has six lanes, is about 110 feet wide, and officials estimate that it will halve the journey from Qingdao to Huangdao to about 30 minutes.
The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is the sixth longest bridge ever built, and breaks the record for world's longest over-water bridge by more than 2.5 miles, beating the United States' Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.
The Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway, is a project that began in 2008, and, in making that trip in under four hours, more than halved the previous 10-hour run time of a parallel train. It cost approximately $33 billion to build and is expected to carry 80 million passengers a year, doubling the route's capacity.
In building the railway, the Chinese government constructed three large over-land bridges: the 102-mile long Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, the 71-mile long Tianjin Grand Bridge and the 30-mile Beijing Grand Bridge – the first, second, and fifth longest bridges in the world respectively.
Eleven of the world's 15 longest bridges are located in China.


Read more: China Opens World’s Longest Sea Bridge

 

[Way to go]

World's longest gas pipeline operates in China - People's Daily Online

China should import more oil and gas from Kazakhstan and other Central Asia countries. Russia is not a reliable business partner. China should not build any pipeline to Russia.

 

[no_name]

^^^ Putin and other russian officials actually have doubt that china is a reliable customer. In fact the development of pipelines relies quite a bit on chinese labour and expertise, and encroachment on russian far east by chinese influence is what they don't want to see.

Current pipeline cooperation benefits china more.

And Peter the great did absolutely the right thing (from their point of view) expanding russian borders to the east.

 

[Brotherhood]

Rail linking Europe expected to open up China's less-developed West - People's Daily Online July 02, 2011

A cargo train filled with laptops and LCD screens has left Chongqing, a mega-city in China's less-developed western regions, starting its 13-day trip to Duisburg, Germany, which marks the official launch of the new transcontinental rail freight route.

The new rail route witnessed its official opening on Thursday night, after three test runs since March last year.

Clattering out of the station at about 9 p.m., the cargo train is set to travel 11,179 kilometers across the far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, before finally reaching Germany.

The route offers a major shortcut to the more traditional sea trade routes from Shanghai and Guangzhou, cutting travel time to Europe from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train, said Huang Qifan, mayor of the inland business hub.

Huang said that the train is also safer and less expensive than sea transport.

Though the rails have been there for over ten years, the route is new as no train services linking Chongqing and Europe have been provided before due to complicated customs checks and cargo transfers, according to Ma Zhongyuan, director of Chongqing customs.

Last year, China signed a strategic agreement with Russia and Kazakhstan to open the new freight route, as the country is trying to build the inland labor-rich municipality into an international high-tech hub, especially for laptops.

Foxconn, the world's biggest contract electronics supplier, Acer, Taiwan's leading computer maker, and Hewlett-Packard(HP) are already in place in Chongqing to produce laptops.

In the first five months this year, Chongqing sold 2.43 million laptop computers abroad. The exports were valued at 840 million U.S. dollars, accounting for 20 percent of the city's total export value.

The city's export of new- and high-tech products totaled 14.26 billion in the period, up 182.5 percent year-on-year.

Officials believe the shorter transport time to Europe by railway will make made-in Chongqing notebook computers more competitive.

Last month, a new cargo air route also became available between Chongqing and the European cities of Moscow and Luxembourg.

The province-sized city is already a major transport center at the junction of China's prosperous East and poorer West, as cargo can be sent out of Chongqing along the Yangtze River, the country's longest waterway,via air and railway.

The new rail route will be used to link south China's Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub and the country's southwest industrial belt with Europe, officials said.

Just last mouth, a rail route connecting Chongqing and a port in the southern manufacturing hub of Shenzhen went into operation.

The transcontinental track will also boost trade between southeast Asia and the Europe, as railways have already linked Chongqing with the southwestern border province of Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Cai Jin, vice president of the China Logistics and Purchasing Association.

Currently, the train only leaves Chongqing for Duisburg once a month, but train services may be increased to once per day in the future as the city's exports to Europe increase, according to Huang.

Source: Xinhua