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Chinese police investigate death of senior Qingdao port customs officer
By Fayen Wong,Reuters

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese police are investigating the death from unnatural causes of the deputy commissioner of customs at Qingdao port which is under investigation for alleged commodity financing fraud, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.
Xinhua said Qingdao Customs Deputy Commissioner Bian Peiquan died on Aug. 5. It did not give any further details.

Global banks including HSBC and Standard Chartered have launched legal action since Chinese authorities started a probe into whether the firm at the center of the allegations, Decheng Mining, used fake warehouse receipts to obtain multiple loans at Qingdao port. Decheng Mining has not commented on the case.

(Reporting by Fayen Wong and Polly Yam; Editing by Paul Tait, Ed Davies and Michael Perry)

Hey BoQ77, here's something for you:

Companies not Biting at Vietnam's "Generous" FDI incentives

You should post more of your country's failing economically and militarily and focus less on China threads. :lol:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/business/economists-balk-at-vietnams-overlygenerous-fdi-incentives-29422.html
 
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local call these three build 3 sets of kitchen ware. 1. whisk 2. injector 3. bottle opener :D
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Wow, it seems like some people think every country is as stupid as their own...Cooperate with china=money, against china=no money, very fair deal, very clear answers.
 
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Myanmar one's selling point is that they are a Chinese bridgehead to the Indian Ocean. If they cannot even capitalize on this one strength, then they are doomed to languish in poverty forever. I would hope that they come to their senses sooner or later :coffee:.

Also they have a lot of Oil & natural Gas deposits there
 
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India's Micromax—which didn't exist six years ago—ranks as the country's best-selling cellphone brand.Bloomberg News

NEW DELHI—Indian cellphone makers that made their names undercutting the prices of big global brands such as Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +1.60% and Apple Inc.AAPL +0.28% are now being challenged at their own game as Chinese brands land in India.

Micromax Informatics Ltd. and Karbonn Mobiles came from relative obscurity in India to dominate the world's second-biggest telecommunications market, after China, by the number of handsets sold. But they are stuck in a pricing and features war for Indian buyers of low-cost phones, as Chinese cellphone startups such as Xiaomi Inc., Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp. and Gionee Communication Equipment Co. set their sights on Indian consumers who value a product's cost rather than its brand name.

"To counter the competition of Chinese brands, both local handset vendors and foreign brands need to [offer] the existing set of device features at even lower price points," said Tarun Pathak, a telecom analyst at Cyber Media Research.

Cyber Media, based in New Delhi, estimates that Chinese brands have less than a 5% market share right now, but the surge in the market share of previously unknown Indian brands shows how quickly market dominance can change when the South Asian consumer is offered a product at the right price.

In 2008, the top Indian brands had a market share of a little more than 1%, according to data from research firm IDC. That share has now surged to more than 40%.

Micromax—which didn't exist six years ago—dethroned Samsung as the best-selling cellphone brand in India in the second quarter, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research, a research-and-consulting company based in Hong Kong. With backing from venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, Micromax has captured the Indian market by offering phones at 30% lower prices than the big global brands and building its name through a nationwide advertising campaign.

Gionee—one of China's larger cellphone makers—wants to pull off the same kind of surge in market share in India. It currently has about a 3% market share, up from 1% last year. "We have been able to take away market share from both multinational companies as well as domestic brands" by offering a range of phones at competitive prices, said Arvind Vohra, India head for Gionee smartphones.

Oppo, another handset maker from China that introduced its own line of cellphones earlier this year, has been ramping up its presence in India, with mobile phones priced as low as 8,990 rupees, or about $150.

"Our pricing is reasonable, giving home-grown brands good competition," said Tom Lu, chief executive of Oppo's India operations.

Cellphone companies are pursuing Indian consumers such as engineering student Shehzaad, who lives in Meerut, a town near Delhi. He says he has always avoided the big global brands to save a few rupees and recently gave up his Micromax phone for a Gionee phone.

"It has more features than Micromax, qualitywise it is better and is much cheaper," said the 20-year-old, who goes by only one name.

The weak spot for the Chinese newcomers is their distribution network in India, where most of the more than 1.2 billion population lives outside of the big cities. One of India's leading low-cost brands, Karbonn Mobiles, for example, already reaches more than 85,000 retail outlets.

The Chinese brands are hoping they can attract consumers using online sales. Selling directly to consumers saves as much as 30% on the cost of a handset, said Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin.

Xiaomi will be selling through Flipkart Internet Pvt., India's largest online store, while Oppo sells its handset on the Indian version of Amazon, Amazon.in.

Chinese handset companies will also need to build service centers. Indian consumers use their phones for a longer period than their global peers. Any new brands that can't fix broken phones are likely to get a bad reputation.

Oppo already plans to set up more than 200 service centers by next May in India, while Gionee plans to have about 750 places where its phones can be fixed by 2015.

Karbonn Mobiles co-founder Pardeep Jain said he doubts the Chinese companies will be able to catch up with their Indian competition.

"I don't see any threat from them," Mr. Jain said. "If anything happens in the future, we'll also do something to match them."

The Indian companies know that the shortcut to capturing market share in India is to sell their products at a few dollars less than the competition. Still, if necessary, it might be difficult for the Indian brands to undercut the Chinese manufacturers on price.

For example, Gionee's Elife smartphone sells for about the same price as the Micromax Canvas Knight handset, at $330. But the Chinese phone looks like a much better deal because it is lighter and has better picture quality. Gionee also claims that its phone is the slimmest in the world.

"Indian handset vendors definitely need to keep a check on the price," said Karan Thakkar, a telecom analyst at IDC.


http://online.wsj.com/articles/arri...r-in-india-1407493144?mod=WSJ_hp_EditorsPicks
 
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On taking office last year, President Xi Jinping had a sizeable in-tray of problems to fix — from a slowing economy and worries over debt, to toxic pollution and a dangerous property bubble.

And after last November’s Party Plenum, hopes were raised for an epochal policy overhaul to match Deng Xiaoping’s reforms three decades earlier. Yet so far, President Xi’s big idea appears to be reining in bad behavior. But could this be a reform program in disguise?

The anti-corruption campaign started out as merely curbing government officials’ extravagance through gift-giving and grand banquets. But later it extended far wider and began to net some more unlikely targets, from the foreign drug company GlaxoSmithKline GSK +0.50% UK:GSK +0.22% (accused of bribery) to retired Standing Committee member and former security czar Zhou Yongkang (accused of corruption).

Investors quickly learned not to underestimate this policy shift, as the end of the good life on the state tab hit luxury goods hard. Scottish whisky sales were down 41% last year in China, while Hong Kong has seen trade in watches, jewelry and other high-end products fall by more than a quarter. Fiat SpA’s IT:F +3.36% FIATY +4.04% Ferrari was reportedly forced to close a string of dealerships in China.

Now, with no signs of the corruption campaign abating, it may be possible to argue the moves are part of wider reform.

Rather than an old-fashioned political purge as a new leader takes office, perhaps the graft fight goes hand-in-hand with reforming state-owned enterprises?

One of the big ideas of reform this time around was to introduce more market-based prices and private competition in order to boost efficiency.

But take a step back, and you can see how this would be difficult in practice.

The first problem is the scale of the graft problem: A survey in 2012 by the China Society of Economic Reform estimated that gray income accounts for $1 trillion, or 12% of China’s economy.

Secondly, if you start with a mixture of state and crony capitalism, where bribes and connections determine who gets business, introducing new players may make little difference.

If you don’t first tackle these non-market distortions, bribes will remain a barrier to entry, or just be paid by someone else.

So the priority of this policy is understandable, although the downside risk is that its unpopularity could expose the new leadership to a challenge. Indeed, this was alluded to last week by President Xi, as he was quoted as saying that he had decided to disregard “life and death, as well as reputation, in the combat against corruption.”

One area where the anti-corruption campaign could help in supporting policy rebalancing is in energy.

A policy shift is badly needed to tackle pollution as China seeks to reduce its dependence on coal, which currently accounts for almost three-quarters of its energy mix. This requires China to step up its oil and gas exploration, as well as to look at unconventional resources.

One reason China has been slow to emulate the U.S. with its shale-gas success, despite China’s own substantial reserves, has been a domestic industry plagued by corruption and rent-seeking behavior.

A series of recent arrests targeting graft in the petrochemical industry can be interpreted as a first step towards allowing a more level playing field to encourage investment.

Meanwhile, as China steps up its offshore energy exploration, a related industry we can expect to get a lift is offshore engineering. China has signaled its intent to be rig builder to the world, and already last year, it has surpassed Singapore as the world’s No. 1 builder of jack-up drilling rigs.

Meanwhile, some other problems in Xi’s in-tray appear to have been left in the “too difficult” or “too dangerous” pile.

Policies aimed at curbing high property prices and levels of debt in the economy also appear to have little support. Dozens of cities have now removed curbs on multiple home purchases, while credit has kept flowing.

The calculation here appears to be that the potential fallout for local authorities’ finances from a weak property market outweighs the wider need for affordable housing. There also seems to be no stomach for the pain that goes with a tightening credit cycle, meaning these potentially serious problems have been kicked down the road for now.

Yet overall, this suggests China’s reform program is unlikely to look like what we might expect in the West — or what the IMF might recommend. It is likely to be somewhat messy, but there are still some parts which could pay dividends.

China’s anti-corruption drive: Is it reform in disguise? - Craig Stephen's This Week in China - MarketWatch
 
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NEW DELHI, Aug 11, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ZTE Corporation welcomes the decision by the High Court of Delhi last week in favor of the company in a patent litigation with Vringo Inc. and its subsidiary.

The court lifted an ex-parte temporary injunction against certain ZTE products, including base station controllers based on GSM technology, in the ruling concerning India Patent No. 200572.

A separate litigation in India involving ZTE and Vringo concerning India Patent No. 243980 is ongoing.

ZTE reserves the right to pursue further legal action against Vringo and its subsidiaries in India and other jurisdictions to protect the interests of ZTE and customers. ZTE is committed to defending the company and our subsidiaries against patent-related claims initiated by Vringo entities in litigations in Europe, Asia and South America.

As one of the world’s leading technology innovators, ZTE respects the intellectual property of other companies, having completed dozens of global intellectual property licensing agreements with holders including Ericsson, Siemens, Dolby Laboratories, Qualcomm, and Microsoft.

ZTE is committed to investment in intellectual property and compliance management to safeguard the company’s business operations and commercial interests. In the past five years, ZTE’s research and development spending exceeded RMB 40 billion. As of mid-2014, ZTE has filed applications for more than 53,000 patents globally, with more than 17,000 granted so far.

ZTE retained its global top-2 position in patent applications in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s annual rankings published this year, after being the top-ranked company in each of the previous two years.

SOURCE: ZTE Corporation
 
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