1. AP: Senate approves Max Baucus as China ambassador
The Senate easily confirmed longtime Sen. Max Baucus on Thursday to become ambassador to China, handing the job to a lawmaker well-versed in U.S.
trade policy but with little expertise about military and other issues that have raised tensions with Beijing. Senators gave final approval to the nomination of the moderate Baucus, D-Mont., by 96-0. Trim and youthful looking for his 72 years, Baucus accepted colleagues' congratulations before and during the roll call and voted "present" for his own nomination. Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus has worked with Republicans during his 35 years in the Senate on issues ranging from taxes to health care reform — an independent streak that has vexed Democratic colleagues. Baucus supported GOP President George W. Bush's sweeping 2001 tax cuts and his 2003 creation of Medicare prescription drug benefits, despite opposition by most Democrats. He also helped write President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul. Congress approved that measure solely with Democratic votes after Baucus spent months trying to craft a bipartisan version with Republicans. "I'm proud to stand up for it, because it is helping millions of Americans," Baucus said in farewell remarks on the Senate floor after Thursday's vote, defending a law that Republicans are making a top issue this election year.
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2. NYT - Editorial: Tangling with China
The Philippines
is resisting China’s claims in the South China Sea by filing its case with the United Nations arbitration tribunal of judges, which has agreed to hear the case in March at The Hague. President Benigno S. Aquino III has appealed to the international community to support his effort to settle the territorial dispute through rule of law. China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, which is resource-rich with fish and potentially oil and gas, while the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan make partial claims. The Filipino foreign affairs secretary, Albert
del Rosario, said the Philippines took its case to United Nations arbitration as the only viable option after exhausting all diplomatic avenues with China. Following the filing by the Philippines in January last year, China has kept paramilitary ships on station in the disputed area, harassing Filipino fishing and commercial boats. China has made it clear that it will not participate in the United Nations arbitration tribunal and demanded a negotiated settlement with the Philippines. The tribunal, which can make a ruling without China’s participation, will decide whether rock formations claimed by China, some fully submerged, qualify as territory from which maritime claims can be made. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, states have a territorial right that extends 12 nautical miles offshore and a 200 nautical mile economic exclusion zone for fishing and mining natural resources. The tribunal cannot rule on the sovereignty of a rock or an island, and its ruling has no enforceable mechanism. While China is a signatory to the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, it opted out of international jurisdiction over some territorial issues. Still, with tensions rising with China’s claims in the South and East China Seas, the international community should make clear that China should abide by the rule of law and heed the United Nations arbitration ruling. What the Philippines started is not just a matter for the Philippines but an important step for the international community to support.
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3. WSJ: China pumps up the volume against Japan
Normally camera-shy envoys are speaking out loud and clear against Tokyo.
Xie Xiaoyan, China's ambassador to Ethiopia, holds up a photo of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a fighter jet. The number '731' was also used by a World War II Japanese military unit that experimented on humans. An official from Japan's Defense Ministry has said the jet's numbering was a coincidence. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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4: LAT: In China, Apple will engrave iPads — if the words aren't too political
'Taiwan independence,' '1989 Tiananmen protest,' 'Falun Gong' and 'Dalai Lama' don't make the cut, but 'American independence' does.
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5. WSJ: China to create unified pension system
China's State Council, or cabinet, said it will establish a unified pension system for residents in both rural and urban areas to boost consumption and encourage labor mobility. The funding will come from contributions from individuals, the central government, local governments and social institutions, the State Council said in a statement Friday on the central government's website. The central government will fully cover pension payouts in the nation's central and western areas and will pay half of the pension in eastern regions, the statement said. The government will also step up spending on pensions, the statement said. It didn't give a time frame for establishing a national pension system. China's weak social safety net has led people to save more for medical care and retirement and spend less, many China researchers and economists have said.
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6. NYT: Amid raft of Chinese financial numbers, one to watch carefully
China’s slowing growth and sputtering industrial output have helped fuel a global fall in stock prices this year. Economists are divided on whether ballooning debt in the world’s second-biggest economy will trigger a full-blown financial crisis or whether China, as it has time and again, will manage to defy the pessimists and continue to outgrow its neighbors. In the search for answers, here is one figure to watch: the price the China Development Bank pays to borrow money. The China Development Bank is the biggest policy bank in the world, with a loan book of more than $1 trillion that makes the World Bank look like an also-ran. It lends hundreds of billions of dollars across the globe, from Venezuela to Myanmar. But by far its biggest customers are at home, the focus of three-quarters of its lending. What is a mystery to Mr. Andrews of UBS is why the China Development Bank has to pay so much more to borrow money when the main buyers of its bonds are state-owned banks. What is not a mystery is that the bank’s costs started rising in the middle of last year. That coincided with a liquidity crunch in
China but was also weeks after the development bank’s long-serving chairman, Chen Yuan, stepped down. The son of the top economic planner in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, Mr. Chen’s “
princeling” status gave the bank unusual clout. No one at the China Development Bank’s media office in Beijing answered the phone when called Friday.
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7. WSJ: Increased flow of money into China could spur reform
China soaked up more money from the rest of the world last year than in 2012, official data show, which could increase pressure on Beijing to introduce long-awaited financial reforms. The increased flows into China could rekindle criticism of Beijing's economic policies from the U.S.
during an election year there. It could also put those policies under a spotlight when China hosts an October meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, a group that includes many nations eager to see
better balance in their financial and trading relationship with Beijing. This year "is likely to be the year when China's [international payments imbalances] re-emerges as a problem for both China and the world," Stephen Green, an economist with Standard Charterer, said in a recent note. International critics have considered such imbalances and the accumulation of reserves by China's central bank as evidence that China was keeping its currency artificially low versus other currencies. A weaker
yuan makes China's exports more attractive abroad. Some of that criticism has been dampened in recent years by signs that the Chinese economy is becoming more balanced in relation to the rest of the world. Data released Friday
showing China's balance of payments last year suggests the trend may be reversing.
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8. Reuters: At prayer breakfast, Obama talks faith and foreign policy
President Barack Obama pressed for greater religious freedom in China and offered prayers for U.S.
prisoners in North Korea and Iran on Thursday during remarks at an annual prayer breakfast that highlighted his Christian faith. Obama, who attended the breakfast at a Washington hotel with his wife, Michelle, used the high profile event to renew calls for the release of two men held by U.S.
adversaries in Asia and the Middle East. Obama said religious freedom, protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, was under threat around the world and he singled out China and Burma, also known as Myanmar, as countries that needed to do better on the issue. "When I meet with Chinese leaders - and we do a lot of business with the Chinese, and that relationship is extraordinarily important not just to our two
countries but to the world - but I stress that realizing China's potential rests on upholding universal rights, including for Christians, and Tibetan Buddhists, and Uighur Muslims," Obama said to applause.
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9. AP: U.S. economy adds a modest 113,000 jobs in January
Hiring was surprisingly weak in January for the second straight month, likely renewing concern that the U.S.
economy might be slowing after a strong finish last year. The Labor Department says employers added 113,000 jobs, less than the average monthly gain of 194,000 in 2013. This follows December's tepid increase of just 75,000. Job gains have averaged only 154,000 the past three months, down from 201,000 in the preceding three months. Still, more people began looking for work in January, a sign that they were optimistic about finding work. Some of these people found jobs, thereby reducing the unemployment rate to 6.6 percent. That's the lowest rate since October 2008. Cold weather likely held back hiring in December, economists said, but the impact faded in January. Construction firms, which sometimes stop
work in bad weather, added 48,000 jobs last month.
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10. Xinhua: Ambassador to Beijing -- no picnic for Baucus
The US Senate on Thursday confirmed Senator Max Baucus as the next ambassador to China, a key post in promoting one of the world's most important bilateral relations. Baucus, known for his rich experience in trade issues and support for Obama's
healthcare reform, has been the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee since 2007, which oversees tax, trade and
healthcare policy. He, who has traveled to China for more than a half dozen times, is notably a China expert, especially on economic and trade affairs, which makes him a wise choice for Washington to deal with the world's second largest and most vibrant economy. The 73-year-old senator was the key person that facilitated the entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 and boosted the normal development of economic ties with Beijing during his previous roles. However, Baucus has also adopted a hard line against China's trade practices and currency exchange rate. With a mixed record on the economic front, Baucus will start his new job at a time when relations between the United States and China are often disturbed by
political squabble over the South China Sea.
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11. Xinhua: China to unify rural, urban pension systems
China will integrate the basic old-age insurance systems for rural and urban residents to allow people to have equal access to the pension scheme, according to an executive meeting of the State Council on Friday. China's separate systems for rural residents and retired company employees in urban areas have basically included everyone in the country, according to the meeting. China will integrate the two systems and build a unified pension system covering both urban and rural residents, said the meeting. The meeting, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, said the move will facilitate population movement and build stable expectations for livelihood improvement. It will also boost consumption and encourage more business
start-ups, said the meeting.
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12. CD: M&A deals reach record high in 2013
The value of deals announced in the Chinese mergers and acquisition market reached a record high in 2013. The restructuring of State-owned enterprises and initial public offering resumption will help its development in 2014, reports said. A report by Thomson Reuters said that Chinese M&A deals in 2013 totaled $261.9 billion, with energy and power being the most popular sectors. By value, these sectors comprised 17.8 percent of all deals.
The report said that last year, the investment amount of cross-border M&As was $96.4 billion, the highest total in the past five years. The investment amount of outbound M&A deals came to $61.9 billion, increasing 8.8 percent year-on-year, which also was the highest total since 2009. The United States was the preferred destination for Chinese outbound M&A deals, totaling $12.2 billion in 2013, an increase of 96.6 percent year-on-year. The $7 billion acquisition of Smithfield
Food Inc by
Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd (recently renamed WH Group Ltd) was the main reason for the increase, Thomson Reuters said.
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13. CD: Trade frictions with the EU likely to grow
China and the European Union may face a fresh round of trade friction as Brussels is planning harsher trade defenses against Chinese imports. EU trade chief Karel de Gucht is seeking to update the tools that Brussels uses to fight "unfair trade practices" and which date from before China's transformation into a powerful exporter, Reuters reported on Thursday. Some in Europe say the rules are too soft. The European Parliament pressed the trade chief on Wednesday to build stronger defenses against cheap imports from China. EU lawmakers want to make it easier for small companies to take on countries that flout world trade rules by exporting goods at below the cost of production. Legislators also want to do away with a European rule that limits punitive sanctions to only what is absolutely necessary to correct any injury caused by illegally subsidized imports, Reuters said. The Parliament's position is "a lot more radical", Christofer Fjellner, the lawmaker leading negotiations with the European Commission on the issue, was quoted as saying. The commission is the 28-nation bloc's trade authority in Brussels.
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14. Reuters: Google to own $750 million Lenovo stake after Motorola deal closes
Internet search company Google Inc will own a 5.94 percent stake in China's Lenovo Group Ltd worth $750 million once Lenovo's deal to buy Google's Motorola handset division closes, according to a disclosure on the Hong Kong stock exchange
.Google would take 618.3 million Lenovo shares at $1.213 per share, the stock exchange said late on Thursday. Lenovo agreed to buy Google's Motorola handset division last week for $2.91 billion in a cash and stock deal.
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15. Bloomberg: Baucus as China ambassador sets off election-year shifts
Montana’s governor as soon as today will choose a U.S. Senate successor to former Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, whose confirmation as ambassador to China is setting off a series of political changes. The Senate voted 96-0 yesterday to approve the chamber’s top Democratic leader on taxes, trade and health care for one of the toughest U.S.
diplomatic posts. Montana Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat, will appoint a replacement as soon as today to complete the final 11 months of Baucus’s term, a move that may help the party hold the seat in the November election. His departure also will cause a leadership change at the Senate Finance and Energy committees. Baucus has said he will work to boost trade with China and press that nation over issues including computer-security breaches. “The United States-China relationship I believe is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world,” Baucus said on the Senate floor yesterday. “It will shape global affairs for generations. We must get it right.”
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16. Neiman Reports: The state of journalism in China
The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China.
Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is used to delete “sensitive” entries from the Internet. Domestic journalists who step over the invisible line of what’s permissible face being fired or even arrested, while foreign journalists face various forms of government intimidation. How reporters are trying to work around China's resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.
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