1. USA Today: U.S. businesses battle rising costs, rip-offs in China
As more Chinese
get behind the wheel, the Ford Focus has become the best-selling passenger car in China,
driving Ford China sales up by 67% last month. General Motors broke its own record for February sales, and plans to invest $11
billion with its Chinese joint venture partners by 2016. But most U.S.
companies surveyed by a U.S.
business association have seen China growth slow in both revenue and profitability, and will scale back expansion plans this year. As labor costs rise, U.S.
firms feel targeted by government campaigns, and complain that China still fails to stop local firms copying their intellectual property, the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) reported.
AmCham's annual survey, released Wednesday, found broad optimism about the short-term business outlook, but growing frustrations about issues including unclear laws, unfair licensing requirements that favor domestic companies, difficulties hiring due to smog worries, and Internet censorship that negatively affects companies' ability to conduct business normally. Among the 365 U.S.
companies and individuals who participated, 68% still characterized China's protection of intellectual property as "ineffective," while 40% said foreign companies are singled out in pricing and anti-corruption campaigns conducted by the Chinese government.
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2. WSJ: U.S. Companies fret over China's economy
Half of firms surveyed cite slowdown among their biggest risks.
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3. Reuters: China's smog driving top foreign talent away: U.S. business survey
China's smog is making it harder for foreign firms to convince top executives to work in the country, the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing said on Wednesday, offering some of the strongest evidence yet on how pollution is hurting recruitment. Some 48 percent of the 365 foreign companies that replied to the chamber's annual survey, which covers businesses in China's northern cities, said concerns over air quality were turning senior executives away. Pollution is "a difficulty in recruiting and retaining senior executive talent", said the report. The 2014 figure is a jump from the 19 percent of foreign firms that said smog was a problem for recruitment in 2010. China's slowing economy, however, remained the top risk for companies, the report added. Foreign executives increasingly complain about pollution in China and the perceived impact it is having on the health of themselves and their families. Several high-profile executives have left China in recent years, citing pollution as the main reason for their decision to go.
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4. WSJ: Shanghai stock exchange raises shareholding cap for foreign investors
Foreigners can now collectively own 30% in a single firm.
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5. Bloomberg: China to accelerate measures to stabilize growth
China will speed up construction projects and other measures to support economic growth after a slowdown in industrial output and investment boosted
risks of missing a 7.5 percent expansion target for the year. The nation will “seize the moment to roll out already-determined measures in expanding domestic demand and stabilizing growth,” the State Council, or cabinet, said in a statement last night after a meeting. China will “accelerate preliminary work and construction on key investment projects with
timely assignment of budgeted funds,” the cabinet said. The statement signals that Premier Li Keqiang, who led the meeting, is concerned that the growth goal is becoming more difficult to reach after fixed-asset investment expanded at the slowest January-February pace since 2001 and retail sales showed the weakest gains for the period since 2004. Li is also dealing with
challenges including pollution, debt and increasing risks of defaults in financial products and companies.
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6. Reuters: China developers get approval for private placements
Two Chinese property developers said they have received regulatory approvals to make private placements of shares, paving the way for more real estate firms to raise funds after a near four-year ban by authorities on real estate companies from seeking new financing. Chinese developers Tianjin Tianbao Infrastructure Co.
and Join
.In Holding Co., received regulatory approval to sell yuan-denominated A shares in private placements, according to separate statements to Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The latest approvals, which come amid growing fears of defaults in the property sector after the collapse of
Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate, will pave the way for more developers
to raise capital and alleviate crash crunches.
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7. WSJ: Falling yuan curbs cash entering China
Chinese currency trades past its previous 1% band for the first time.
WSJ Back to Top
8. FT: China to shift Beijing bureaucrats to Baoding
China’s government
is planning to shift parts of its vast bureaucracy to a city 150km from Beijing, causing shares in companies linked to the struggling metropolis to surge in anticipation. Within an hour of the announcement of the plan to move state bureaus and government institutes
to Baoding, a dozen Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed stocks surged and reached the daily trading limit of 10 per cent thanks to their connection to the city.
FT Back to Top
9. USA Today: Michelle Obama, her mother and daughters head to China
First lady Michelle Obama, accompanied by daughters Malia and Sasha and mother Marian Robinson, is off to China Wednesday with plans to make friends, see the sights, promote education, and charm anyone willing to listen. On this, her third solo foreign trip abroad, sticky, tricky issues such as human rights and international trade abuses are decidedly not on her agenda, at least not in an obvious way. She is not expected to be making dramatic pronouncements about, say, women's rights, as former FLOTUS (and possible future POTUS candidate) Hillary Clinton once did on a trip to China. That's not Obama's FLOTUS style. She has turned out to be a skillful blend of first-lady convention and innovation, seamlessly switching from workouts with kids on the White House lawn, to glittery state dinners in couture fashion to "mom-dancing" with Jimmy Fallon on his late-night gab show. But she rarely says or does anything truly controversial or explicitly political, and she isn't planning to start in China.
Associated Press photo
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10. WSJ: Michelle Obama visit to China draws attention to role of first ladies
Weeklong visit will focus on education and try to dissolve tension between two nations.
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11. Xinhua: US companies in China optimistic: survey
US companies in China remained optimistic about the business environment but would be more cautious in making investments due to rising costs and narrowing profit margins, a survey showed on Wednesday. The survey, by the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham-China), showed over 80 percent of the 365 respondents perceive China's investment environment as improving or staying the same.
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12. Caixin: State-owned enterprises slowly letting go
From Shanghai to Guangdong, private investors will be welcomed under a new phase of SOE reform.
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13. CD: Tour adds 'new dimension' to ties
US first lady Michelle Obama will arrive in Beijing on Thursday afternoon to kick off a weeklong, three-city tour of China that analysts said will further advance relations between Beijing and Washington. Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan will join
Obama on a visit to the Forbidden City on Friday and welcome Obama, her daughters Malia and Sasha as well as her mother Marian Robinson for a private dinner event, according to the White House. This will be the first visit to China by a US first lady without the accompaniment of the US president. The Obamas will also tour the Great Wall; see the Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province; and visit a panda reserve in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Michelle Obama will also deliver speeches on bilateral cooperation in education during the tour.
CD Back to Top
14. Xinhua: China adds 3.2 mln cars in first two months
The number of automobiles on China's roads increased by more than 3.2 million in the first two months of 2014, the Ministry of Public Security revealed on Wednesday. Passenger vehicles accounted for 95 percent of the growth. The number of small passenger cars rose rapidly, said the ministry's traffic control bureau. China had 253 million motor vehicles on the roads by the end of February, of which 141 million were cars, statistics from the bureau showed.
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15. SD: Government officials asked to declare property assets
Officials above division level in Beijing and some state ministries and commissions are declaring their housing and property
assets according to
requirements of the country's official property declaration system which aims to prevent corruption, 21st Century Business Herald reported today. Li Shixiang, executive vice major of the capital city told
media earlier this month, that government officials in Beijing, including himself, have already started doing so. Beijing is currently studying detailed plans for execution of its official property declaration system which has
covered detailed information including the size of the houses, their locations, whether they are commodity homes or policy houses, whether they belong to
officials themselves or their families,
etc, according to Li.
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16. Reuters: China in talks with Airbus on possible $20 billion aircraft deal - sources
China is in talks to buy at least 150 Airbus passenger jets potentially worth $20 billion when Xi Jinping pays his first visit to Europe as president at the end of this month, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. In a broad-ranging deal that could help reset trade relations between China and Europe after a bumpy year, China is expected to buy more A330 passenger jets as talks advance to open Airbus's second major factory in the country. The "cabin completion" plant for A330s would bolster Airbus's presence five years after the opening of its first final assembly plant outside Europe in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, where Chinese workers put together A320 jets. The deal could also involve a decision to unfreeze the purchase of 27 A330s blocked by China during a recent row with the European Union over environmental policies.
Reuters photo
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17. LAT: 'Need For Speed' rushing to top at Chinese theaters
What might “Need for Speed” have in common with “Pacific Rim,” “Escape Plan” and “Cloud Atlas”? The Dreamworks driving film might end up being one of those (increasingly less) rare Hollywood movies to perform better in mainland China than stateside. The Aaron Paul-
starrer was released Friday in China, the same day as in the U.S., and kicked up $19.7 million in its first three days, film industry consulting firm Artisan Gateway said. That’s about $2 million ahead of its stateside tally, and the movie accounted for nearly 40% of
receipts at the mainland box office for the full week ending Sunday. Hollywood films took the three top spots this week, with “Robocop” at No. 2 and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” at No. 3.
LAT Back to Top
18. Bloomberg - William Pesek: China to U.S.: Fix your own economy
Watching Chinese officials turn the tables on the U.S., I can't help but wonder if they've been reading Stephen Roach's new book.
Roach is an economist who made his name at Morgan Stanley. But in "Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China," he dons a psychologist's hat to warn about how the "marriage of convenience" between the two biggest economies is going awry in ways that could send bad vibes from Jakarta to Johannesburg. The impending breakup will not be pretty -- especially for the U.S. "This relationship obviously brings important benefits, but there are serious risks," Roach argues. "Psychologists warn that codependency ultimately leads to
identity crisis, denial of responsibility, and the tendency to blame others for problems. China and the United States manifest most aspects of that mutual pathology." That was the
clearly subtext at last month's Group of 20 meeting, where Jacob Lew did what Treasury secretaries do best: call on an Asian economy to ease the U.S. '
s pain. Japan used to be the target of this age-old blame game; now it's China. When asked whether China was doing enough to rebalance its economy away from excessive investment and cheap exports, Lew said: “I have yet to see the signs that they are moving with the speed that we would want.” Washington, he added, will continue to press China's leadership “to move faster, with more clarity and more immediacy.”
Bloomberg Back to Top
19. NYT - Hugh White Oped: Sharing power with China
For 40 years American leadership has kept Asia stable and fostered economic growth, especially in China. But today China’s growing power
is undermining that old order and posing big questions about America’s future role in the region. Those questions loom in the ongoing dispute between China and Japan over a chain of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that could easily spark an armed clash between the two rivals. Such a conflict would escalate fast, and the United States would have to quickly take action to support Japan militarily against China — or not. Washington remains neutral on who owns the islands, while criticizing China for using displays of force to challenge Japan’s
de facto control of them. As Secretary of State John Kerry has said: “The United States, as everybody knows, does not take a position on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands. But we do recognize that they are under the administration of Japan.” Proposing to share power in the Pacific would not be easy for Mr. Obama (or for any American president). He’d face tremendous resistance at home. But American hawks who would oppose negotiating with China need to realize what’s at stake: The problem of China’s growing ambitions can be solved through war or pre-emptive diplomacy. This third way offers a
realist solution. And
most important, addressing these issues now would be a lot easier than confronting the choice that America could face any day if Chinese and Japanese forces clash in the East China Sea.
NYT Back to Top
20. FT - George Magnus: China’s financial distress turns all too visible
Country’s economic change will have deflationary consequences.
FT Back to Top
21. FT: Chinese internet: Mobile wars
China’s big three online rivals are transforming inefficient sectors of the economy.
FT Back to Top
