1. WP: China’s leaders face major decisions on reform at annual National People’s Congress
China’s military spending will increase by 12.2 percent this year, officials announced Wednesday at an annual meeting of top government leaders
.The budgeted $131.56 billion in spending comes after a year in which new Chinese President Xi Jinping has consolidated considerable power domestically and adopted an aggressive posture in foreign policy, particularly in territorial conflicts with neighbors. On Tuesday, before the budget’s release, government spokeswoman Fu Ying rejected equating increased military spending with a more aggressive Chinese military. “China’s national defense power is defensive in nature,” she said. But in announcing the military increase, Premier Li Keqiang vowed that
leaders would “resolutely uphold China’s maritime rights and interests, and build China into a maritime power.” And in a veiled reference to territorial disputes with Japan, he said, “We will safeguard the victory of World War II
. . .
and will not allow anyone to reverse the course of history.”
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2. Bloomberg: China retains 7.5% growth target for 2014
China
set a 7.5 percent target for economic growth in 2014, a pace that may make it more difficult to achieve the leadership’s goals of curbing credit risks and stemming the pollution choking the nation’s biggest cities
.The growth target, which is the same as last year’s, will boost market confidence and protect jobs, Premier Li Keqiang told the annual meeting of the legislature in Beijing today. “We must keep economic development as the central task and maintain a proper economic growth rate,” Li said.
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3. Reuters: China signals focus on reforms and leaner, cleaner growth
China provided its strongest signal yet that it will shift toward balanced and clean economic growth, promising to reduce the pace of investment to the lowest in a decade and wage a "war on pollution". In a State of the Union style address to China's annual parliament meeting that began on Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang said Beijing aims to grow the world's second-largest economy by 7.5 percent this year, the same as last year's target. Analysts have said maintaining the target after years of breakneck expansion signals that Beijing will remain focused on reforms and
rebalancing the economy. Li said enacting reforms
was his
first priority even as he keeps an eye on
growth. Idle factories will be shut, and work on a new environmental protection tax will be sped up to create a greener and more balanced economy powered by consumption rather than investment, he said. "Reform is the top priority for the government this year," Li told around 3,000 hand-picked delegates in a cavernous meeting hall in central Beijing.
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4. WSJ: China's economic growth forecast at 7.5% this year: Premier Li Keqiang
Economic growth forecast is unchanged from last year.
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5. WSJ: Beijing signals new worry on growth
China's leaders kept the growth target for their giant economy
unchanged but signaled that they are more concerned than ever about reaching it, giving
themselves the option of letting credit flow freely to keep from falling short. The suggestion of more lending to buoy growth—despite repeated recent efforts to rein in debt—is the latest sign of government unease that a slipping economy could trigger higher unemployment and corporate failures, aggravating already high social tensions. For years, China kept a growth target of about 7.5
% but actually grew far faster; in the last two years the economy has barely cleared that figure, and many economists have said it would have a tougher time meeting the goal this year as its economy matures and global demand for its exports comes under pressure. That is a troubling trend for the rest of the world, which has increasingly depended on China to fuel the global economy.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivers the government work report during the opening meeting of the second session of the 12th National People's Congress. ZUMAPRESS.com
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6. AP: China vows to address stifling smog, terror threat
China's government vowed to address long-festering complaints about choking smog while promising to crack down harder on the new threat of terrorism and promote unity among the country's sometimes-restive ethnic minorities. In his first annual policy speech, Premier Li Keqiang also pledged to move more people into the middle class, cut government waste and push further with President Xi Jinping's signature campaign to fight the rampant official corruption that has undermined public faith in the Communist Party. Li's speech at Wednesday's opening of China's annual ceremonial legislature comes as the government confronts ethnic unrest in the far western region of Xinjiang that has intensified over the past year. On Saturday, China saw the first big terror attack outside Xinjiang blamed on militants from that region — a slashing attack at a train station in Kunming that killed 29 people and wounded 143.
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7. Bloomberg: Li says China will declare war on pollution as smog spreads
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said pollution is a major problem and the government will “‘declare war’’ on smog by removing high-emission cars from the road and closing coal-fired furnaces
.Pollution is ‘‘nature’s red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development,’’ Li said today in his work report at the start of this year’s National People’s Congress in Beijing. ‘‘Fostering a sound ecological environment is vital
for people’s lives and the future of our nation.” Li’s remarks, delivered in China’s equivalent of the U.S.
president’s State of the Union address, reflect government recognition of public displeasure over pollution and its impact on people’s health. The weeks before the congress saw pollution stuck at unhealthy levels in much of northern China, prompting one government adviser to say smog had become “unbearable.”
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8. Reuters: China vows to cut industrial capacity faster, fight pollution
China will cut excess industrial capacity a year earlier than planned and fight pollution through reforms in energy pricing to boost non-fossil fuel power, the government said on Wednesday. To ensure food security, Beijing also said it will expand the scope of agricultural subsidies for grains and other commodities, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's economic planner, said in its 2014 work document. The government will continue to implement annual stockpiling programs for corn, rapeseed and sugar, the NDRC said.
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9. Bloomberg: What to know about China's National People's Congress
What should you know about China’s annual National People’s Congress, opening on Wednesday morning in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People? First, it’s the only full session of the Congress held yearly, when some 3,000 delegates come from across China to meet; the Congress’s 175-member standing committee in Beijing is in charge of legislative issues the rest of the year. Each delegate to the National People’s Congress serves a five-year-term after being elected by delegates to provincial congresses who were chosen by delegates from lower-level assemblies. “Only the lowest level of people’s congress delegates—at county level or equivalent—are directly elected by their electorate,” notes weekly finance magazine Caixin in a March 3 report on its English-language website.
The opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images
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10. FT: China ramps up rhetoric battle with Japan
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has warned Japan that China would not allow any country to “reverse the course of history”, as Beijing and Tokyo remain locked in an increasingly tense dispute over contested islands in the East China Sea. “We will safeguard the victory of World War II and the postwar international order, and will not allow anyone to reverse the course of history,” Mr Li said on Wednesday at the opening of China’s rubber stamp parliament. Sino-Japanese relations have deteriorated over the past 18 months since Japan bought several of the Senkaku Islands – which China claims and calls the Diaoyu – from their private Japanese owner. With his comments at the National People’s Congress, Mr Li was following in the footsteps of other Asian leaders who have recently likened the tense security situation in Asia with the first and second world wars. In January, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, shocked an audience at Davos when he compared the state of relations between Japan and China with the relationship between Germany and Britain before the first world war.
FT Back to Top
11. Reuters: China's Xi says Russia can push for political solution in Ukraine
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that he believes Russia can push for a political settlement to the Ukraine crisis in coordination with other parties, China's foreign ministry said. Xi said during a telephone call late on Tuesday "the situation in Ukraine, which seems to be accidental, has the elements of the inevitable", the foreign ministry said in a brief statement. He described the situation in Ukraine as "highly complicated and sensitive", with regional and global implications. "China believes that Russia can coordinate with other parties to push for the political settlement of the issue so as to safeguard regional and world peace and stability," Xi told Putin, according to the ministry statement. "China supports the proposals and mediation efforts of the international community that are conducive to
reduction of tension," Xi said.
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12. FT: China’s rich lawmakers power ahead
Many Chinese people believe wealth in China flows directly from political connections – and judging by the fortunes of the richest members of the country’s ersatz parliament they appear to be right. According to Financial
Times calculations, the richest members of the upper and lower houses of China’s parliament saw their average wealth increase more than four times over the past eight years, compared with an increase of under three times for the 1,000 wealthiest people identified in the country. The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, the lawmaking body, which opens on Wednesday and lasts for just over a week, includes 86
renminbi billionaires on the Hurun China Rich List, the annual ranking of China’s wealthy. The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which opened on Monday, is the country’s main political advisory body and includes 69
renminbi billionaires from the Hurun list. The average wealth of the 56 billionaires who have been in either political body for more than one five-year term increased by 316 per cent from 2006 until the end of last year.
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13. FT - Editorial: China cannot relax war on corruption
Western banks must also take care not to fuel illegality.
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14. SCMP: China to push ahead with fiscal reforms as it sets economic growth at 7.5 pc
Premier Li Keqiang today signaled that China will push ahead with key fiscal and financial reforms that should eventually allow the country to cut its dependence on the fixed asset investment that currently drives economic growth and has inflated a damaging property market bubble. In his first government working report to the National People’s Congress, Li outlined the key economic growth targets for the year and pledged to further overhaul the exchange rate, interest rate, and fiscal system. He also said more private capital would be injected into state-owned enterprise sectors. Most economic targets remained
unchaged, with the economy predicted to grow 7.5 per cent, highlighting that China's priority remains to ensure stability.
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15. SCMP: China ‘declares war on pollution', announces Premier Li Keqiang
China is to "declare war" on pollution, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday at the opening of the annual meeting of parliament, with the government unveiling detailed measures to tackle what has become a hot-button social issue. It is not uncommon for air pollution in parts of China to breach levels considered by some experts to be hazardous. That has drawn much public ire and is a worry for the government, which fears any discontent that might compromise stability. "We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty," Li told the almost 3,000 delegates to the country’s largely rubber-stamp legislature in a wide-ranging address carried live on state television. Curbing pollution has become a key part of efforts to upgrade the economy, shift the focus away from heavy industry and tackle the perennial problem of
overcapacity, with Li describing smog as "nature’s red-light warning against inefficient and blind development".
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16. SD: Shanghai eyes total smoking ban in public places
The city government is planning to introduce a total ban on smoking in all public places within five years, local health authorities said yesterday. The standing committee of the Shanghai People’s Congress has included the comprehensive ban as one of its key legislation targets for the period, said Li Zhongyang, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Promotion Committee. Efforts to introduce the ban should receive a fillip in 2016, when Shanghai hosts the Global Conference on Health Promotion, in association with the World Health Organization. “It will be a great opportunity for Shanghai to push for a complete ban on indoor smoking,” said Tang Qiong from the Shanghai Health Promotion Committee, which is in charge of smoking control in the city. “The event will help speed up the introduction of laws in the public health sector,” she said.
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17. WSJ: Ford to expand China research and development facility
The expanded facility in Nanjing will play a bigger role.
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18. Reuters: Caterpillar CEO 'guardedly optimistic' about global economy
Caterpillar Inc's (CAT.N) chief executive said on Tuesday several of the company's biggest markets, including China and North America,
were strengthening modestly, but he warned that the global economy was largely fragile and sensitive to unexpected shocks like the crisis in Ukraine. Caterpillar Chairman and CEO Doug Oberhelman told ConExpo, the world's largest construction equipment show, in Las Vegas that he remained "guardedly optimistic
... very, very guardedly optimistic" about the global economic outlook. Referring to the crisis in the Ukraine without mentioning Russia, he said it served as a reminder of the political risks, in the United States and abroad, that can still trip up the global economy. "Most of the bad
of the news in Europe is behind us," he said.
A Caterpillar excavator is displayed at the China Coal and Mining Expo 2013 in Beijing October 22, 2013. Picture taken October 22, 2013. Reuters
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19. Reuters: U.S. engine maker backed by Bill Gates forms second China venture
EcoMotors, a Michigan-based engine maker backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, has formed a joint venture in China with a subsidiary of First Auto Works. The FAW subsidiary, First Auto Works Jingye Engine Company, is investing more than $200 million in the venture, BEM (Shanxi) Co, which aims to begin building an advanced engine designed by EcoMotors in 2015 in China's Shanxi province. FAW's manufacturing partners in China include Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Co. It is the second China venture for EcoMotors, a suburban Detroit startup, which announced a similar deal last April with China's Zhongding Power. The privately held Chinese firm plans to ramp up production this year in Anhui province, supplying engines for use in commercial and off-road vehicles.
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20. WP: Taxi-app war leads Chinese to question one-party rule
It began with a comment from a taxi driver that went viral, and turned into a popular critique of China’s one-party rule. This year, two giant Chinese Internet companies have been engaged in a fierce battle to attract customers to new software applications that allow people to call and pay for taxis with their
cellphones — offering big discounts and rebates for using their services. The competition, the driver observed to a passenger, was making everybody better off; the Internet companies
were unwittingly demonstrating the “advantages of the two-party system.” The passenger posted the comment on social media last month, and
netizens soon took up the theme. “This taxi-calling software, if the government doesn’t ban it, it will make everyone understand why the two-party system is good,” posted a user called
Qiubochun Benjamin on the Sina Weibo
microblogging service.
Chinese taxi drivers have their
smartphones installed with taxi-hailing apps in Hangzhou in east China’s Zhejiang Province on Feb. 19, 2014. Chen
zhongqiu/Imaginechina
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21. WSJ: China Institute to move to Lower Manhattan
Upper East Side mansion that was its base for 70 years on
market for $32 million.
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