08/10/2009 Source: Xinhua

China’s home prices continued to rise in July as bank loans surged and the country’s economy improved.

Home prices in 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities rose 1 percent in July from a year earlier, according to a joint statement issued Monday by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics.

The prices climbed 0.9 percent from June, which saw a 0.8 percent gain over May.

Prices of new homes in the listed cities rose 0.3 percent year on year in July, and 1.1 percent from June. New home prices increased in 43 cities, including eastern Ningbo City and northwestern Yinchuan City, which saw growth rates of 6.4 percent and 5.4 percent respectively.

Prices fell in 26 cities. The northern city of Shijiazhuang and southern city of Shenzhen witnessed price drops of 5.5 percent and 4.6 percent in July year on year.

Second-hand homes in the 70 cities rose 3 percent in July from the same period last year and 0.9 percent from June.

Chinese banks lent a record 7.37 trillion yuan ($1.08 trillion) of yuan-dominated loans in the first half, exceeding the annual target of 5 trillion yuan.

The country’s central bank announced earlier this month that new loans to home buyers in the first half rose by 263.3 billion yuan year on year to 479.3 billion yuan, boosted by an improving property market performance.
New credit for property developers increased by 221 billion yuan year on year to 403.9 billion yuan, said the central bank.

Premier Wen Jiabao reaffirmed over the weekend that the government’s relaxed monetary policy would continue.

08/10/2009 Source: Xinhua

Police in south China say they have broken up an underground bank that illegally sent 10 billion yuan (US$1.46 billion) of laundered criminal cash abroad since 2004.

Qin Yongjun, spokesman for the public security department of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Monday that eight of the 11 people arrested were Vietnamese.

“The two chief culprits of the gang based in Fangchenggang city, bordering Vietnam, were Ruan Zhizhong, a Chinese, and Ruan Shichai, a Vietnamese,” said Qin.

The gang opened accounts at legal banks in Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian provinces to launder money and electronically transfer it abroad, mainly to Vietnam, Qin said.

Remittance records of the 77 accounts opened and managed by Ruan Zhizhong alone showed that he illegally transferred 7.2 billion yuan on more than 10,000 occasions from November 2004 to March 2008.

The gang charged a certain fee for each transfer, said Qin.

A total of 200 police raided the underground bank in Fangchenggang in May this year and seized 70 deposit books, 590 bank cards, two cars, six computers and 680,000 yuan of cash. They also froze 327 banking accounts involved in the money-laundering case with book value of 47.5 million yuan.

08/10/2009 Source: China Daily

US label maker Avery Dennison paid bribes to research institutions and other authorities in China to win business contracts, Lu Kaixin, a manager from the communications department of the company’s Asia Pacific Group, admitted last Tuesday, according to the Chongqing Evening News.

Later that day, in a press release the company’s spokesman David Frail said that Avery Dennison recently discovered that a handful of employees were involved in the incidents, but that the company had disciplined them and reported the incidents to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department, according to Los Angeles Times.

The bribes reportedly included gifts, kickbacks, and sightseeing trips, the American Securities and Exchange Commission said. The company agreed to pay a US$200,000 fine over the incidents.

In 2007, a subsidiary of Avery Dennison also paid $51,000 in bribes to officials in China and several other countries, the SEC said.

08/07/2009 Source: People’s Daily

After more than a year of careful preparation, testing and trial operation, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) recently finished upgrading the domain name resolution system, including the central host node.

It means that at a global level, the time required to resolve Chinese and English domain names maintained by the center has been shortened from four hours to 15 minutes. Resolution speed has reached a world-leading level.

CNNIC officials said that on the one hand, the work of positioning “.??” domain names as top level domain names is proceeding smoothly and there will soon be a surge of Chinese domain name applications. On the other hand, the number of both China’s netizens and websites is increasing rapidly, and the scale of China’s 338 million netizens has sharply increased demand for domain name resolution and put forward higher requirements for China’s domain name resolution ability. The CNNIC’s timely upgrade of the domain name resolution system and their improvement of the operational capacity of the domain name infrastructure are preparations for the further expansion of China’s Internet capacity.

Experts explained that the domain name resolution service plays an extremely important role in the normal operation of the Internet. Various Internet applications such as surfing websites and sending/receiving e-mails all rely on domain name resolution service. The upgrade will further advance the service level of national domain name system, and improve the convenience of registration and application processes.

The rapid resolution speed of China’s domain name system will also significantly strengthen the international competitiveness of .CN and Chinese domain names, and further consolidate the position of .CN domain names as internationally mainstream domain names.

08/07/2009 Source: China Daily

A more thorough crackdown will be waged against illegal drivers, according to the Hangzhou police, after the second pedestrian death in three months has sparked public criticism of road safety.

The degree of punishment will increase as part of the police’s new “zero tolerance” stance.

For motorists who drive after drinking, the police will withdraw his or her driver’s licenses for three months; the prior penalty was a fine.

But anyone driving under the influence will be stripped of the license for six months; the previous penalty was three months. Drivers who commit a crime while driving drunk face a maximum sentence of seven years.

Ma Fangfang, a 16-year-old waitress from Linhai of Zhejiang province, was struck and killed at 9:26 pm on Tuesday by a drunken driver in a Porsche Cayenne SUV. She died an hour later at the hospital.

The driver, Wei Zhigang, is a 29-year-old marketing manager at Hangzhou Tianchang Communication Equipment Company. The car involved in the incident belongs to his father, the chairman of the company, according to police.

Wei’s alcohol content was 360 milligrams per 100 milliliters, more than four times the legal limit for drunken driving, which is 80 milligrams.

In a sad twist of fate, the teen girl was killed in a street crossing painted with a heart, a reminder of caution to drivers. Eight crossings in Hangzhou are adorned with the heart after a 25-year-old man was mowed down and killed by a drag racer named Hu Bin on May 7.

Wei is now in criminal detention. Hangzhou police promised to investigate the case.

“They should severely punish such drivers long before,” said a Hangzhou citizen surnamed Wang, who said she was almost struck by a car days ago while crossing the road. “The light legal punishment from traffic accidents has become so frequent nowadays.”

Meanwhile another drunken driver Zhang Xijun hit 10 people on Wednesday afternoon in Jixi, Heilongjiang province. Two have died and the eight other victims are in the hospital in stable condition.

Officer Zhang Liwen, of Nanshan police station in Jixi, witnessed the accident. He said Zhang was driving a Land Rover SUV and struck the feet of two girls. The girls and other pedestrians stopped Zhang.

The girls’ parents arrived later and began arguing with the driver. The officer asked the group to come with him.

“But suddenly the driver started the vehicle and rushed back to a food booth,” the officer said. One person died immediately, another died later in the hospital.

08/05/2009 Source: Xinhua

China vowed to deepen its financial system reform and promote more efficient financial intermediation in support of domestic demand, according to a fact sheet released here on Wednesday.

To meet the commitment, China would promote interest rate liberalization and consumer finance, said the economic track joint fact sheet of the first U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED).

It said China would accelerate the allocation of QFII quotas to $30 billion and continue to allow foreign-invested banks incorporated in China that meet relevant prudential requirements to enjoy the same rights as domestic banks with regard to underwriting bonds in the inter-bank market.

China would gradually increase the number of qualified joint-venture securities companies that can participate in A-share brokerage, proprietary trading and investment advisory services subject to the condition of meeting relevant laws and regulations.

The country would also support qualified overseas companies to list on Chinese stock exchanges through issuing shares or depository receipts and continuously support qualified Chinese companies to be listed abroad, including in the United States, said the fact sheet.

From the U.S. side, the country would pursue comprehensive reform of financial regulation and supervision to create a more stable financial system and to help prevent and contain potential future crises.

Regulation and supervision would be strengthened to ensure that all financial firms that pose a significant risk to the financial system will be well regulated, major financial markets will be strong enough to withstand system-wide stress and the failure of large institutions, and the government has the tools it needs to respond rapidly and effectively when problems arise, the fact sheet said.

The United States pledged to continue to have strong oversight of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). Through Congressional action, the country remained committed to ensuring that the GSEs were able to meet their financial obligations, it said.

The country was committed to undertaking a process of exploring the future of the GSEs, including through seeking public input, and the U.S. government resolved to report to Congress and the public by S&ED II.

In the joint fact sheet, China and the United States pledged continued close communication and coordination to promote financial stability and would work together to expedite the financial sector reform, to improve financial regulation and supervision, and to promote greater financial market transparency, so as to make their financial sectors more robust.

“We recognize the importance of ensuring sound regulation in our own countries and globally,” said the fact sheet.

The two countries were undertaking IMF Financial System Assessment Programs (FSAPs) and would complete them in a timely manner,it said.

Both countries would continue to promote convergence towards a single set of high quality global accounting standards and would continue discussions on financial reporting matters.

“The United States and China welcome continued dialogue between the bilateral competent authorities on the oversight of accounting firms providing audit services for public companies in the two countries based on mutual respect for sovereignty and laws,” it said.

The two countries would also conduct technical exchanges on the development of private pensions, and would share experiences and strengthen cooperation with regard to improvement of insurance regulation.

The first S&ED was held in Washington, D.C from July 27 to 28. The mechanism was jointly launched by Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President Obama during their meeting in April in London as a way to show elevation of the importance of China-U.S. cooperation under the new historical circumstances.

08/05/2009 Source: People’s Daily

A series of multinational corporations in China appear on commercial bribery lists from time to time, and this comes quite out of expectation. A study showed that the number of multinational corporations involved in commercial bribery cases in China has been an upward trend. In 10 years China has investigated at least 500,000 cases of corruption, of which 64% are related to international trade and foreign companies.

A report by China Youth Daily on August 3 aroused the attention of the media in China. It gives the following reasons behind those multinational bribery cases.

If it is the “hidden rules” in the Chinese business circle that leads to passive “dissimilation” of transnational corporations, then it is the special structure of interests in the Chinese market that pushes the commercial bribery by multinational companies from passive to initiative.

First of all, the enormous profits in Chinese markets lure multinational giants to take bold actions when facing “hidden rules”. Take the telecommunications industry for example, China’s telecommunications market accounted for 10% to 15% of the global telecommunications market. Lucent’s financial report shows that the Chinese market has become the second largest telecommunications market worldwide. Facing China’s huge market and profit margins, commercial bribery became Lucent’s key to open Chinese business door.

Secondly, the existence of monopoly privileges drives multinational corporations to take risk. Monopoly of resources goes with commercial bribery. In monopoly industries and in industries strictly controlled by the government, employees control too many resources.

In the absence of comprehensive supervision, people who hold rights, such as the right of administrative examination and approval and the right of allocating resources naturally become the target of commercial bribery. Multinational companies who are eager to develop the Chinese market have become a major player in commercial bribery.

Thirdly, the imperfect system enables multinational corporations to be unscrupulous when facing “hidden rules”. The existing legal system is not yet perfect and cannot adequately deal with commercial bribery; the legal punishment is not severe enough. Besides local governments indulge irregularities by multinational corporations, the business sector has long been in “habitual silence”, all this results in pessimistic expectations of participants in bribery, and also in some way fuels the violation of regulations or codes of conduct in multinational corporations in China.