07/06/2009 Source: Xinhua News

The Bank of China (BOC), China’s largest foreign exchange bank, announced Monday that it had transacted the first cross-border yuan trade settlement deal Monday morning.

The BOC said its Shanghai branch had received the first cross-border yuan trade settlement deal from the BOC (Hong Kong) Monday.

The payee was Shanghai Electric International Economic and Trading Co. Ltd., a subsidiary company of Shanghai Electric Group Co. Ltd., and the remitter was the company’s business partner in Hong Kong, said the Beijing-based BOC in a statement on its Web site Monday.

The bank did not reveal the amount of the settlement in the statement.

Li Lihui, president of the BOC, said Monday at the ceremony of the first cross-border yuan trade settlement held in Shanghai that the deal could facilitate trade between China and neighboring countries and regions and help enterprises avoid exchange rate risks.

“Cross-border yuan trade settlement could help firms simplify trading procedures and reduce operation costs. It could also help banks to expand business scope, improve service, and forge stronger ties with enterprises,” Li added.

 
The BOC said its Shanghai branch had inked tentative agreements with 11 overseas agent banks on yuan trade settlement deals, which had remarkable companies yuan settlement demand, including Standard Chartered (Hong Kong), Bank of East Aisa (BEA), Hong Kong-based Wing Hang Bank and others.

On the same day, many other banks cleared transactions in yuan.

The Bank of Communications transacted the first cross-border deals.

“In the morning the Shanghai branch of the Bank of Communications has transacted six cross-border yuan settlements. The Guangdong branch and Shenzhen branch have also been dealing with the business,” said Zhang Xiaoming, head of the international business department under the Bank of Communications.

The Shenzhen branch of the Bank of Communications Monday transacted cross-border yuan settlements for two clients, Shenzhen Aerospace Guangyu Industry Group Corp. and T&J Electric (Shenzhen)Limited. The two sent yuan to their business partners in Hong Kong.

The China Construction Bank Monday said it had signed tentative deals with six overseas banks to cooperate in yuan cross-border settlement.

The BOC Monday said its branch in Guangdong Province would transact 6.93 million yuan (1.01 million U.S. dollars) of cross border yuan settlements Tuesday in forms of remitting yuan, receiving yuan and opening letters of credit in yuan.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Monday said its branch in Indonesia had opened letters of credit of 372,000 yuan (54,466 U.S. dollars) to a company in Shanghai, indicating the launch of its cross-border yuan trade settlement.

“Cross-border yuan trade settlement could help enterprises avert exchange rate risks and reduce cost in converting foreign exchanges,” Shanghai Electric Chairman Xu Jianguo told Xinhua.

China’s State Council, or Cabinet, announced in April a pilot program to allow exporters and importers in Shanghai, and southern Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan cities to settle cross-border trade deals in Renminbi(RMB), or yuan.

China last week issued detailed regulations for the pilot program for cross-border trade settled in yuan. The rules specified how to make transactions using yuan to settle trade with Hong Kong and Macao and regional trade partners.
Ou Minggang, director of the International Finance Research Center of China Foreign Affairs University, told Xinhua Monday that cross-border yuan trade settlement provided exporters and importers with another option when conducting trade settlement and banks could explore a new business area.

“This move was in line with the market needs and it could also enhance trade volume growth,” Ou added.

07/11/2009 Source: www.chinaview.cn

Chinese police have warned Internet third-party payment businesses against providing services for those providing pornographic and lewd material online.

The Ministry of Public Security said third-party payment platforms, who act as intermediaries for payments between buyers and sellers of goods and services on the Internet, would face prosecution if they deliberately provided such services for illegal material.

The ministry released a statement Monday detailing one case in north China’s Hebei Province, in which people were charged for selling membership to view porn through the third-party payments.

Police in Hebei detected in April that 23 people who allegedly owned and ran the website “Love City” had gained 800,000 yuan by selling more than 8,000 memberships through the e-payment platforms such as Alipay, PayPal and YeePay.

The police authorities warned the third-party payment platforms that they could be charged with complicity if they deliberately provided services to those dealing in pornography.

The ministry also named and shamed Chinese web portal Tencent Inc. for spreading lewd information, saying the QQ personal blog spaces operated by the company were one of the largest sources of porn and lewd content.

According to the statement, police in south Guangdong’s Dongguan city in March arrested a man surnamed Chen, who posted a large amount of pornographic pictures, video clips and novels in the blog space of his QQ account.

In central China’s Hunan in May, police arrested a person surnamed Wang on suspicion of making pornographic and lewd materials with a computer camera and selling them to QQ messenger users who paid with “Q money,” a virtual currency.

The three cases were the latest disclosed by the Ministry of Public Security in its effort to crack down on web porn.

More than 1,000 websites have been blocked for distributing porn and other lewd materials since the government launched the Internet clean-up campaign at the beginning of this year.

07/13/2009 Source: People’s Daily

A merchant from Wenzhou, Zhejiang province has confirmed the buyout of Propeller TV, a UK digital satellite television channel, according to 66wz.com, a Wenzhou-based website.

The deal, reached last month, was made under the name of Xiking Group, said Ye Maoxi, CEO of the group and head of Wenzhou chamber of commerce’s Beijing branch. He didn’t disclose how much the group paid for the takeover.

The Leeds-based Propeller TV is a free-to-air and non-profit television channel run by the Image Channel Company Ltd, a subsidiary of the Grimsby Institute in the UK.

Launched in February 2006 on British Sky Broadcasting’s satellite platform, it is the first digital satellite television channel in Europe to screen 100 percent new and original programming.

Ye said he got in touch with the channel when visiting as a member of a Chinese trade delegation during Premier Wenjiabao’s visit the UK earlier this year, after learning it was being shunned from the government’s fund and in need of a strategic investor due to the financial crisis.

After the purchase, Ye said he would adjust the developing route of the TV station and use the platform to promote Chinese culture.

“There will be specific programs to introduce China and Wenzhou, with some to be broadcast in Chinese”, said Ye. “It will be a venue for the Europeans to know more about China, and for overseas Chinese to get immediate information of their homeland.”

Prior to the deal, another Wenzhou merchant named Wang Weisheng bought a state-owned TV station in United Arab Emirates, which went into broadcast in August 2006.

Meanwhile, a Chinese-language radio station initiated by Chinese in France has been approved by the French authority and is set to hit the airwaves during the Chinese Spring Festival next year.

07/10/2009 Source: www.chinaview.cn

China’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced Friday that it will launch two more batches of electronic savings bonds of up to 50 billion yuan (7.32 billion U.S. dollars) since next week.

According to the ministry, one batch of the e-savings bonds of 40 billion yuan has a term of three years, with a fixed annual interest rate of 3.73 percent.

The other, the five-year e-savings bonds, is worth 10 billion yuan at a fixed annual interest rate of four percent.

The two bonds will be issued from July 15 to 31, with interests to be calculated from July 15 and paid annually, said the ministry in a statement on its website.

These bonds are open to only individual investors, the MOF said.

Compared with other types of bonds, the e-savings bond is seen as more convenient for investors. For example, the interest can bepaid through direct deposit into the investor’s account.

This is the second time the ministry launches this kind of bond this year, with the first issuance of two batches of e-savings bonds in April.

The ministry also said it would issue two batches of book-entry treasury bonds next week with a face value of 12.48 billion yuan and 12.65 billion yuan each.

One with the face value of 12.48 billion yuan has a term of 91 days, and the issue price, set by competitive bidding, was 99.72 yuan for a face value of 100 yuan. In this sense, the annual yield will be 1.15 percent, the ministry said.
The other has a term of 273 days, and the issue price was set at 99.077 yuan for 100 yuan, with an annual yield of 1.25 percent.

The ministry said the book-entry T-bonds will be sold from July 13 to July 15. Trading of the bonds will begin July 17.

07/06/2009 Source: China’s Daily

A higher court in east China’s Shandong Province on Monday upheld an earlier death penalty for the former chief of the Capital Airports Holding Company (CAH) for bribery and embezzlement.

Li Peiying, 60, former board chairman and general manager of the CAH, was sentenced to death by Jinan Intermediate People’s Court on February 10 for taking bribes of 26.61 million yuan (US$3.9 million) from 1995 to 2003 and misappropriating 82.5 million yuan for personal use from 2000 to 2003.

Li appealed to Shandong Provincial Higher People’s Court after the conviction. The provincial court rejected Li’s appeal and upheld the death penalty.

According to law, the death sentence will have to be reviewed the Supreme People’s Court before enforced.

The provincial higher court said the amounts involved were extraordinary and Li’s crimes had inflicted great economic loss on the country.

It also ordered the confiscation of all his personal property and deprived him of political rights for life.

All the embezzled money had been recovered, the court said.

CAH, under the Civil Aviation Administration of China, is a large state-owned enterprise. It has 30 airports in nine provinces and more than 38,000 staff.

06/24/2009  Source: Xinhua

Two Chinese companies made initial public offerings on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on June 24, signaling a pickup in the return of foreign IPOs.

Chemspec International Ltd., a Shanghai-based maker of specialty chemicals, hopes to raise about 64.8 million U.S. dollars at nine dollars per share in its deal.

The ticker symbol for Chemspec is CPC. Chemspec’s deal is being underwritten by Credit Suisse and Citi.

Meanwhile, Duoyuan Global Water Inc, the Chinese water treatment equipment supplier, priced its initial public offering at 16 dollars per American depositary receipt.

The ticker symbol for Duoyuan is DGW and the company sold more shares than initially announced, according to Piper Jaffray, the IPO’s underwriter.

The offerings mark the first IPOs by Chinese companies on the NYSE so far this year, said Sam Van, manager of Asia & Middle East/North Africa global listings of the NYSE.

Chinese video-game maker Changyou.com Ltd (CYOU), an offshoot of Chinese Internet portal Sohu, kicked off IPOs by Chinese companies on a U.S. exchange in 2009, after going public on the Nasdaq in April. The deal followed a six-month spell with no IPOs in the U.S. by foreign companies.

Van said a handful of Chinese companies are filing for IPOs on the NYSE and a new offering may be seen as early as August.

06/23/2009    Source: www.chinaview.cn

China’s top legislature Monday began to review the first draft law on diplomatic personnel which intended to standardize management of diplomats in foreign countries and international organizations and improve their well-beings.

The draft, submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the ninth session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC) for a first reading, said the government should establish a floating mechanism to raise the diplomats’ wages and other benefits.

China has about 5,000 diplomats serving in more than 250 embassies, consulates general and other overseas organizations who were sent by 32 domestic agencies of the central government.

The draft law will be the first of its kind written to regulate Chinese government agents working in the 171 countries that China so far has diplomatic ties with.

If a diplomat’s spouse works for the government, a public institution, a state-run enterprise or is an active-duty military member and decides to move abroad with the diplomatic staffer, he or she could not be dismissed or face any charges from their employer, it said.

The draft only applies to overseas employees with diplomatic rank, not translators, messengers, chefs, drivers and other non commissioned staff.

It also mandates that diplomats intending to marry must have their prospective spouses vetted, and that divorces must be promptly reported.

If a diplomatic spouse acquires a foreign nationality or permanent residence permit, the diplomat will be called back before the overseas tenure ends, the draft said.

Diplomats’ domestic agencies would also have the power to decide if the spouse could accompany them abroad or whether those who remain in China would have government-paid visits to the diplomats.