As part of our Feature on the China / Japan dispute, which, thankfully, seems to be simmering down,
we noted that not only has China apparently stopped exporting rare earth metals —
which are key to the production of many advanced high tech products
like high-definition elevisions, cell phones, computers, guided missiles, hybrid cars, satellites, wind turbines, batteries, magnets,
The Chinese government, determined to become a world leader in green technology,
says it plans to invest billions of dollars over the next few years to develop electric and hybrid vehicles.
It said a group of 16 big state-owned companies had already agreed to form an alliance
to do research and development, and create standards for electric and hybrid vehicles.
The Chinese government recently ran an enormous help-wanted advertisement
seeking professional managers for some of its biggest state-controlled companies,
a novel but not unprecedented move that apparently reflected unhappiness with the companies’ current performance.
The advertisement, two broadsheet-newspaper pages of small type,
sought applicants for 20 senior management jobs
in industries like nuclear power, auto manufacturing and textiles.
This past summer brought heady days for China’s state-controlled banks.
In July, the Agricultural Bank of China made its stock market debut, bringing in $22 billion for the largest public offering ever.
A sister government-run bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has had one of the highest stock market values of any bank in the world.
But the windfalls have created an unusual problem for China: white-collar unrest.
For more than a decade, Beijing has kept the value of the renminbi, also known as the yuan, more or less constant to the dollar,
a strategy that critics say increases the price of American exports to China and fuels the rapidly growing trade deficit with Beijing.
Lost in the noise, however, is the question of whether de-linkage would actually have any effect on the trade deficit.
On this, the United States’ 40-year history of pressuring Japan to let the yen appreciate against the dollar is instructive.
Forget the calls by many Chinese patients for more honest, better-qualified doctors.
What Shenyang, China’s 27 public hospitals really needed, officials decided this summer , was police officers.
And not just at the entrance, but as deputy administrators.
The goal: to keep disgruntled patients and their relatives from attacking the doctors.
The decision was quickly reversed after Chinese health experts assailed it,
In an apparent bid to extend its control over the Internet and cash in on the rapid growth of mobile devices,
China plans to create its own government-controlled search engine.
The new venture would be fresh competition for Baidu.com, a private company that runs China’s dominant search engine.
Baidu has seen its market share grow since Google retreated from the mainland earlier this year.
Internet TV has arrived in China.
Every month, about 300 million people in China are using a computer to watch Chinese TV dramas, Japanese and Korean sitcoms,
and even American films and television series like “Twilight” and “Gossip Girl.”
Live streaming of the recent World Cup also drew a huge online audience.
Analysts say young people in China are even starting to favor free laptop-viewing over TV sets,
According to Magic Johnson, if LeBron James “wants to be a billionaire, or close to it, [he’s] gotta go to New York.”
Nike, however–the company that is LeBron’s top sponsor–believes that another destination is more vital for achieving this goal.
China.
In the run-up to James’ announcement he would join the Miami Heat to form – along with Dwayne Wade & Chris Bosh – a “super-team”
We remain a bit shaken by the report we ran earlier this week about the seemingly parlous state of the Chinese financial system.
But in the interim, it seems factories there are running full-out, and there is an on-going struggle to find workers.
If Wang Jinyan, an unemployed factory worker with a middle school education, had a résumé, it might start out like this:
