Keen to avoid the kind of onslaught on tax cheats being waged in EU and U.S., Singapore, the world’s fourth largest offshore financial centre, said on Tuesday it will sign up to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s multilateral treaty on sharing tax details, a move that would make it harder for cross-border tax cheats to operate.
The risk of conflict in the South China Sea is significant. China claims it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the territory, which is believed to sit atop extensive reserves of oil and gas. The claims are however fiercely contest by regional players such as Taiwan and the Philippines. As diplomacy is not likely to be a sufficient means of quelling rising tensions, the United States must make hard choices and put forth the effort necessary to ensure the South China Sea remains peaceful in 2013 and beyond.
China wants to raise its disproportionately small share of consumption as the cornerstone effort to close one of the world’s widest income gaps and quell rising discontent among those who feel they have missed out on the country’s blistering expansion of the last three decades. Consumption growth is itself dependent on investment growth, and this is more true in the inland provinces than the urbanised coastal regions. But will China be able to maintain consumption growth once investment growth is sharply reduced?
The U.S. military will spend close to $7 billion on logistical issues when it finally pulls out its troops and equipment from Afghanistan by the end of next year, estimated defense experts to Bloomberg on Sunday.
This week, Greece’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras heads to China with a delegation to discuss possible investments in his country’s beleaguered economy. On Saturday, the suspension of the U.S. debt ceiling officially ends.
Monday, May 13
Acclaimed director Zhang Yimou is under investigation and could face a multi-million dollar fine after it was claimed that he had violated China’s strict one-child policy to father seven children. The policy was introduced more than 30 years ago as a temporary measure to curb a surging population but continues today, despite increasing calls for change.
U.S. federal prosecutors on Thursday charged eight cyber-criminals accused of stealing $45 million by hacking into a database of prepaid debit card, scrapping withdrawal limits and helping themselves from cash machines across 26 countries.
Prosecutors also highlighted the “surgical precision” of the hackers and the global nature of their crime network, adding that the entire heist unfolded “in a matter of hours”.
During the last three years, the mantra in the U.S. for shale has been, “Drill, baby, drill.” But the reality is there is only one true gas formation in the U.S. that is increasing production – Marcellus – while every other single shale gas play is now in decline.
Following separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called for both parties to make “joint efforts” towards peace, promising the “necessary assistance” to restart peace talks as soon as possible.
Most of China’s high net worth individuals have used their wealth to obtain residency rights abroad and are increasingly looking to move their assets overseas to diversify risk, according to a joint report by U.S. consulting firm Bain & Co. and China Merchants Bank.
Mainland China had more than 700,000 high net worth individuals (HNWI) with at least 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) in investable assets at the end of last year, more than double the number in 2008.
