Changing China Food Safety Key to Shuanghui on Smithfield

Bloomberg
“If we go and purchase businesses from America and Europe, develop China’s meat industry, we will raise the level and standard of our food safety,” said Wang Long, Shuanghui’s chairman. 

The Role of Trust Companies in China’s Recent Credit Growth

Nicholas Borst
Peterson Institute for International Economics
If any institutions fit the classic definition of shadow banking in China, it’s trust companies. Trust companies take money from institutional investors and individuals and make loans and investments to a wide variety of projects. 

Belay for Hollywood

Wei Xi
Global Times
In summer 2012,  when foreign productions were moved out of China’s multiplexes, a widely observed phenomenon unofficially called “domestic movie protection month” was implemented. It seems this measure is going to be repeated this...

Caixin Media

06.03.13

Trading Companies and the Business of Illusion

Last year, the owner of an export-processing company whom we will call Lin Minyao learned of an easy way to make money in Shenzhen, the port city next to Hong Kong.Like his fellow traders, Lin said he could set up two shell companies, one in Hong...

Reports

06.01.13

Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet

John D. Negroponte, Samuel J. Palmisano, Adam Segal
Council on Foreign Relations
The Task Force recognizes that there are both considerable opportunities and perilous challenges in cyberspace. This report identifies guiding principles and makes policy recommendations to mobilize a coalition of old friends and rising cyber powers...

Is the U.S. About to Become One Big Factory Farm For China?

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones
If Shuanghui International’s purchase of Smithfield is to grease the wheels of trade carrying U.S. hogs to China and its enormous domestic pork market, then we’re looking at the further expansion of factory-scale swine farming here in the U.S.&...

Europe and China Trade Talks End Bitterly

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
China called on the European Union to refrain from imposing tariffs on solar panels, and the European trade commissioner complained that China was pressuring individual countries to prevent Europe from reaching a consensus. 

Caixin Media

05.25.13

Honeymoon’s Over for Sweethearts of SOE Reform

Corporate wedding bells were ringing in 2011 when a trust controlled by insurer Ping An Insurance Group forged a partnership with a Shanghai-based cosmetics maker called Jahwa Group and its listed subsidiary, Jahwa United.The tie-up was duly praised...

Conversation

05.23.13

China and the Other Asian Giant: Where are Relations with India Headed?

Michael Kulma, Mark Frazier & more
Mike Kulma:Earlier this week at an Asia Society forum on U.S.-China economic relations, Dr. Henry Kissinger remarked that when the U.S. first started down the path of normalizing relations with China in the early 1970s, the economic relationship and...

McDonald’s To Hire 75,000 Staff On Store, McCafe Expansion

Bloomberg
The new hiring represents an increase of as much as 83 percent of the Illinois-based company’s workforce in the Asian nation. McDonald’s has more than 90,000 employees in China currently.  

Chinese Automakers Quietly Build a Detroit Presence

Bill Vlasic
New York Times
Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers. 

Conversation

05.21.13

U.S.-China Economic Relations—What Will the Next Decade Bring?

Orville Schell & Patrick Chovanec
On Monday, within hours of the announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Barack Obama on a visit to California on June 7-8, Tung Chee-hwa, the former Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of Hong Kong,...

Caixin Media

05.20.13

Errors of Aggression Catch up with Underwriter

Ping An Securities Co. has been slapped with a fine by the securities regulator and will lose its stock underwriting license for three months because of its sloppy work in underwriting the initial public offering of a company that turned out to be a...

China Export Gains Spur Renewed Skepticism of Figures

Bloomberg
The 14.7% increase, reported by the General Administration of Customs in Beijing today, was led by a 57.2% jump in shipments to Hong Kong that highlighted suspicions of false transactions used to mask capital flows into China.&...

China’s Baidu to Pay $370 Million for Internet Video Business

Neil Gough
Deal Book
Acquiring the video business from P.P.S. will increase Baidu’s position in China’s fractious market for online entertainment and help iQiyi compete better against Youku Tudou. 

China Not Embracing Electric Cars

Nathan Bomey
Detroit Free Press
China faces the same obstacles as the U.S. in the push for electric vehicles: They’re still expensive, many consumers don’t understand them and many drivers don’t have anywhere to charge the batteries.   

Conversation

05.16.13

China: What’s Going Right?

Michael Zhao, James Fallows & more
Michael Zhao:On a recent trip to China, meeting mostly with former colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, I got a dose of optimism and hope for one aspect of the motherland. In terms of science, or laying down a solid foundation for better...

Why Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. Is On Weibo But Not Twitter

Gwynn Guilford
Quartz
Notable is the recent aggressive outreach to Chinese audiences by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. Not only did he visit China for the first time in his life to talk up the film, but Downey also set up a personal account on Sina Weibo. 

Conversation

05.14.13

Why Can’t China Make Its Food Safe?—Or Can It?

Alex Wang, John C. Balzano & more
The month my wife and I moved to Beijing in 2004, I saw a bag of oatmeal at our local grocery store prominently labeled: “NOT POLLUTED!” How funny that this would be a selling point, we thought.But 7 years later as we prepared to return to the US,...

Caixin Media

05.13.13

Competitors Try Curbing China Mobile’s 4G Urge

The wireless Internet technology race is intensifying a longstanding rivalry between China’s largest mobile phone operator, China Mobile, and its smaller competitors China Telecom and China Unicom.Since 2011, China Mobile customers in fifteen cities...

Alibaba Buys Stake In Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter

Michael J. De La Merced
Deal Book
Alibaba and Sina also agreed to cooperate in improving ways to marry social networking with e-commerce, as microblogging services like Sina’s continue to grow in popularity.

DreamWorks Experience To Debut In Macau, China

Sophie Shillaci
Hollywood Reporter
As part of a new partnership between DreamWorks Animation and Sands China, the studio will debut its DreamWorks Experience at the Resort in Macao beginning July 1. 2013.

As Wal-Mart Swallows China’s Economy, Workers Fight Back

Esther Wang
American Prospect
As Wal-Mart expands in China, activists and academics have found that along with “Wal-Mart culture,” the company has also imported abuses familiar to those who follow Wal-Mart in the United States.

Learning From China, But What?

Yu Hua
New York Times
Yu Hua on how the new Schwarzmen scholarship ought to look to Apple’s and Google’s experience in China as instructive examples of how to (and how not to) do business in China.

Airbus Reaches Deal To Sell Jets To China

David Pearson
Wall Street Journal
Airbus said it clinched an order from China for 60 Airbus jets, including 18 planes that had fallen hostage to China’s order freeze in retaliation to the E.U.’s 2012 decision to include the airline sector in a carbon-dioxide-emissions trading scheme...

Agricultural Merger Shows China Is Worried About Feeding Itself

Jake Maxwell Watts
Quartz
China conditionally approved the $5.6 billion purchase of US grain supplier Gavilon by the Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp. Without imports, China would need to devote about a quarter of its total arable land to soybeans in...

The China Clusterf--k: Is Hollywood Fed Up?

Kim Masters
Hollywood Reporter
Even if studios expect only the chance to play a movie in Chinese theaters and believe all hurdles have been cleared, sudden obstacles can arise. Such was Sony's experience with Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained,...

Alibaba Joins China In Antipiracy Fight

Juro Osawa
Wall Street Journal
Alibaba announced its partnership with five agencies at a news conference Tuesday. On the same day, Xinhua reported that China’s top legislature is considering amending the country’s consumer-rights law to protect online shoppers. 

Caixin Media

04.27.13

Cracking Down on Bond Market’s Knotty Traders

It was a typical workday morning at Wanjia Asset Management Co. in Shanghai’s downtown financial district, but the firm’s star bond trader Zou Yu was not at his desk.Zou, 31, had mysteriously failed to report for his job as head of Wanjia’s fixed-...

Hollywood’s Box Office Heroes Proving Mortal In China

Michael Cieply
New York Times
If the preferences of Chinese moviegoers continue to shift to domestic releases — ticket sales for American movies in China fell 65 percent, to about $200 million in Q1 2013 — China will maintain control...

Katzenberg Unveils China Film Project

Andrew Browne, James T. Areddy and...
Wall Street Journal
The Hollywood power broker has lately turned his marketing skills on China, which is expected to surpass the U.S. box office by the end of the decade, driven by a boom in cinemas across the country. Tibet will be the topic of one of the first...

Conversation

04.25.13

Hollywood in China—What’s the Price of Admission?

Jonathan Landreth, Ying Zhu & more
Last week, DreamWorks Animation (DWA), the Hollywood studio behind the worldwide blockbuster Kung Fu Panda films, announced that it will cooperate with the China Film Group (CFG) on an animated feature called Tibet Code, an adventure story based on...

Bo’s Campaign ‘Worse Than Cultural Revolution’

Radio Free Asia
Chongqing, the largest Chinese municipality, was the epicenter of a Maoist revival campaign under Bo, who spearheaded an effort to crack down on gangs and corruption and promoted the public singing of nostalgic revolutionary songs reflecting the...

The Upside Of China’s Slowdown

Nin-Hai Tseng
Fortune
Plenty of people were expecting an end to the China-led luxury boom last year, but as Burberry’s latest sales report suggests, China’s consumers are more resilient than many of us think. 

Pinewood Shepperton, China’s Seven Stars Ink Joint Venture Deal

Clarence Tsui
Hollywood Reporter
The venture comes amid a slew of recent collaborations between Hollywood studios and Chinese partners as foreign entertainment companies look to break into China, and as China seeks to increase its capacity for soft power. 

Hollywood Descends On China For Beijing International Film Festival

Clarence Tsui
Hollywood Reporter
At this year’s festival Keanu Reeves debuts his upcoming movie, LucasArts’ Kathleen Kennedy delivers a keynote speech on modern storytelling, and many other Hollywood bigwigs come to town for business, screenings, signings, and more.

In China, The World’s Biggest Movie Lot Gets Even Bigger

Ian Johnson
New Yorker
Some of China’s most iconic buildings have been erected on Hengdian’s sprawling lot, giving the place the ersatz-historical feel of Colonial Williamsburg.  

Why Leave Job In Beijing? To Breathe

Laurie Burkitt and Brian Spegele
Wall Street Journal
The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China says air pollution is a key challenge facing companies here, and is an underlying reason why many expatriate workers choose to leave. 

Oakland Waterfront Project Jump-Started By Chinese Investor

Matthew Artz
Inside Bay Area
In a surprising and possibly landmark deal for Bay Area development, a Chinese firm is reviving a $1.5 billion waterfront real estate project. The deal continues a wave of institutional money flooding Oakland’s real estate market. 

‘Old School’ Hip-Hop Radio Station Likely To Change To Chinese-Language Programming

Brian Watt
Southern California Public Radio
The owners of the Los Angeles classic hip-hop radio station 93.5 FM KDAY have agreed to sell their stations to Hong Kong-based R.B.C. Communications. If the deal closes, it will likely to change to a Chinese-language format.  &...

China And California Sign Deal To Boost Investment

Associated Press
A new joint task force composed of officials from the California government and China's Commerce Ministry identified sectors for potential expanded investment and trade including infrastructure, environmental protection, agriculture...

Conversation

04.18.13

How Fast Is China’s Slowdown Coming, and What Should Beijing Do About It?

Patrick Chovanec, Barry Naughton & more
Slower Chinese GDP growth is not a bad thing if it’s happening for the right reasons. But it’s not happening for the right reasons.Instead of reining in credit to try to curb over-investment, Chinese authorities have allowed a renewed explosion in...

China’s Dalian Wanda In Talks To Buy European Theater Chain

Reuters
Dalian Wanda has shown interest in purchasing UK-based chains, Odeon & UCI Cinemas Holdings and Vue Entertainment, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.  

Conversation

04.16.13

Why is China Still Messing with the Foreign Press?

Andrew J. Nathan, Isabel Hilton & more
To those raised in the Marxist tradition, nothing in the media happens by accident.  In China, the flagship newspapers are still the “throat and tongue” of the ruling party, and their work is directed by the Party’s Propaganda Department...

Caixin Media

04.15.13

China Export Policy Chokes on Vitamin Verdict

Internet cafés covered by the city of Wuhan’s Internet Café Association agreed to set minimum prices for online access nearly a decade ago. And more than one hundred coking coal company-members of the Coke Association of Shanxi Province each agreed...

Caixin Media

04.15.13

Tencent Lets WeChat’s Rapid Growth Do the Talking

Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s free messaging service, WeChat, has seen its popularity grow among both individual users and businesses, even amid a dispute with the Big Three telecom operators [China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom].Since launching...

WeChat War Escalates, Becomes Showdown Between Government And Internet Users

Rachel Lu
Most Internet users believe that China’s three state-owned telecom operators are pushing for the introdction of a fee scheme to popular messaging app WeChat because their core SMS and voice business are threatened by the app. 

China Vanke Expanding To U.S. After Customer Emigration

Belinda Cao
Bloomberg
Chinese developers are starting to take advantage of demand for real estate around the world from Chinese nationals as the government imposes property curbs at home.  

China’s Branding Failure

Caitlin Dewey
Washington Post
According to a recent survey by international marketing firm HD Trade Services, 94 percent of Americans cannot name even one Chinese brand. Chinese companies show few signs of working to reverse this trend. &...

The Five Biggest Challenges To Doing Business In China

Dan Washburn
Asia Blog
“As business people, our goal is to reduce complexity,” Kent Kedl said. “We want to reduce risk by understanding the complexity and then packaging it up so we can identify it. China resists that at every turn.” 

Apple’s Apology In China Part of ‘Rite Of Passage’ For Foreign Companies

Neil Hughes
Apple Insider
The same newspapers that attacked Apple and even China's Foreign Ministry are now heaping praise on the American company,  calling Apple’s revised policies evidence that the company had “conscientiously” responded to consumers...

Beijing Opposes U.S. Rule On Technology Imports

Reuters
The new provision following recent cyberattacks requires NASA, as well as the U.S. Justice and Commerce Departments, to seek approval from national law enforcement officials before buying information technology systems from China. 

Sinica Podcast

04.05.13

The Transgressions of Apple Computer

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing, and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found itself...

China Takes Aim At Apple. Why?

Peter Ford
Christian Science Monitor
The sustained vitriolic tone of the state-run campaign against Apple is prompting observers here to wonder what could possibly be behind it, with some speculating it is retribution for America’s treatment of Chinese flagship telecoms...

Books

04.03.13

From the Dragon’s Mouth

Ana Fuentes
From The Dragon’s Mouth: Ten True Stories that Unveil the Real China is an exquisitely intimate look into the China of the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of its people. This is one of the rare times a book combines the voices of everyday Chinese people from so many different layers of society: a dissident tortured by the police; a young millionaire devoted to nationalism; a peasant-turned-prostitute to pay for the best education for her son; a woman who married her gay friend to escape from social pressure, just like an estimated 16 million other women; a venerated kung fu master unable to train outdoors because of the hazardous pollution; the daughter of two Communist Party officials getting rich coaching Chinese entrepreneurs the ways of Capitalism; among others.   —Penguin{chop}{node, 3048, 4}

Conversation

04.02.13

Why Did Apple Apologize to Chinese Consumers and What Does It Mean?

Jeremy Goldkorn, Isabel Hilton & more
Jeremy Goldkorn:On March 22, before the foreign media or Apple themselves seemed to have grasped the seriousness of the CCTV attacks on the Californian behemoth, I wrote a post on Danwei.com that concluded:“The signs are clear that regulators and...

Caixin Media

04.01.13

Staking a New Claim on Internet Insurance

When three household brand names in China announced they would cooperate to form a company offering insurance services on the Internet, excitement naturally was the order of the day.Last year, Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, and Ping An Insurance...

Conversation

03.28.13

Will China’s Renminbi Replace the Dollar as the World’s Top Currency?

Patrick Chovanec, Damien Ma & more
Patrick Chovanec:This week’s news that Brazil and China have signed a $30 billion currency swap agreement gave a renewed boost to excited chatter over the rising influence of China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB). The belief, in many quarters, is...

‘Oh Boy! So Many Questions!’ About China in Africa

Didi Kristen Tatlow
International Herald Tribune
Although not universal, there is some concern among Africans that China may be a “new colonial power,” extracting resources and selling manufactured goods. 

Xi In Africa As China's Role Comes Under Scrutiny

Katie Hunt
CNN
“There's a sense from Africans that it’s not an equal relationship. That China is extracting oil and then in return building infrastructure projects with its own companies and own workers and not necessarily transferring the skills to African...