China in a dilemma as home prices soar

In the hard, exhaust-choked reality of his days trawling Longhua’s clogged roads, taxi driver Zhang Bo’s ambition to buy a small flat for his young family has slipped out of reach for now.

Beijing’s ‘Buy China’ policy alarms trade partners

Beijing says it wants to spur Chinese inventions with a “Buy China” policy that gives preference to domestic technology companies. But the tactic has provoked an outcry from Washington and business groups that say it will choke off access to the massive market for goods from software to clean power equipment.

Tiger year has history of tumult, turbulence

And the key questions for this time are: Is there an Asian asset bubble in the making; is the equity rally over

China’s influence repels Australia

Increasing economic ties haven’t bought China much love from Down Under, with Australians increasingly wary of the behemoth

GE wants China’s fast-rail technology

Beijing may supply the skills to fulfil Obama’s dream of high-speed network across US

Inflation May Spur Revaluing Of Yuan

Today’s dilemma is familiar to China. That means Beijing may opt for a familiar solution: a variation of the compromise approach it took in July 2005 when it moved off a de facto peg to the dollar. That involved making a small appreciation, then setting the currency on a path of gradual gains. Authorities also widened the yuan’s daily trading band, in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to convince markets that the yuan could go down as well as up.

US showdown with China may do no one any good

It’s become apparent from recent events that America’s political, business and scholarly elites have fundamentally misjudged China. Conflicts with China have multiplied. Consider: The undervalued yuan and its effect on trade; the breakdown of global warming negotiations in Copenhagen; China’s weak support of efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; its similarly poor record in pushing North Korea to relinquish its tiny atomic arsenal; the sale of US weapons to Taiwan; and Google’s threat to leave China rather than condone censorship.

Port projects signal rise of China in South Asia

Expansion has growth rival India on tenterhooks

The tiger’s claws

China is bounding into the year of the tiger with a sense of self-confidence it has never felt before, secure in the belief that its rise is inexorable and that its voice, and soon its power, will extend into every corner of the earth. This month, statistics showed that China overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter in 2009, confirming its growing economic clout.

Waiting for the bubble to burst

Empty buildings are sprouting across China as companies with access to US$1.4t of new loans last year build skyscrapers

India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia

For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.

Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbours.

Gome boss finally charged over fraud

Former Gome Electrical Appliances Holding chairman Wong Kwong-yu has been formally charged in Beijing with insider trading, bribery and unspecified business crimes after 15 months in police custody.

China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet

Deep inside a Chinese military engineering institute in September 2008, a researcher took a break from his duties and decided — against official policy — to check his private e-mail messages. Among the new arrivals was an electronic holiday greeting card that purported to be from a state defense office.

China faces a slowdown, risk of a crash, says Marc Faber

China’s economy will slow down and may even be at risk of a crash because of the nation’s excess capacity and as loan growth slows, investor Marc Faber said.

China Milk Defaults on Bond Redemption, Seeks Talks

China Milk Products Group Ltd., a supplier of raw milk and dairy cow embryos, said it’s defaulting on some repayment obligations because it hasn’t enough money outside China to pay for early redemption of its bonds.

China Moves to Tighten Curbs on Lending

For the second time in less than five weeks, China’s central bank has moved to limit lending to consumers and businesses by ordering big commercial banks to park a larger share of their deposits at the central bank.

China raises bank reserve level to cool credit

China ordered banks Friday to increase reserves for a second time in a month to cool a credit boom without resorting to interest rate hikes that might derail a recovery in the world’s third-largest economy.

Innocent websites suffer in Beijing’s anti-porn push

More than 130,000 websites have been closed in the mainland’s crackdown on internet pornography, although less than 12 per cent of them were actually pornographic.

A tradition that has no place in modern China

The one-child policy may have reined in China’s population growth but it has done nothing to change the preference for sons deeply rooted in traditional culture. And an official crackdown on fetal sex determination and sex-selective abortion has had limited impact, as evidenced by Hong Kong’s emergence as a mainland birth hub since a landmark Court of Final Appeal ruling gave permanent resident status to children born in Hong Kong of mainland parents.

On yuan, Obama has to tread cautiously

As a senator and candidate for president, Barack Obama urged the US to take a tough stand against China over its foreign exchange system.

Police chief boasts of 12,000 informants

A mainland police chief has boasted of recruiting one in every 33 local residents as an informant, official media reported yesterday.

The great power game

Portraits of China’s rise and America’s decline in the region fail to capture the real dynamics at play

Smear campaign

Western media is painting a grossly misleading picture of Chinese investment in Africa

‘Terminal’ activist arrives in Shanghai

Feng Zhenghu arrived on a flight from Narita International Airport, where he camped from early November until last week to protest China’s refusal to let him enter the country.

Tony Chan challenges seizure of documents from former law firm

Tony Chan Chun-chuen has launched a court challenge to the seizure by police of documents that he claims are covered by legal professional privilege. This follows a police search of the premises of Chan’s former law firm Haldanes, as part of their investigation into suspected forgery by the fung shui master after he lost the court battle for Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum’s fortune.

Sparse U.S. Listings Prompt Rush on China I.P.O.’s

Last April, when global financial markets were collapsing, a Chinese Web site named Sohu.com made a bold move to spin off its online gaming unit and list it on the Nasdaq Stock Market.