News » Society » Wang Anshun appointed acting mayor of Beijing
News » Society » Wang Anshun appointed acting mayor of Beijing |
- Wang Anshun appointed acting mayor of Beijing
- Death and devastation as typhoon makes landfall
- Beijing mayor, vice mayor resign
- VIDEO: China displays military might
- Protecting the peace
- Death and devastation as typhoon makes landfall
- Rains' toll of devastation
- Internet users map out Beijing hazards
- City's government pledges toll truth
- Traffic resumes on flooded highway
- Massive test for Three Gorges
- 13 dead, 7 injured in Fujian road accident
- South China Sea's Sansha takes root
- College first to teach tree-climbing course
- Microblog writing test stumps applicants for job
- Stepmom cuts up boy, 8
- 2011-2012 China Film Industry Report
- China Push in Canada Is Biggest Foreign Buy
- China Shadow Bankers Go Online as Peer-to-Peer Sites Boom
- WTO to Probe China’s Rare-Earth Policies
| Wang Anshun appointed acting mayor of Beijing Posted: 24 Jul 2012 08:29 PM PDT WANG Anshun was appointed vice mayor and acting mayor of Beijing today. Wang, born in December 1957, is a native of Huixian County in central China's Henan Province. He had worked in petroleum geology authorities, the Ministry of Land and Resources, northwest China's Gansu Province, Shanghai and Beijing, holding a series of important positions. He has served as vice Party chief of Beijing since March 2007. |
| Death and devastation as typhoon makes landfall Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:25 AM PDT Three people were killed and six were reported missing as Typhoon Vicente made landfall early yesterday morning in Guangdong Province just minutes after it hit neighboring Hong Kong, leaving dozens injured and bringing the financial hub's businesses to a standstill. Vicente hit Hong Kong at 4am with wind speeds that reached around 140 kilometers per hour, moderating to 59kph. The government said 118 people had been injured during the night, with 52 admitted to hospital. Flying debris struck several people in the central business district and subway stations were converted into temporary shelters to accommodate stranded passengers. At daybreak, the normally bustling central district resembled a ghost town, with the stock market and major banks closed, and businesses shut. Dozens of flights at Hong Kong airport were cancelled or delayed, and ferry services linking Hong Kong island with Kowloon, the New Territories and outlying islands suspended. After smashing through Hong Kong, Vicente headed to Guangdong. It made landfall in coastal areas in Guangdong's Taishan City at around 4:15am, with wind speeds of up to 144kph near its center, spawning torrential rain, the provincial meteorological station said. As of 5pm yesterday, Vicente had caused 305 million yuan (US$47.7 million) in direct economic losses in Taishan alone, according to the municipal flood control headquarters. The typhoon is expected to move northwest but is weakening. Gales and downpours are expected to hit western Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta today and tomorrow. High-speed train services between Guangzhou and Shenzhen have been temporarily halted, the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp said, and speeds on the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed line reduced. All shipping lines across the Qiongzhou Strait, between Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong and Hainan Island, have been closed since Sunday night. More than 10 flights were delayed by four to six hours on average at Nanning Wuxu International Airport in Guangdong's neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region yesterday. In Guangdong, more than 710,000 households had power blackouts. However, electricity was back on in 470,000 households by 6pm after 5,760 workers were sent to repair the facilities, China Southern Power Grid said. The meteorological station in Haikou, Hainan's capital, issued a red storm alert yesterday, the highest level in China's four-tier warning system. Thirty-two flights were canceled at the Phoenix International Airport in Hainan's Sanya as of yesterday morning. Seas off the coast of Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan provinces are expected to experience waves of 3 to 5 meters in height, according to the National Maritime Forecast Station, which warned local authorities and the public to take precautionary measures. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Beijing mayor, vice mayor resign Posted: 24 Jul 2012 07:47 PM PDT THE Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress today accepted the resignation of Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong and the Vice Mayor Ji Lin. Wang Anshun and Li Shixiang were elected vice mayors at the meeting. Wang was appointed acting mayor of China's capital. |
| VIDEO: China displays military might Posted: 24 Jul 2012 01:10 PM PDT China gives foreign media a rare glimpse of its military might, showcasing an elite helicopter unit. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:28 AM PDT A Z-9WZ attack helicopter, designed and manufactured in China, takes flight during a demonstration for the press at the base of a helicopter regiment of the Chinese People's Liberation Army outside Beijing yesterday. China was showing its elite helicopter unit to foreign media. "Our military's aim is to protect peace. The training exercises we carry out are normal and in line with what we always do," Zhang Zhilin, commander of the Army Aviation 4th Helicopter Regiment, told reporters. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Death and devastation as typhoon makes landfall Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:25 AM PDT Three people were killed and six were reported missing as Typhoon Vicente made landfall early yesterday morning in Guangdong Province just minutes after it hit neighboring Hong Kong, leaving dozens injured and bringing the financial hub's businesses to a standstill. Vicente hit Hong Kong at 4am with wind speeds that reached around 140 kilometers per hour, moderating to 59kph. The government said 118 people had been injured during the night, with 52 admitted to hospital. Flying debris struck several people in the central business district and subway stations were converted into temporary shelters to accommodate stranded passengers. At daybreak, the normally bustling central district resembled a ghost town, with the stock market and major banks closed, and businesses shut. Dozens of flights at Hong Kong airport were cancelled or delayed, and ferry services linking Hong Kong island with Kowloon, the New Territories and outlying islands suspended. After smashing through Hong Kong, Vicente headed to Guangdong. It made landfall in coastal areas in Guangdong's Taishan City at around 4:15am, with wind speeds of up to 144kph near its center, spawning torrential rain, the provincial meteorological station said. As of 5pm yesterday, Vicente had caused 305 million yuan (US$47.7 million) in direct economic losses in Taishan alone, according to the municipal flood control headquarters. The typhoon is expected to move northwest but is weakening. Gales and downpours are expected to hit western Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta today and tomorrow. High-speed train services between Guangzhou and Shenzhen have been temporarily halted, the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp said, and speeds on the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed line reduced. All shipping lines across the Qiongzhou Strait, between Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong and Hainan Island, have been closed since Sunday night. More than 10 flights were delayed by four to six hours on average at Nanning Wuxu International Airport in Guangdong's neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region yesterday. In Guangdong, more than 710,000 households had power blackouts. However, electricity was back on in 470,000 households by 6pm after 5,760 workers were sent to repair the facilities, China Southern Power Grid said. The meteorological station in Haikou, Hainan's capital, issued a red storm alert yesterday, the highest level in China's four-tier warning system. Thirty-two flights were canceled at the Phoenix International Airport in Hainan's Sanya as of yesterday morning. Seas off the coast of Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan provinces are expected to experience waves of 3 to 5 meters in height, according to the National Maritime Forecast Station, which warned local authorities and the public to take precautionary measures. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:25 AM PDT TORRENTIAL rains have ravaged 22 provincial-level regions in China since July 20, leaving 111 dead and another 47 missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the downpours had affected nearly 9.2 million people in 353 counties and forced the evacuation of nearly 1.18 million people, it said. The rainstorms also destroyed 54,000 houses and damaged another 144,000. Heavy rains are forecast to sweep north China over the next three days. |
| Internet users map out Beijing hazards Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:24 AM PDT CHINA'S Internet users are sharing self-made maps marking Beijing's flood-prone areas following the weekend's deadly downpour. The maps, identifying potentially waterlogged streets during rainstorms, appeared after torrential rains inundated Beijing on Saturday, leaving 37 people dead. An official statement said 25 people drowned when the rain, said to be the worst in six decades, submerged many sections of the city's streets. In one map created by "goldengrape," 40 places in Beijing are labeled as "dangerous" based on experiences during Saturday's rainstorm. Descriptions were also added, such as "intersection of Xi'erqi North Road, low-lying, many manhole covers washed away." Netizens said the map would help them cope with future cloudbursts, as they said the city's road conditions couldn't be improved in a short time. Other posts and videos included survival tips such as how to break open car windows. Earlier reports said a Beijing man drowned in his car on Saturday night after driving into a pool 4 meters deep formed by rainwater. He is said to have knocked his head against the window in a failed attempt to break free. According to a map published by Beijing's flood control office, 80 spots in the city were still covered in water as of 9am yesterday. The office will soon publish its version of a "flood map" pointing out flood-prone areas in Beijing, said spokesman Liu Hongwei. |
| City's government pledges toll truth Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:23 AM PDT THE Beijing city government says it has been and will continue to be truthful in reporting the death toll from the weekend's flooding amid online skepticism. Spokeswoman Wang Hui told reporters yesterday that 37 people died in the city. She said flood-hit areas were still being inspected and any updates would be disclosed promptly. "I want to say I hope everyone will not speculate that the Beijing government is hiding the death toll," said Wang, who at moments during the briefing became tearful as she described the force of the downpour. "Doing the inspection work is not easy. Do believe us that we will speak the truth," she said. "If there are new figures we will immediately tell you." Rumors had been circulating online about higher casualties. |
| Traffic resumes on flooded highway Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:23 AM PDT TRAFFIC on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau expressway resumed at noon yesterday after 84 vehicles stranded on the expressway following Saturday's massive downpour in Beijing were removed. One section of the road was submerged in up to 6 meters of floodwater on Saturday. Ten divers and hundreds of rescuers spent two days pulling submerged cars out of deep water on the expressway, rescuers said. They found the bodies of three drowned victims in the cars. Each diver worked a 40-minute shift. Another 900-meter section of the expressway was submerged in water four meters deep, the municipal government said. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:23 AM PDT THE Three Gorges Dam saw its biggest flood of the year yesterday, as water from the Yangtze's upper reaches gushed at 69,000 cubic meters per second into the dam's reservoir. The dam is working to take the edge off the fierce flood and reduce its impact on the river's lower reaches by storing at least 26,000 cubic meters of water every second, the Yangtze River flood control headquarters said. Thanks to the dam's buffer effect, outflow from the dam currently measures 43,000 cubic meters per second, it said. It said the force of the flood far exceeded that of the Yangtze flood of 1998, which caused a large amount of damage. |
| 13 dead, 7 injured in Fujian road accident Posted: 24 Jul 2012 10:11 AM PDT Wrecks of a vehicle is seen at the accident site after the vehicle fell off a bridge in Shouning County, southeast China's Fujian Province, yesterday. Thirteen people were killed and another seven injured in the accident Tuesday morning, according to local authorities. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| South China Sea's Sansha takes root Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:35 AM PDT China's newest city was established in the South China Sea yesterday morning. As blustery island winds buffeted palm trees, Mayor Miao Jie declared Sansha, with a population of just 1,000, China's newest city. The city is a tiny and remote island barely large enough to host a single airstrip. There is a post office, bank, supermarket and a hospital, but little else. Fresh water comes by freighter on a 13-hour journey from China's southern Hainan Island. The central government has created the city administration to oversee not only the rugged outpost but hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of water. Luo Baoming, Party chief of Hainan Province, said at the ceremony that Sansha had been established to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea. Sansha is under the jurisdiction of Hainan. "The provincial government will be devoted to turning the city into an important base to safeguard China's sovereignty and serve marine resource development," he said, adding that the main task at present would be to build up political power in Sansha to ensure efficient management. The city government is located on Yongxing Island, a part of the Xisha Islands and the largest island in the area. Yongxing, about 350 kilometers from Hainan, is little more than the size of Manhattan's Central Park. China has approved the formal establishment of a military garrison for Sansha, though specific details have yet to be released. China Central Television aired yesterday's formal establishment ceremony live from Sansha, with speeches from the city's new mayor and other officials. The Chinese flag was raised and the national anthem played before plaques for the Sansha municipal government and the Sansha municipal committee of the Communist Party of China were unveiled on a white-columned government building. Sansha's jurisdiction covers just 13 square kilometers of land but 2 million square kilometers of surrounding waters. Sansha means "three sandbanks" in Mandarin and appears to refer to the Chinese names for the Xisha, Nansha and Zhongsha island chains. Wei Qiqiang, a 61-year-old fisherman on the island, said fishermen used to live in huts made of wood panels when he first arrived on the isolated island in 1979. Yesterday, 613 local residents living off fishing became official residents of Sansha. The ship Qiongzhou III currently serves as the only lifeline sending in supplies like rice, vegetables and medicine from Hainan. The ship can take up to 200 passengers. It makes two round trips a month, weather permitting. |
| College first to teach tree-climbing course Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:13 AM PDT A RENOWNED university in a coastal city in southeastern Fujian Province has triggered controversy for becoming the first Chinese institution of higher learning to teach students how to climb trees. The Xiamen University, which has one of the greenest campuses in China, said it has started to look for the proper tree-climbing venue on an adjoining hill, and the class would train students to "move smoothly among the trees" as well as teach them survival skills. "Many US universities have opened this elective class, which greatly inspired our headmaster during his US tour," Lin Jianhua, professor of the university's sports department, told Xiamen Economic Daily. "We will ensure the students' safety with the assistance of equipment," he added. The move has been praised by outdoor enthusiasts who considered it a relatively safe and easy way for students to improve their physical fitness as well as learn survival skills. "At least, students can climb trees to escape floods," an Internet user called Maimang06 said. Some Xiamen University students also showed support. "It's interesting! I will be sure to select this course in the upcoming semester. It's great to have fun while learning something," a third-year student identified as Xiao Chen said. But others protested, accusing the university of blindly imitating its overseas counterparts and saying it would damage the environment. "Learn to be monkeys? It's ridiculous. It's better to teach swimming," one commenter said. It is not the first time Xiamen University has made news. In 2005, it became the first domestic school to open a golf course and was surprised to find that students warmly welcomed it. The university has recruited professional golf coaches and expanded classes from three to 11, the paper said. Other universities also offer unique lessons as Chinese education gradually becomes more focused on all-round development. Ocean University of China teaches students sailing. Nanjing Normal University teaches girls how to be a charming woman while China University of Political Science and Law develops a psychological courses from the popular US television series "Lie to Me." |
| Microblog writing test stumps applicants for job Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:13 AM PDT WHEN a writing sample for a microblog was included as part of a test for those applying to be government officials at a county in Zhejiang Province, results showed about 60 percent didn't have basic knowledge of the platform. The 310 applicants were asked to write a sample microblog to promote a festival as part of an exam on Monday to be selected as government officials at Tiantai County of Taizhou City, Shanghai Evening News reported. But about 60 percent of them didn't know that they could write no more than 140 Chinese characters, the usual limit for microblog platforms and some wrote more than 300. Three applicants got zero score as they didn't know how to write a microblog. The exam organizers said they added the writing section to the test because the microblog is playing an important role in government affairs, allowing services to be provided to the public more easily. Li Sendi, an official with Tiantai government, told the newspaper that microblogs should be used as a vital tool for the government to communicate, so government officials have to know the platform and use them wisely. The Shanghai government's Information Office announced in April that more than 400 city government offices and institutions have opened microblog accounts to publicize issues and communicate with more than 11 million followers. More than 800 microblog accounts have been opened by municipal departments, including those of the city government, the Public Security Bureau, Shanghai Commercial and Industrial Administration and district governments. In Chongqing City, over 600 microblog accounts have been opened by government departments, while the number was only 200 by the end of last year, the newspaper said. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:12 AM PDT POLICE in Shanxi Province have detained a young woman who killed her eight-year-old stepson and chopped his body into pieces because he snuck a chicken claw, local media reported. The 26-year-old stepmother, Zhu Hongling, told police that she was angry on July 12 when she found the boy eating a chicken claw without her permission and beat him, news website China.com.cn reported. Zhu took the boy to the rooftop of their apartment, threatening to let him fall. When he cried loudly, Zhu tried to silence him by striking his head until it bled with the handle of an axe, the website reported. Then the stepmother chopped on the boy's head with the axe for several times until he died, police told the website. Zhu said she planned to hide the body in a washing machine but as the child was too big for the drum, she chopped up his body and hid the pieces in different places in her bedroom. Then she put the boy's legs in bags and carried them on her motorcycle 2 kilometers away to throw them into weeds in a desolate area, she told police. The boy's body, without arms or legs, was found on the rooftop of their apartment two days later by his grandmother, who smelled a strong odor and saw flies near the woman's bedroom. Other parts of the boy and the axe she used to butcher him were found in closets in the bedroom. |
| 2011-2012 China Film Industry Report Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:03 AM PDT Source: china.org.cn According to EntGroup's, China Film Co-production Company has received 93 applications for co-productions, 6 applications for assisted co-productions, in total 99 films in 2011. 69 films were approved as co-production projects and 4 approved as assisted co-productions, in total 74 films. 58 films out of the 74 films finished shooting and passed the censorship for theatrical release.  Mutual benefit is the basis for Chinese-foreign co-productions. Mainland Chinese companies seek partners to share the risk and to learn production experiences; foreign companies seek to enter the Chinese market. If we look at the number of co-productions, the number of co-produced films never takes a big proportion of the total number of production. But the box office output are generally significant, taking a large share of China's total box office gross. Among the top 20 local films, 12 are co-produced films. Mainland China-Hong Kong co-productions make up the majority of co-produced films and they are often box office winners too. China-US co-produced films are outnumbered and outperformed by their Hong Kong counterparts. Cultural difference and a lack of in-depth collaboration from the script stage are main reasons for the situation.  According to EntGroup's "2011-2012 China Film Industry Report", there are several thousands of production companies in China. Among them, around 1500 companies are based in Beijing. In 2011, there are 190 companies that have produced films earning at least 100,000 yuan in box office per film. These 190 companies can be further divided into three categories: The first category refers to major studios such as China Film Group, Huayi Brothers Media and Bona Film Group. The second category refers to state-owned companies such as Shanghai Film Group, and companies eagerly preparing their IPO plans such as Beijing Galloping Horse Films and Ciwen Media. The third category refers to major provincial-leveled studios and private companies with solid box office records such as Perfect World and Guoli Changsheng. The fourth category refers to companies that are currently inactive in film production. In fact, there are a great number of companies belonging to the fourth category. These companies in total produced a good number of productions but their commercial performances are always less-than satisfactory. If these companies can integrate their production resources and cut down their production, only to jointly produce a few good-quality films, their productions will be able to compete with films by major studios. As a result, the recent production slump will be improved in a great deal. 
|
| China Push in Canada Is Biggest Foreign Buy Posted: 23 Jul 2012 06:22 PM PDT  Source: Wall Street Journal By Simon Hall, Edward Welsch and Ryan Dezember | Photo: Reuters Cnooc Ltd. swept into Canada with its biggest-ever overseas acquisition, a $15.1 billion deal to buy one of that country's largest energy producers that reignites a debate over the role of Chinese state players in North America's energy industry. The deal, approved by Nexen's board, faces government and regulatory reviews in Ottawa and Washington, D.C. Nexen has considerable operations in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and U.S. officials are likely to scrutinize any change of ownership there. Even in Canada, a country more accustomed to big Chinese investment in its oil patch, the deal could face heightened scrutiny. The offer is several times larger than any previous Chinese investment in Canada and nearly equivalent to total China investment in the province of Alberta, excluding real estate, according to Gordon Houlden, head of the University of Alberta's China Institute in Edmonton. "It is another order of magnitude" from previous deals, he said. In recent years, North American energy producers have boosted output of oil and gas, capitalizing on a series of expensive and technologically challenging extraction methods. Those include oil-sands development—a costly, energy-intensive process for separating quartz sand from huge deposits of bitumen lying just below the surface of northern Alberta. Meanwhile, producers in the U.S. and Canada have boosted natural-gas output through innovative drilling techniques in shale-rock fields once considered uneconomical. They're also pumping oil from deep beneath the sea in the Gulf of Mexico. While a relatively small player on the world stage, Nexen operates in all of these frontiers. It has oil-sands development in Alberta, shale gas in British Columbia and deep water leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Nexen's Gulf of Mexico beachhead would give Cnooc a level of entry into the U.S. oil patch that has long eluded Chinese companies. In its earlier U.S. deals, including tie-ups with Chesapeake Energy Corp., as well as an investment in Nexen's own Gulf of Mexico properties, Cnooc took a back seat, helping to pay for drilling for some of the oil and gas that came out of the ground. In acquiring Nexen, Cnooc would be in the driver's seat. It views the Nexen acquisition as a platform from which to build a North American business beyond its current role as a financial backer, according to people familiar with the deal. Cnooc envisions additional deals to expand, one of these people said. To help cement the deal, Cnooc agreed to base its North and Central American operations in Calgary, Nexen's hometown. Cnooc executives said their focus now is to complete the Nexen deal and expand the business. In Nexen, Cnooc would be buying a significant player in the Gulf of Mexico, with at least partial stakes in exploration areas covering 2,142 square miles, according to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management data. Cnooc would likely file for a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a group that vets proposed foreign investment in strategic industries, according to legal experts. A CFIUS review is meant to examine a potential investment's possible impact on U.S. national security. Its focus is meant to be technical not political, but legal experts said that any purchase that put large amounts of U.S. energy assets in foreign hands could raise alarm bells. The Treasury Department, which coordinates CFIUS reviews, declined to comment. The deal also faces scrutiny by both parties on Capitol Hill and along the presidential campaign trail. Canada's industry minister, who is in charge of vetting big foreign investment, also must review the deal. Cnooc had alerted the Canadian government that it planned to announce a deal, but didn't engage in talks about undertakings it was ready to make, said a person familiar with the transaction.  Globally, Chinese firms have disclosed 1,414 overseas acquisitions, valued at a total of about $235 billion, since January of 2008, according to researcher Dealogic. That includes Monday's Nexen offer. Of those deals, 198, or roughly $40.6 billion, have taken place this year. Much of China's early overseas investment targeted the developing world. More recently, state-controlled companies have been buying in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, especially following the global economic and financial crisis. Underscoring China's growing comfort level operating in the developed world, Chinese state-controlled oil producer China Petrochemical Corp., or Sinopec, separately agreed to acquire a 49% stake in U.K. North Sea assets owned by Canada's Talisman Energy Inc. for $1.5 billion. The Nexen deal comes seven years after Cnooc's 2005 failure to acquire Unocal Corp. for $18.5 billion. That bid quieted Chinese deal making in the U.S. for years. Cnooc officials later acknowledged the failure taught it to do a better job dealing with lobbying and public relations. Unocal is now part of Chevron Corp. In an interview Monday in Calgary, Cnooc Chief Executive Li Fanrong said the company's friendly agreement to buy Nexen "is a different story, unique" from the Unocal deal. He said Cnooc has learned from that aborted deal and others since, and is now comfortable investing and operating in advanced economies like North America.  "We [have] worked with almost every single major international energy company. We learned their management best practices. We learned their technology," he said. "So over the last 30 years we built confidence in ourselves." Cnooc agreed to pay $27.50 per share for Nexen, representing a 61% premium to its closing price Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. It also said it would seek to list on the Toronto Stock Exchange, in addition to its listings in China and New York. It said it would keep Nexen's management and staff in place and continue with Nexen's current capital-investment plans. Those moves could help it win Canadian government approval, which requires a potential acquirer to demonstrate a "net benefit" to Canada's economy. Another factor in its favor: Cnooc chose a company going through a spate of recent troubles, potentially making its proposed premium and promise of sustained capital especially attractive, both to shareholders and the government. Nexen has recently struggled with a number of production-related setbacks around the world, including the loss of a key concession in Yemen. The loss caused a shake-up at the company, with several executives leaving, including in January, former Chief Executive Marvin Romanow, who had held the top job at the company for three years. The company also suffered major equipment malfunctions and disappointing production rates for several years at its Long Lake oil sands project in Alberta. Cnooc's first investment in Canada was in 2005 through a 17% stake in oil-sands developer MEG Energy Inc. Then last year, it made a flurry of deals, including in a small shale company in the Yukon. In the summer, it announced a $2.1 billion purchase of Nexen's bankrupt partner in the Long Lake oil sands project, OPTI Canada Inc. It also said it would join in a joint venture with Nexen in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last year began to help Nexen explore strategic alternatives, according to people familiar with the matter. Cnooc was among the companies contacted as part of that process, but a deal didn't materialize, according to one of these people. The Chinese company then came back to Nexen in early June 2012, after deciding it wanted to launch a North American business through Nexen, the people said. Fang Zhi, CNOOC's president, said a year of working with Nexen on Long Lake and in the Gulf of Mexico, was like a "courting" process in which Cnooc became convinced of the long-term strength of Nexen's assets, including its Long Lake oil sands project in Alberta. "When we came and proposed, it was not a surprise to them," Mr. Fang said in an interview. |
| China Shadow Bankers Go Online as Peer-to-Peer Sites Boom Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:13 AM PDT  Source: Bloomberg News Jack Qiu, spending evenings in front of his laptop in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, is earning the best returns of his life: 14.2 percent on an annualized basis in just two months. He's doing it by lending money to strangers online. An accountant by day, Qiu has turned out to be a better loan manager by night than most banks. Only two investments out of his 80,000 yuan ($12,525) total, each worth 100 yuan, have gone unpaid. Nonperforming loans at a Chinese lender, on average, would be almost four times as much. Peer-to-peer lending is taking off in China as traditional methods of private lending among family and acquaintances, part of the country's unregulated $2.4 trillion shadow-banking system, move online. More than 2,000 websites have been set up nationwide since 2007, China National Radio reported in May. Loans brokered online increased 300-fold to 6 billion yuan in the first half of 2011, the latest figures available, from the full year total in 2007, the report said. 'Innovative Lending' Akin to LendingClub.com or Prosper.com in the U.S., China's peer-to-peer lenders let individuals invest a minimum of 50 yuan in projects ranging from small-business expansion to funding newlyweds' honeymoons for as much as 23 percent interest, the highest rate allowed under Chinese law. While the returns are higher than parking the money in bank accounts earning 3 percent, they're dwarfed by some underground shadow-banking investment yields that can go as high as 100 percent. "This is an interesting and innovative lending platform with a lot of goodwill," said Liao Qiang, a Beijing-based director for financial institutions at Standard & Poor's. Existing outside of regulators' jurisdiction, online lending sites aren't without risks. The China Banking Regulatory Commission in September issued a warning about web-based brokers, cautioning that their bad-loan ratio is "significantly higher" than that of banks — without specifying the figure — and that they can cross the line into illegality such as fraud, funding illegitimate businesses or money laundering. A Beijing-based spokesman for the banking regulator said peer-to-peer lending isn't under its official purview. "There is no discipline at all," Liao said, calling it a "short-lived fad" that won't affect the role banks play in the economy. "There's no enforcement should borrowers default." Prosper Marketplace Online peer-to-peer lending started in the U.K. in 2005 and spread to the U.S., Germany and elsewhere. Prosper Marketplace Inc., the first such U.S. lender, reported a 179 percent increase in volume in 2011 and has almost 1.4 million members funding $369 million in loans. Lending online became popular in China after a tightening of bank credit in 2010 following two years of stimulus spending to fight the global financial crisis. With total loan volume less than $1 billion, it's still a tiny part of the country's shadow-banking universe — along with underground lending, off- balance-sheet financing by banks and investments by trust firms — that policy makers led by Premier Wen Jiabao are trying to bring under government oversight. The total amount that circulates as loans among friends, families and companies is $1.3 trillion, according to estimates by research firm IHS Global Insight Ltd. (IHS), an amount equal to last year's U.S. budget deficit. Microfinance Inspiration The Ppdai site, which calls itself China's first and largest, was founded by former Microsoft Corp. engineer Zhang Jun and three former classmates from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Zhang said they found inspiration when Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for lifting millions out of poverty by making small loans through what is known as microfinancing. Reeling from a failed YouTube-like website, the friends decided to pool their remaining savings of 200,000 yuan to connect borrowers with investors via the Web. The catch: None of the founders, including one who was a corporate lawyer at the time, knew if it was legal. "We went ahead because we couldn't find any regulation that specifically bans it," Zhang, 35, said in an interview at his Shanghai Ppdai Financial Information Services Co. office in a shared space for startup companies at a high-tech park in Shanghai's Pudong district. "We knew the demand was there. So was the supply." Loan Requests Like San Francisco-based Prosper, Ppdai requires borrowers to list basic personal information and details of their financing needs. Investors review the requests and make investments that meet their criteria. About 80 percent of the total 400 million yuan of lending brokered by Ppdai since 2007 has gone to small businesses, Zhang said. Only 3 percent of China's 42 million small and medium-sized firms are able to get loans from banks, according to an estimate by Citic Securities Co., while 36.7 trillion yuan of household savings are parked in banks. Half of that amount earns as little as 0.35 percent a year in checking accounts, with the remainder earning a 3 percent savings rate, which the government lowered from 3.5 percent in June. A recent loan request by an online sportswear retailer in Hunan province asked for 11,970 yuan to buy inventory for the fall season, paying 20 percent interest. Another borrower in Shandong province is seeking 50,000 yuan to purchase manufacturing equipment, paying 18 percent. Default Risk Ppdai, which in Chinese is short for "lending through auctions," claims more than 1.1 million registered users. Loan amounts start at 3,000 yuan and are capped at 500,000 yuan, with lenders contributing a minimum of 50 yuan. The maximum interest rate by law, 23 percent, can't exceed four times the benchmark lending rate, now 6 percent for one-year loans. Credit cards usually charge 18 percent. "It's fairly easy to get consumer loans and credit cards from banks nowadays," S&P's Liao said. "If someone is unqualified for that, he may very likely end up being a borrower online and the default risk is extremely high." About 3.5 percent of Ppdai's loans aren't paid off on time, Zhang said, while 1.2 percent have been overdue for at least 90 days, the definition of nonperforming at Chinese banks. That compares with the 0.9 percent bad-loan ratio of the nation's commercial banks as of the end of March, according to data from the banking regulator. The rate by investor Qiu of 0.25 percent is considerably lower than Ppdai's average. Online Rescue The default rate of LendingClub Corp., a U.S. peer-to-peer lending site which issues consumer loans of as much as $35,000 for everything from home repair to exotic vacations, has been below 3 percent since its inception in 2007, while at Prosper the loan-loss rate is about 5 percent, according to the companies' websites. One Chinese borrower, 29-year-old Xu Xiaolong, counts herself a beneficiary after a lending website helped her family survive a difficult period in May. Xu's husband had a car accident and needed 30,000 yuan to pay his medical bills. Days before the accident, the couple had put 1 million yuan, their entire savings plus some loans from relatives and friends, into a nonrefundable investment. They bought 30-year rights to eight acres of green-tea fields in Fujian province. Hongling Chuangtou Ecommerce Co., which operates the My089.com lending website from Shenzhen, increased Xu's borrowing limit after learning what happened. She was able to raise all the money she requested in one day at an 18 percent annual rate. 'Great Platform' "It's a great platform to resort to if you have urgent needs," Xu, who had been a borrower and lender previously, said in a telephone interview. "I am truly thankful for it." Ppdai, which charges borrowers a fee of as much as 4 percent of their loans, began to break even early last year, Zhang said. Almost 80 percent of the company's monthly revenue of 500,000 yuan goes to the salaries of its 40 employees, while the rest is reinvested in the business, he said. Renrendai Business Consulting (Beijing) Corp., which operates renrendai.com, brokered about 130 million yuan of loans online in the first half this year, an increase of more than 10 fold from a year earlier, according to its earnings report posted last week. Borrowers are paying between 10.3 percent and 16.6 percent interest on loans with maturities of three months to 24 months. Credit Scoring China's lack of a credit-scoring system makes risk management difficult for peer-to-peer lending, giving potential lenders no way to gauge borrowers' creditworthiness. For most online platforms in China, risk-control measures include checking whether the personal identification or business license of the borrower has been photo-shopped. Those who have defaulted have their names and contact numbers disclosed on the front page of the website. "Coming from a technology background, it took us a while to realize that risk management is key to the business," Zhang said. "But we can do just enough to reduce default and prevent fraud, so we urge investors again and again not to put all their eggs in one basket." 'Ponzi Scheme' Some peer-to-peer sites have shut down. Hahadai.com, a Shanghai-based online loan broker with almost 100,000 registered users, closed in July 2011, about 18 months after it started, because the company didn't have enough capital, the Economic Observer reported. Taojindai.com, which went live on June 3, became inaccessible five days later, with more than 1 million yuan in investments from at least 80 users missing, the China Business News reported last month, calling it the first "Ponzi scheme" in the country's peer-to-peer lending business. "Unlike banks, these middlemen are unable to collect information on borrowers and manage loans afterwards," the regulator warned in September. "In the event that illegal activities such as malicious fraud or even money laundering occur, it will endanger the entire society." The same concerns have haunted the sites' U.S. counterparts. Prosper in November 2008 stopped all new lending after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist letter characterizing the website as a seller of investments, a label Prosper had resisted by arguing it was a marketplace matching lenders and borrowers. Five months later, California regulators allowed the company to resume raising money in the state and lending it out under a system that lets borrowers and lenders use bids to set the interest rates on loans. Suicides, Bankruptcies China's policy makers are trying to regulate the excesses of private lending after a spate of suicides and bankruptcies around the country led to defaults, lawsuits and protests. "Informal lending through various forms has been an integral part of China's financial system because not all of its functions can be replaced by banks," said He Wenguang, an economics professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, whose research focuses on rural and microfinancing. "It will continue to exist with or without government interference." Beyond Lending CreditEase, established as a peer-to-peer lending site in 2006, has now become a provider of wealth-management services, credit ratings and rural financing, drawing investment from venture-capital firm IDG Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley's Asia fund. The company doesn't have the licenses required by the banking and securities regulator for these services. "We are a company that provides all types of services, including financial planning," said Tang Ning, founder and CEO of CreditEase. "We don't consider ourselves simply a lender." Tang, who went to Bangladesh to study microfinance under Yunus, said Beijing-based CreditEase is registered as a service company, not a lending organization. To ensure that it could continue to grow in the absence of clear regulation, Ppdai sought an operating license as a provider of "financial-information services," Zhang said. After numerous visits by officials from the central bank and city government, Ppdai was granted the license in May by Shanghai's Administration for Industry & Commerce, he said. Providing financial information isn't what peer-to-peer lending is about, raising more questions from users such as Qiu. "I am still not sure whether my investment is legal or not," said Qiu, whose loans included 500 yuan for a borrower's apartment renovation and 400 yuan to a paint seller in Chongqing. "I can manage default risks by screening borrowers, but there is nothing I can do if the whole website turns out to be a scam. So finally, who's the police on this place if that really happens?" |
| WTO to Probe China’s Rare-Earth Policies Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:18 AM PDT  Source: Wall Street Journal By Chuin-Wei Yap BEIJING—In a widely expected move following requests by the United States, European Union and Japan, the World Trade Organization has set up a panel to probe China's rare-earth export policies, the trade body said in a report on its website Tuesday. The WTO Dispute Settlement Body's decision moves forward the request made in March to have the agency probe China's export quotas, duties and other restrictions on rare earths, as well as minor metals molybdenum and tungsten. But coming at a time when global production is rising and prices are under pressure, the findings of the trade body can only have limited impact on prices as the world no longer relies on Chinese supply for all its needs. After China imposed quota restrictions on exports, global suppliers have made considerable headway in reducing dependence on Chinese supply. U.S.-based Molycorp has begun production at its California mine, and Avalon Rare Metals is developing a deposit in Canada's Northwest Territories, according to a U.S. Congress research report in June. Japan also has a deal for a rare-earth development project in Quebec, and Australia's Lynas Corp. is due to start mine production at its Mount Weld facility this year as well as potentially reopen a mine in South Africa. The Lynas project is expected to produce 40,000 tons annually by 2013, while Molycorp's Mountain Pass could produce 20,000 tons a year. The two projects together could potentially account for about a third of world demand, the congressional report said. At the time when the quota restrictions came into force, China accounted for nearly 95% of global supply. In a changing market, China has struggled with plummeting rare-earth prices as demand weakened in the past year. Prices of bellwether rare-earth products such as neodymium oxide have nearly halved from last year's level to around $67.50 a metric ton Monday, according to Lynas Corp. Beijing has said it regrets the complaint, defending its policy as a means to control an environmentally polluting industry, although it led to sharply higher prices when the measures were announced. If found to contravene WTO rules, China may have to remove or amend some of its policies and that could further free up the rare-earth market. Vietnam, Norway, Oman, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, Canada and Colombia plan to exercise third-party rights in this case, the WTO said. Third parties in WTO disputes can monitor and influence proceedings, which usually take about six months to complete. Flagging global demand and rising private stockpile, coming amid worries over China's control over output, have dented international trade in these commodities. Chinese exporters used up only 62% of last year's quota. Industry websites show only a quarter of this year's initial quota has been used so far. China has so far allowed its companies the right to export 21,226 tons of rare-earth metals this year. The government has said it plans to maintain its 2012 quota volume "basically flat" compared with last year's 30,184 tons. China's largest rare-earth producer, Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth (Group) Hi-Tech Co., said earlier this month that it plans to launch a physical-trading platform for the minerals on Aug. 8, which may bolster China's control over their pricing. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Update » News » Society To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Comments