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• China Capital Account Restrictions Loosened for Foreign Investors
• Huawei Might Need Some PR Help in the UK
• Baijiu, China’s Latest “Food” Scandal

China Capital Account Restrictions Loosened for Foreign Investors Posted: 22 Nov 2012 04:34 AM PST Want to know how difficult it is to teach China foreign investment law? Less than two months ago I told my students about capital account restrictions and the influence of hot money and financial speculators on the approval process for cross-border capital flows. That information is now out of date: China will clear the way for foreign investors' capital to flow in and out of the country more easily by waiving and simplifying regulations, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or SAFE, said on Wednesday. Starting on Dec 17, foreign investors won't need to get regulatory approval to open bank accounts, remit profits, and transfer money between different domestic accounts, it said. And the limits on the number of foreign-currency accounts and the amount of money that can be transferred will also be loosened, it added. Good news for some of my clients, but now I have to supplement my class lecture. The fun, it never ends. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

Huawei Might Need Some PR Help in the UK Posted: 22 Nov 2012 02:01 AM PST From the Telegraph: Huawei's UK arm paid more than £8,600 to send executives to a networking event at the Conservative Party conference, in the same week US politicians said its technology should be blacklisted from American government systems. The company also paid £10,000 to the Liberal Democrats to sponsor a reception at its conference in Brighton. {sigh} Once again, I feel sorry for Huawei. Was it a smart move to make UK political contributions? If you have business there, it certainly makes a lot of sense, and (of course) everyone else, including Huawei's competitors, are doing it. This is unfortunately the way things get done these days in developed countries where bribery is legal. And what, according to a lot of critics, was Huawei's big problem in overseas markets? For years, folks said that Huawei, and a lot of other Chinese companies, did not understand local practices. So now Huawei is doing just that, and they get burned for it. This kind of thing looks great on paper, and can be a very effective strategy. But then the information gets out to the public, and what was once a great move blows up in your face and becomes a PR problem. Seriously, this is rather sad. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Huawei

Baijiu, China’s Latest “Food” Scandal Posted: 21 Nov 2012 09:05 PM PST If you're keeping score at home (and I know you are), the latest "food" safety scandal involves a well-known brand of baijiu, China's infamous white wine, which as everyone knows is extracted and refined from the tears of liberal economists. Or maybe it's distilled from rice and other types of grains. The news broke a couple days ago that a nasty chemical had been found in Jiugui brand baijiu, a name that can be translated as "drunkard." Classy. Provincial authorities have confirmed that a high-end band of Chinese liquor contains a harmful chemical, while the liquor association has defended the company saying there is no national standard regulating the use of the plasticizer. The Hunan Institute of Product Quality Supervision and Inspection announced on Wednesday that up to 1.04 milligrams per kilogram of the chemical, Dibutyl phthalate (DBP), was found in the famous Jiugui brand of the traditional Chinese liquor known as baijiu. The Hunan quality watchdog has ordered the Jiugui Liquor company to determine the source of the plasticizer. Experts say the chemical used in plastics may cause harm to the human immune and reproductive systems. Uh oh, not another food safety scandal. Or is it? I'm going to go out on a limb here and give you three reasons why this is not your average food safety problem. First, the product isn't really food. Yes, some folks ingest this stuff, but the jury's still out on whether this liquid is even really potable. People routinely put stuff in their mouths that isn't safe, like cigarettes and Big Macs. I once saw a guy on a reality show eat musk ox testes; there's no accounting for taste. Second, the news should not have reported that a toxic chemical was found in baijiu, but that "another questionable substance" was found in the disgusting soup o' gunk that is called baijiu. Look, I'm not a big fan of this particular kind of jet fuel. Granted, I don't drink the hard stuff anymore, not since the Flaming Dr. Pepper Incident of 1990 in Claremont, California, the details of which I am unable to divulge per court order. The point is, baijiu is nasty. I'm sure there are plenty of you connoisseurs out there who can wax rhapsodic about the subtle differences in baijiu, explaining how we can all best enjoy the flavor experience. But I bet I can find some gear heads who could give me the same info about the different varieties of gasoline, based on lead content. What it comes down to is that you can ingest this toxic chemical, which may damage your immune system and turn you into a eunuch, or you can drink unadulterated baijiu and burn/scar the entire length of your alimentary canal (and yes, I mean the entire length). Third, and this is based on preliminary information at this point, it doesn't sound like the well-intentioned (but, let's face it, evil) folks at Jiugui put this chemical into the baijiu for nefarious reasons. We are by now used to the farmer who injects shit into his livestock to add weight, the retailer who sprays crap on his produce to make it look shiny, and the bastards who added amino acids to their milk products to give it a higher protein content. In this case, it appears that the plasticizer (i.e., a chemical used to make plastic more flexible) originated in containers used in the production chain. In other words, this might be chemical leaching going on here, not a deliberate addition of a harmful substance. So, just another food safety scandal? I don't think so. On the other hand, the press has given this story a great deal of attention, so it looks like the government might actually investigate this chemical leaching issue with plastic containers. This of course involves more than just baijiu, so stay tuned for more "revelations" in the coming days. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: baijiu, food safety

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