Posts Tagged ‘China’
China’s Great Wall Motors opens first European plant
Carlos Sousa driving a Great Wall Haval to 7th overall in Dakar 2012
Great Wall Motor has become the first Chinese carmaker to open an assembly plant in Europe as it aims to lift sales in the region.
The factory, in the northern village of Bahovitsa in Bulgaria, will eventually produce 50,000 vehicles a year.
The facility was built together with Great Wall’s Bulgarian partner Litex Motors. It will manufacture Great Wall’s Hover SUV, Steed pick-up and Voleex city car models.
The plant will initially employ 150 workers capable of making 4,000 vehicles per year, rising to 2,000 employees when at full capacity in 2013.
“Great Wall’s plans to build a plant in Bulgaria and produce automobiles here are aimed at boosting our production capacity and exporting these automobiles for the European market,” company president and chief executive Feng Ying Wang said. “We estimate that in three to five years we will have a wide range of models made here and that these cars will be sold in all European countries.”
The sort of enterprise following on economic growth and market penetration by the Asian countries preceding China into Western markets. I expect this will continue with sensible entry and growth models – in Europe. It’s all part of sensible, interconnected globalising of economies. That doesn’t require ideology, prayer or xenophobia.
I think Cold War conservatism will continue to get in the way of similar job creation in the United States. A ship of fools.
Xi confident on Chinese economy – discounts Bears and book peddlers
Xi Jinping with Joe Biden, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping said on Friday the Chinese economy would experience stable growth and avoid a hard landing this year, discounting a scenario economists fear may upset the global economy.
The Chinese leader-in-waiting, turning to courting American companies and governors hungry for a slice of his nation’s growth, told a business forum in Los Angeles that the world’s No. 2 economy will continue to push domestic demand while directing investment toward the United States.
Xi said “2012 will be a crucial year in driving the 12th five-year plan. China’s economy will maintain stable growth … there will be no so-called hard landing.”
“We will encourage more consumption, imports, and outward investment,” he told a business forum in Los Angeles on the final leg of his five-day U.S. visit, drawing light applause…
Xi is poised to become China’s next leader after a decade in which it has grown to become the world’s second-largest economy, while the United States has endured the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s…
Scores of executives from major U.S. and Chinese companies, from Intel to Microsoft, lined up to sign a plethora of deals after Xi’s address at the economic forum on Friday. Those included “Kung Fu Panda” studio Dreamworks Animation’s venture to make films from Shanghai, and Chinese telecoms giant Huawei’s pledge to award $6 billion of contracts over three years to Qualcomm, Broadcom and Avago.
The Chinese trade delegation this week also inked deals to buy a record 13.4 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans, valued at $6.7 billion. Before Los Angeles, Xi visited the heartland farm state of Iowa, where Chinese soybean buyers announced they would buy more than $4 billion in U.S. soybeans this year…
“China has become the United States’ fastest growing export market,” Xi told an audience of business executives and policymakers on Wednesday. “Speaking frankly, an important aspect of addressing the imbalance in Chinese-U.S. trade is the United States’ own economic policies and structural adjustment…”
“A prosperous and stable China will not be a threat to any country,” he said.
None of this differs especially from the analyses of most economists and analysts doing business on the global stage. Of all the information strolling across the electronic stage – all week – the majority reflects this theme.
Professional bears, trying to influence their short-selling egos try to counter reality. And a couple times a week some minstrel show mug will get five minutes interview time trying to sell the latest book on the imminent collapse of China. With or without a secret cabal of lizard people [and a wink to Eddy Elfenbein].
Appreciation in China’s currency unnoticed – especially by politicians
With little fanfare, China’s currency has appreciated significantly in the last year and a half, leading many economists to question whether the exchange rate is still the most important economic issue for the United States to press with China’s leaders.
The rise of the renminbi — up 12 percent since June 2010 on an inflation-adjusted basis and 40 percent since 2005 — has helped American companies by effectively reducing the cost of their products in China. In the last two years, American exports to China have risen sharply…
In his Oval Office meeting on Tuesday with Xi Jinping, China’s vice president and likely next leader, President Obama discussed the currency as one of the trade practices that concerned the United States. That meeting — and tough public comments by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — continued a three-year campaign by the administration to convince Chinese leaders that a stronger currency is in their interest…
Administration officials and members of Congress have chosen not to emphasize the appreciation publicly, partly to keep pressure on China. Widespread discussion of the change could reduce support in Congress for a bill that would impose sanctions on Chinese imports to the United States and that Beijing strongly opposes…Passing legislation based on a lie doesn’t upset Congress or the White House at all.
Xi Jinping makes a return voyage to Muscatine, Iowa
Xi Jinping talks with local people in the home of Roger and Sarah Lande in Muscatine, Iowa
Kevin E. Schmidt / Pool via AFP – Getty Images
A young, blue-eyed Sarah Lande never thought the polite young man from China, Xi Jinping, sitting at her dining room table in 1985 would go on to become the next president of China. She simply thought of him as a gentle soul with genuine interest in her family’s Iowa roots, sharing a home-cooked meal of pork, beef and locally grown corn.
Wednesday afternoon 27 years later – he returned to the same three-story home on Muscatine’s 2nd Street and walked through the same door, but this time as China’s next president.
“Coming here is really like coming back to home,” Xi told a packed living room of familiar faces he met on his 1985 visit. “You can’t even imagine what a deep impression I had from my visit 27 years ago … because you were the first group of Americans that I came into contact with…”
Xi first visited Muscatine as a provincial official from Iowa’s sister state of Hebei almost three decades ago. Leading a delegation of four other local officials on an educational trip primarily focused on agriculture, Xi and his colleagues toured local farms and businesses as part of an exchange that began with Iowans going to Hebei in 1984. He met then-and current Iowa governor Terry Branstad and more than a dozen other Iowans in Muscatine he now calls his “old friends…”
Clearly, Muscatine also left an indelible impression on Xi. Upon invitation back to Iowa by Governor Branstad, he requested to reunite with each person he met in Muscatine.
Muscatine is the perfect, if coincidental, background to counterbalance Xi’s highly-scripted meetings in Washington. Aesthetically frozen in the 1950s, the town oozes both old-fashioned small-town charm and the harsh reality of post-industrial American economy. Many storefronts and warehouses stand empty in a place that once called itself the “pearl button capital of the world.” Meanwhile, China has opened and expanded exponentially since 1985, into a roaring economy.
RTFA. There is so much real farm country folksiness in the article I won’t do an editorial job on it. The point for me – perhaps because of my decades dealing with Asian businesses bringing products to sell in the United States – is that commerce sets an appropriate stage for individuals and cultures to get to know each other, affect each other in social ways, in business, in study and friendship.
There was a time in American history when some portions of this nation lived as neighbors to the world – by preference. Better we learn to learn from each other – instead of following the night-riders of bigotry into their pride in conquest and conflict.
Hackers have been inside Nortel networks for 10 years!
Hackers based in China had “widespread access” to computer systems from Nortel Networks for almost 10 years, according to a Tuesday report from the Wall Street Journal.
The hack was carried out via seven stolen passwords that belonged to Nortel executives, the Journal said. Evidence suggests that the attacks originated in China and started in 2000. The cyberscammers managed to access “technical papers, research-and-development reports, business plans, employee emails and other documents,” thanks to installed spyware.
The Journal was made aware of the intrusions by Brian Shields, a former Nortel employee who led the investigation into the hacks…
As noted by security firm Sophos, Nortel changed the offending passwords, but didn’t do much beyond a rather fruitless, six-month investigation.
Sophos analyst Graham Cluley warned not to immediately point the finger at China, an easy target.
“It’s very hard to prove a Chinese involvement. Yes, the data might have been transmitted to an IP address based in Shanghai, but it is possible that a computer in Shanghai has been compromised by.. say.. a remote hacker in Belgium,” he wrote. “It’s all too easy to point a finger, but it’s dangerous to keep doing so without proof.”
Any serious geek – or principled journalist – knows that Graham Cluley is correct about determining where a hack originates. Not that the Wall Street Journal allows its writers who fit the first category to express the second. That is – not since Rupert bought the paper.
In any average 24-hour period, 15/25% of the traffic at eideard.com is listed as from “Unknown” – which may or may not be China. And all that defines is the location of the last proxy server tracked back through the Web.
The serious question is what sort of Dumbos were running Nortel? Bad enough they waltzed around with passwords easy to crack – at the highest level of the company. They never did a thorough enough filtering of their system to deal with trojans left behind.
As Xi Jinping visits, China’s appetite for American crops deserves a bit more than Cold War politics
John Weber on his farm in Dysart, Iowa
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
China is half a world away from the 2,300-acre family farm in east-central Iowa where John Weber and his son plant corn and soybeans. But 62-year-old Weber is among a number of Iowa farmers who are benefiting as rising incomes in China lead to demand for billions of dollars of American farm goods.
“There are huge opportunities,” said Weber, who in addition to his corn and soybean business, markets more than 14,000 hogs a year with a partner. “Absolutely huge.”
This week, a visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to the farm state will underscore the possibilities of the deepening agricultural trade relationship between China and the United States.
Xi, who is expected to replace Hu Jintao as Communist Party chief late this year and then become China’s new president in early 2013, will spend two days in Iowa after meeting President Barack Obama in Washington.
China last year bought $20 billion, or 14 percent, of record U.S. agricultural exports and it is now the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, while becoming an increasingly important importer of U.S. corn and pork. The farm exports, up from $18.6 billion in 2010, now represent about one fifth of American sales of goods to China and U.S. officials are hoping for a lot more.
Beijing is not only buying food that will go directly to feed its 1.3 billion people but also for feedstuff that is going to the animals raised to meet increasing demand for meat and dairy produce that more Chinese can now afford…
RTFA if you feel you need to be reminded of all the crap reasons raised by xenophobes who would rather choose war over competitive commerce any year.
China stops spread of toxic metal in Longjiang River — next task?
Neutralizers of dissolved aluminum chloride added at a water station
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Officials in southern China appear to have averted environmental calamity by halting the spread of a toxic metal that had threatened to foul drinking water for tens of millions of people…Officials said they had successfully diluted the concentration of cadmium, a poisonous component of batteries, that has been coursing down the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The spill, which first occurred two weeks ago, prompted a rush on bottled water in several downstream cities and prompted worries that the contamination could reach as far as Hong Kong and Macao.
The cadmium, a substance used in the production of paint, solder and solar cells as well as batteries, has been traced to discharges from a mining company in Guangxi that has since halted production, said Xinhua news agency…
African Union opens new $200 million headquarters in Ethiopia
Standing on what was once Ethiopia’s oldest maximum security prison, the new African Union headquarters funded by China is a symbol of the Asian giant’s push to stay ahead in Africa and gain greater access to the continent’s resources.
Critics point to an imbalance in what they see as the new “Scramble for Africa”. But the prospect of growing Chinese economic influence is welcomed by African leaders, who see Beijing as a partner to help build their economies at a time when Europe and the United States are mired in economic turmoil…
The brown marble and glass monolith was fully paid for by China, right down to the office furniture, and cost $200 million. The office complex and almost 100-metre tower is Addis Ababa’s tallest building by far.
For the past decade, Africa has recorded economic growth of an average of 5 per cent but its underdeveloped infrastructure has in part hindered its capacity to develop further. Chinese companies are changing that. They are building roads and investing in the energy sector, and are active in areas such as telecoms technology…
Beijing now appears keener to flex its diplomatic muscle in the continent. It has also contributed $4.5 million for the African Union peacekeeping force battling Islamist militants in Somalia.
Outside the complex, hundreds of Chinese support staff, delegates and officials snapped pictures of their country’s most ostentatious presence yet in Africa. Yet African officials insist they aren’t being manipulated by China, and say the relationship is not based on aid but on trade and development.
“There are people who still consider Africans like children who can be easily manipulated. The good thing about this partnership is that it’s give and take,” said the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ambassador to Washington, Faida Mitifu.
In a related story, Congressional Republicans are supporting – well, nothing that I could find.
I googled “Congressional Republicans aid to Africa” and got bored after wandering through several pages mostly of Republican candidates for president each trying to prove he’ll do the most to reduce foreign aid to anyone!
Majority of Chinese are now urban dwellers
Still relying on apartment blocks for most urban residences
China’s urban population exceeded its rural population in 2011 for the first time in the nation’s history, the government’s National Bureau of Statistics reported, continuing a trend that has helped drive its rapid economic growth but poses an increasingly difficult social transition for scores of millions of Chinese.
The statistics bureau stated that China counted 690.79 million urbanites at the year’s end, an increase of 21 million, compared to 656.56 million rural-dwellers, down 14.56 million.
The shift furnishes a ready labor force for the factories that power China’s export-based economy, and better wages in cities have contributed to raising hundreds of millions from poverty. But it also has fueled an urban underclass of migrants and jobless without proper housing and social services, and the hollowing of the countryside has left the elderly without family close by and deprived farms of needed labor.
Barely 10 percent of Chinese lived in cities when Communist forces took control of the Chinese mainland in 1949, Reuters reported. Globally, about 51 percent of people now live in cities, including 51.27 percent of Chinese citizens. The United States counts 82 percent of its residents as city-dwellers.
It took the United States – even with our waves of immigrants – about 140 years to reach 50% city-dwellers. Growing the needed infrastructure in parallel most of the way. China has blown through that process in 60 years. There are advantages and disadvantages to that rate – not counting the difference in culture between a New World society a bit over 200 years old versus a culture estblished in place for thousands of years.
They have the advantage of examining methods of growing traffic management and communications after seeing what works and what doesn’t. They’re still stuck into the same mistakes we made with motor vehicles booming in cities, underestimating the siren call of mobility at the family and individual level. They’re avoiding our mistakes made with relying on highway transport for commercial goods and building a national network of high-speed trains. That reduces fuel costs and pollution in the long run. Much closer to the European model.
It will be interesting to see where the next 5-year plan settles goals and strategies, this year. Certainly, the government recognizes the needs for sensible energy production – which must be balanced against an economy which they’re also throttling back towards a domestic base and a larger percentage of consumer goods for that domestic market. But, communications systems will be specially interesting. Will they build out fibre and copper or place a greater reliance on RF and cellular/satellite communications?
Visualizing Asian energy consumption
Click on graphic or refresh to see animation
I’ve heard it many times before. Remarkable growth in Asia is leading to big increases in coal consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions. But I didn’t have a good sense of just how big that change has been until I saw this graphic from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Asia’s coal use was smaller than Europe’s in 1980. Now it dwarfs coal consumption even in North America, the world’s second-largest consumer.
Stunning – as a reflection of fossil fuel consumption, energy production. Without differentiating the portion of coal consumed as metallurgical versus thermal coal we’re still looking at enormous growth in industrial potential.
The concurrent pollution problems help to understand why China is fast becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of alternative energy devices. Their conversion rate to solar and wind power is close to first – though still behind Europe. They’re trying equally fast to catch up to and surpass nations like France in nuclear power generation. They have to. That burgeoning middle class is starting to make lifestyle demands to match their growing wealth and education.
