Earth Moves, China Rallies
CAIXINRapeseed was ripening in the lush fields ringing the village of Renjia when a local farmer, forced from his home, stepped into the sea of green stalks and pitched a tent.Less than a day earlier, the farmer and each of his more than 3,000 neighbors in Renjia had been rendered homeless by a powerful earthquake that rocked southwest China’s Sichuan province.The April 20 quake devastated the village and other parts of mountainous Lushan County. As of May 3, officials said, the temblor registering 7.0 on the Richter scale had killed 196...
Read full storyCompetitors Try Curbing China Mobile’s 4G Urge
CAIXINThe 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 nationwide have been...
Bird Flu’s Latest Talons Force Fresh Defense
CAIXINA surprise attack by a new strain of the bird flu virus has forced Chinese authorities into the trenches for a two-pronged defense against unseen enemies.The primary threat is the deadly virus that scientists identified as a new strain of H7N9. It first surfaced in February in...
Cracking Down on Bond Market’s Knotty Traders
CAIXINIt 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-income department. And his...
Tencent Lets WeChat’s Rapid Growth Do the Talking
CAIXINTencent 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 in January 2011, WeChat, the...
New Hands Take the Financial Regulation Wheel
CAIXINWho’s steering China’s carefully managed financial system? Speculators were busy name-guessing before and for several months after the Communist Party’s 18th National Congress in November.Finally, the dust started to settle with formal appointments announced a few days...
China Export Policy Chokes on Vitamin Verdict
CAIXINInternet 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 in 2005 to cut production...
Achieving Real Progress in How Government Functions
CAIXINAfter months of speculation, the reorganization of the State Council has finally been approved by the National People’s Congress.Under the shake-up, China’s rail business will no longer be managed by the regulator. Three national agencies will be formed or beefed up—on...
A Day in the Life of a Beijing “Black Guard”
CAIXINAfter receiving his delayed wages, thirty-year-old Wang Jie decided to change professions.On March 7, he pressed a fingerprint onto a receipt that read: “Today I have received settlement of the 12,000 yuan in wages owed to me by Mr. Shao.”“Actually it was short by over 1,...
Is Railway Reform Finally On Track?
CAIXINFinally, it seems the railways ministry may soon be restructured as part of a wider exercise by the government to streamline its ministries. Putting railway reform on the agenda of this year’s meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political...
China’s Economic Policymakers Turning a Page
CAIXINWritten into the script for China’s once-in-a-decade leadership shuffle, confirmed at the recently concluded National People’s Congress, are macroeconomic policies for the new government that plot a course for future growth.The policy book has already landed on the desk of a...
Dirty Business for China’s Internet Scrubbers
CAIXINFlames of a public relations disaster were licking at the heels of a private equity firm when China’s most notorious Internet-scrubbing company rode to the rescue.Saving the Shenzhen-based firm’s image was not cheap, and it took more than two months to douse the flames of...
Ladders, Losers, and Direct-Marketing Schemes
CAIXINA skin cream customer pays an extra fee and, voilà, instantly becomes a company representative with the right to sell cream and other products, as well as recruit more dealers.Eventually, she persuades other women to buy the cream and join the marketing team by paying the fee....
China’s 3D Printing: Not a Revolution—Yet
CAIXINEngineers, inventors, and industrial futurists in China are setting sights on a new technological frontier as three-dimensional printing slowly revolutionizes manufacturing.A Beijing University research team, for example, has been working on what industry sources say is a...
Spin of a Crooked Record
CAIXINHundreds of villagers in Hebei province discovered they were victims of identity theft—and in demanding officials find the culprit, they became the recipients of harassment and legal bills. Instead of seeing a shakeout, the villagers watched environmental authorities and local...
Lights, Camera, Pending IPOs for Filmmakers
CAIXINThe cameras could be rolling soon for long-anticipated stock listings by the nation’s largest movie producer and foreign flick importer China Film Group, as well as a smaller but ambitious rival, Shanghai Film Group.The state-owned companies’ names were added January 11 to a...
Cleaning Up China’s Secret Police Sleuthing
CAIXINWiretapping, email hacking, cell phone tracking, and secret videotaping are just a few of the cloak-and-dagger techniques long employed by police in the course of criminal investigations in China.But now, for the first time, new rules say that police officers applying for...
Defining the Chinese Dream
CAIXINA new phase of Sino-American relations is poised to begin now that Xi Jinping has been confirmed as China’s next leader and Barack Obama re-elected U.S. president.In both countries, the debate about foreign policy options has been robust, particularly about the bilateral...
China Development Bank Cancels Loans for Ping An Deal
CAIXINThe Hong Kong branch of China Development Bank (CDB) has been ordered by its Beijing headquarters to cancel loans that would have been used to finance an acquisition involving the nation’s second-largest insurer, a bank source said.The source said the decision was reached...
Garden of Lost Children
CAIXINIt started with a baby that was left in the doorway of a hospital bathroom. Yuan Lihai took in the girl with a cleft lip while working at a Henan province hospital in 1989. At the department of gynecology and obstetrics, she was paid 20 yuan for every infant she buried. This was...
Shutter Labor Camp System for Good, Legal Experts Urge
CAIXINLegal experts have called on the government to follow through with hints at abolishing the country’s notorious system of labor camps.On January 7, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu said at a top conference that the system would “cease to be used.” His comment was obtained by...
Shandong’s Slippery Gutter Oil Man
CAIXINIt’s oil with an extra something, but there’s nothing virgin about it. Pumped from sewers outside restaurants and drained from dumpsters, it’s cooking oil born from waste both human and mechanical.Known in China as “gutter oil,” it’s commonly used by cooks at greasy...
Twisted Tongues
CAIXINChina’s cultural progress in the year 2012 can be summed up with eight words: weibo (microblog), diaosi (commoners), yuanfangti (a Yuanfang-like inquiry), shejian (tip of the tongue), yangsheng (keeping fit), shisanchai (thirteen hairpins, from a movie title), shige (poetry),...
Uncertain Future for Architectural Treasures
CAIXINNestled between mountains and a winding river in a scenic corner of Shanxi province is Zhongyang County, the home of an exquisite Confucian temple built during the Ming dynasty.The colorful wooden temple graced this idyllic valley for hundreds of years before a construction crew...
Why Are Entrepreneurs So Uneasy?
CAIXINI’m often asked whether it’s more difficult for a Chinese company to survive now than it was in the 1980s, when I started my business. The two eras are indeed different. Many entrepreneurs with whom I shared the stage at awards ceremonies have since disappeared, swept away...