China Mobile reiterates no plan to control Far EasTone | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters

HONG KONG, June 18 (Reuters) - China Mobile (0941.HK), China’s dominant mobile carrier, on Thursday said it has no intention of taking control of Far EasTone (4904.TW) if its controversial plan to buy 12 percent of the Taiwan company is approved.

“China Mobile reiterates that when this investment is approved, after China Mobile becomes a Far EasTone stakeholder, we won’t participate in the company’s daily business administration, and won’t pursue a controling interest,” China Mobile said in a statement

HONG KONG, June 18 (Reuters) - Dominant Chinese mobile carrier China Mobile (0941.HK) said it has no intention of seeking control of Far EasTone (4904.TW) and vowed to seek necessary approvals for its plan to buy 12 percent of the Taiwan company.

“China Mobile reiterates that when this investment is approved, after China Mobile becomes a Far EasTone stakeholder, we won’t participate in the company’s daily business administration, and won’t pursue a controlling interest,” China Mobile said in a statement released on Thursday.

“Industry watchers, the media and ordinary shareholders have all been very positive about China Mobile’s move to buy a stake in Far EasTone,” China Mobile said.

“We hope the relevant authorities will be able to introduce regulations that will allow for the deal to move forward smoothly.”

By Roger Neill

June 18 (Bloomberg) — China may have an “interest” in U.K. mid-cap mining companies after the failure of Aluminum Corp. of China’s proposed investment in Rio Tinto Group, with First Quantum Minerals Ltd. “the most obvious ‘fit,’” Citigroup Inc. wrote.

By Bloomberg News

June 18 (Bloomberg) — The World Bank raised its growth forecast for China this year and advised policy makers to delay until 2010 any additional stimulus plan to boost the world’s third-largest economy.

China’s economy will expand 7.2 percent in 2009 from a year earlier, up from a 6.5 percent forecast in March, the Washington-based lender said in a quarterly report released today in Beijing. Stocks gained after the announcement.

The World Bank joins Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and UBS AG. in raising growth forecasts this year after a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package triggered record loans and surging investment. China, the biggest contributor to global growth in 2007, is relying on government spending as exports slump because of the world recession.

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) — A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday denied reports that the son of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) top leader Kim Jong Il had visited Beijing.

The situation “presented in some media reports does not exist,” Qin Gang told a regular press briefing here.

Japan’s Asahi newspaper on Tuesday cited unidentified sources as saying that Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s youngest son, met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders after flying to Beijing around June 10.

Qin repeated China’s stance on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue, pledging to develop good-neighborly and friendly relations with the DPRK while firmly standing for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, nuclear non-proliferation and peace and stability there.

By EDWARD WONG & ASHLEE VANCE
Published: June 18, 2009

BEIJING — U.S. computer makers say the Chinese government has not backed down from a requirement that Internet filtering software be installed on all computers sold in China after July 1, despite reports this week that the rule had been relaxed.

Meanwhile, in another sign that Chinese officials are trying to assert more control over the Internet, the city of Beijing wants to recruit 10,000 volunteers by the end of the summer to monitor Internet content, said Ms. Guo, an employee of the Beijing government’s Spiritual Civilization Office.

Lots o news recently about the negative export numbers here (over 26% drop from the May numbers last year). As this is a huge sector in China, this of course is something to be concerned about as GDP and employment are hit hard when trade is down substantially.

On the other hand, there are a few fundamental truths here that seem to be lost in this discussion:

1. China needs to rebalance its economy, away from exports and towards domestic consumption.

2. Poor exports are a function of international demand (i.e. this has more to do with the U.S. and EU economies than China’s economy).

3. China’s domestic stimulus plan is a good thing and is sorely needed during this recession.

Friday Jun 12, 2009

Shanghai’s inaugural Pride Week has come under attack by officials, according to media reports that indicate that although the event has state approval, the police and commerce bureau of the city have intimidated venues where events were initially scheduled to take place.

The English edition of People’s Daily Online said that “the municipal commercial bureau” had informed Shanghai bar that without the proper license, the establishment would not be allowed to screen gay-themed films.

A second bar pulled out of the celebration with no explanation on June 11, the article said.

And a play was pulled after an official from “an unidentified authority” paid a visit to the photography studio where the play was scheduled to be performed, the article noted.

People’s Daily Online reported that Shanghai’s “administration of culture, radio, film and TV” denied knowledge or involvement in the cancellations of events.

Shanghai’s Pride celebration, a week-long festival of events, commenced on June 7 and is scheduled to run for a full week, concluding on June 14.

The article quoted China university of Political Science and Law’s Cai Dingjian, who noted, “Although homosexuality has long been decriminalized in China, social stigma still exists and public acceptance of the community is largely limited.”

Cai opined that the government had quietly sabotaged Shanghai Pride, saying, “The authorities didn’t say directly that ’gays are not allowed to hold gatherings,’ which obviously is not legally viable, but they still intervened in a way that betrays their discrimination against this group.”

By Mark Lee and Sanchez Wang

June 12 (Bloomberg) — China’s anti-pornography software that will be loaded in all personal computers sold in the country blocks anti-government Web sites and restricts users from typing in keywords unrelated to sex, a researcher said.

“Green Dam-Youth Escort” restricts access to Web sites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown and the banned spiritual movement known as Falun Gong, said Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The software also shuts down word-processing applications and Internet-chat services when some keywords are entered, said Mao, who says he’s tested the program.

Bryan Chang, chief executive officer of Jinhui Computer System Engineering Corp., which co-developed the software, said in a June 11 interview the program only blocks pornography. Wang Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, declined to comment today.

The unadvertised features of “Green Dam” indicate China’s stepping up its censorship efforts as the government grapples with surging online use, according to Hong Kong Polytechnic University Associate Professor Korris Chung. China bans online pornography, gambling and politically critical content by requiring all domestic Web sites to be registered and by blocking access to foreign sites such as Google Inc.’s YouTube.

By Stephen Clark

Men dressed as prisoners (in orange) clash with prison guards during a demonstration at the opening ceremony for the newly refurbished part of Pul-i-Charkhi prison on the outskirts of Kabul March 25, 2007. (Reuters)

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison who are brought to the United States to stand trial in U.S. criminal courts, they are expected to enjoy the same rights afforded others who pass through the federal criminal court system, and that worries some.

The contentious debate over bringing terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison to the United States to be tried in federal courts raises thorny questions about rights such as bail hearings, plea negotiations and jury selections — and of course, what happens if a suspect is acquitted.

“That’s the issue that drove the whole system in the first place,” said Anthony Barkow, a former U.S. attorney and executive director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University.

“I think some if not all pose a risk to national security and I think the administration is going to be put in a tough spot if anyone is acquitted and faced with a difficult decision about whether to employ some other mechanism to detain these people,” Barkow told FOXNews.com.

The Times of India reported this week that the forged anti-malaria pharmaceuticals were “a large consignment” and that they were seized by the Drug Regulatory Authority (NAFDAC) of Nigeria.

Had the drugs not been intercepted, about 642,000 adults would likely have taken the potentially harmful product, said NAFDAC.

Overseas pharmacy companies should deal only with registered Chinese drug producers and traders that are recognized by SFDA, said Cui Enxue, director of the SFDA’s drug safety inspection bureau.

It’s not just residents of Alexandria, Va., who are uncomfortable with the prospect of hosting Guantanamo Bay detainees in their backyards. Some residents of the Pacific nation of Palau, where 13 Chinese Uighurs detained at Gitmo are set to be relocated, are expressing indignation over what they consider their government’s failure to consider the opinions of its citizens, The Associated Press reports.

“It’s good to be humanitarian and all, but still these people … to me are scary,” remarks one Palauan.

The government of Bermuda, where four of the 17 Uighur detainees are now residing, is receiving a mixed response for its decision to take in the detainees. Bermuda, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, has been criticized by the United Kingdom for unilaterally deciding to accept the detainees without regard for Britain’s concerns on the matter. In a statement issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Bermudan government was chided for potentially overstepping its bounds:

A California company alleged that an Internet-filtering program being pushed by the Chinese government contains stolen portions of the company’s software.

The company, Solid Oak Software Inc., said it will try to stop PC makers from shipping computers with the software.

Solid Oak said Friday that it found pieces of its CyberSitter filtering software in the Chinese program, including a list of terms to be blocked, instructions for updating the software, and an old news bulletin promoting CyberSitter. Researchers at the University of Michigan who have been studying the Chinese program also said they found components of CyberSitter, including the …

Shi Weihan shown in a 2007 photo in a school for the children of migrant workers in Shanxi province, China.

Man praised as model citizen gets three-year sentence for violating publishing law
Jun 13, 2009 04:30 AM

Bill Schiller
ASIA BUREAU

BEIJING – By all accounts, Shi Weihan was a model Chinese citizen.

A kind-hearted man with a sense of social responsibility, he donated funds to send poor kids to school, raised money for those suffering from congenital heart disease, and when the Sichuan earthquake hit, worked tirelessly for the emergency relief effort.

But Shi had a fatal flaw.

He printed Bibles – and gave them out for free.

This week a criminal court in Beijing sentenced him to three years in jail.

His wife and 65-year-old parents were crushed – his two daughters, 13 and 9, were inconsolable.

“The children just cannot accept it,” says Zhang Jing, Shi’s wife.

“Their father is their biggest hero. They cried uncontrollably. They couldn’t believe their father was convicted like an ordinary criminal.”

Shi was also fined about $25,000.

Six others who stood trial with him received lesser sentences this week.

Despite a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and even of religious belief, religious activities in China remain strictly monitored by the Communist party government and for those who dare to operate outside of that control – there are punishments.

Posted 2009/05/23 at 10:56 am EDT

BAGHDAD, May 23, 2009 (Reuters) — Iraq’s Shi’ite leader vowed on Saturday to amend a law meant to foster sectarian reconciliation by pardoning mostly Sunni prisoners, saying it had led to the release of “terrorists” and corruption suspects.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks to the media during the opening ceremony of a new bridge in Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad May 15, 2009. REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammed
Related Topics

* Iraqi Politics
* Middle East Politics
* Politics
* Terrorism
* World Politics

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Iraq has blamed a spike in violence since April on the release of detainees from Iraqi and U.S. prisons, and is also on a drive to stamp out the rampant corruption that has crippled efforts to attract foreign investment and rebuild the country.

“Regrettably, the amnesty law has been changed from the conditions written by the government, and has led to the pardoning of many (accused of) corruption,” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a conference of tribal leaders from both Sunni and Shi’ite faiths in Baghdad.

The law, which allowed the release of thousands of Sunni Arab prisoners, has helped return estranged Sunni politicians to Maliki’s government and is thought to have taken some of the heat out of the insurgency.

Maliki nonetheless vowed to change it.

“This will be amended and reviewed, on the basis that there is no protection for any corrupt (person) or terrorist in any legislation, or by any political power that is part of the government,” he said.

Political reconciliation is seen as crucial to ending the insurgency as U.S. troops prepare to leave by 2012, but Maliki said the existing law had meant “major terrorists” being freed.

“Because of the addition of one word to the law, whether because of a mistake or deliberately, major terrorists have been released, because the law says that a terrorist that is not responsible for direct killings should be pardoned,” he said.

Inside the FBI
Mr. Schiff: Hello I’m Neal Schiff and welcome to Inside the FBI, a weekly podcast about news, cases, and operations. Investigations are underway across the United States of telephone threats to Chinese-Americans.

Mr. Phillips: “We really hope that they’ll reach out to their law enforcement; local law enforcement to report it. They can also reach out to their local FBI office; we’ve got 56 field divisions across the country.”

Mr. Schiff: That’s FBI Special Agent Dean Phillips. He’s the Chief of the Asian-African Criminal Enterprise Unit in the Organized Crime Section which is part of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division.

Mr. Phillips: “ What we’ve seen so far is a number of phone calls to primarily Chinese business owners. The phone calls are coming in and threatening bodily harm to them or their family members.”

Mr. Schiff: Any thoughts on where these calls are coming from and and who might be doing it?

Mr. Phillips: “It seems like right now that the calls are being made through Voiceover Internet Protocol and the calls actually would be actually originating from China .”

Mr. Schiff: Are we aware that these calls are human to human or are they recorded calls coming in to people here in this country?

Mr. Phillips: “The description of the phone calls from victims, it sounds like it’s actually a person-to-person conversation. It’s not a recorded call. It’s a conversation like you and I would be having .”

Mr. Schiff: What are some of the things being said by those who are apparently in China to Chinese people here in this country?

Mr. Phillips: “It’s mostly threats of bodily harm to themselves or their family members .”

Mr. Schiff: We don’t know the source so we don’t know if it’s an organized thing coming from overseas or whether it’s just a few individuals doing this, right?

Mr. Phillips: “Well at this point we’re actually approaching it as organized crime simply because the volume of calls really requires several people to be involved. It isn’t just one or two people that could be doing all these phone calls. Furthermore, when you look at the activity itself—extortion, threats of violence—those are traditional organized crime, racketeering-type activities. And the purpose of which is certainly to gain money, go gain assets. And those are all definitions of what we call organized crime. So we’re looking at it right now as organized crime .”

Mr. Schiff: Any idea when these calls started and approximately how many calls like this have been made over the time period?

Gordon Chang, Forbes

On Wednesday, Ma Ying-jeou marked his first anniversary as president of Taiwan by calling his initial year “fruitful.” And he had just cause for doing so. His most notable accomplishment so far has been a marked improvement in relations between the island republic and China. “In one year, we have transformed the strait from a dangerous flashpoint to a conduit of peace and prosperity,” he told reporters in Taipei.

Last month, Taipei and Beijing, which both claim to govern “China,” entered into historic agreements covering financial cooperation, regularly scheduled flights and judicial and law enforcement ties. That’s on top of…

I’m sure that the Chinese just arrived independently at the idea of having a folding-wing version of the Su-27:

Russia is eyeing China following media reports that an unlicensed variant of the Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-borne multirole fighter has been developed. Sukhoi officials are “closely monitoring that situation but have not said any official position yet,” said Sukhoi spokesman Aleksey Poveshchenko.

Ever since Beijing announced plans earlier this year to build its first aircraft carrier, speculation has been rampant over how the People’s Liberation Army Navy would acquire carrier-borne fighters. Sukhoi’s Su-33, with its folding wings, is the only choice because of the U.S. and European arms embargo to China.

Russian officials, who say China is already illegally copying their Su-27SK fighter jet, have halted negotiations to sell the Su-33. Beijing has not confirmed that it is working on a clone of the Su-27SK - dubbed Flanker by NATO.

“China will not acknowledge to the Russians that these are copies,” said Andrei Chang, a China military analyst at Kanway Information Center. “They say it is an independent domestic production designed solely by themselves.”

China owns an Su-33 prototype, which it obtained from the Ukrainian Research Test and Flying Training Center at Nitka, Chang said.

There’s a lot going on here. For one, it indicates that China’s IP policy remains ad hoc; the PRC will respect IP rights when it is bribed sufficiently to do so, or when it fears retaliation. On this second point, it seems that the Chinese do not fear Russian retaliation, given that they have also been accused of stealing Russian submarine designs. I’m guessing that the Chinese anticipate that in the future purchasing advanced weapon systems from Russia will no longer be a preferred option, in no small part because the next generation of Chinese designs will be more capable than the next generation of Russian.

There are also some interesting IR theory puzzles here. By a standard crude realist account, the Chinese shouldn’t care a whit for Russian licensing rights. By a somewhat more sophisticated realist account, the Chinese leadership will abide by international intellectual property norms to the extent that such norms benefit China. In this account, the PRC would be willing to forego short term gains from IP defection in defense of the larger structure of international IP law if China benefitted sufficiently from that structure. I think that we’re moving in that direction; I suspect that the PRC will become a beneficiary of strict IP interpretation in the short to medium term, if it isn’t already.

Exploring philanthropy, non-profits and socially motivated business, from the Gates Foundation to your donation. A fresh look at the economy of good intentions.

May 21, 2009 5:34 PM
A legal crusader against polluters in China finds NW allies

Posted by Kristi Heim

Jingjing Zhang works for the first and only non-governmental legal aid organization focused on environmental issues in China. It’s her job to go after polluters in court.

Zhang, litigation director for the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, is in Seattle for a few days, where she’s giving a lecture at the University of Washington tonight and meeting with local organizations including EarthCorps, Earthjustice, Sightline and RDI. She was invited to UW as the Severyns-Ravenholt lecturer, named for Marjorie Severyns Ravenholt, a UW graduate who chronicled the development of Asia as a foreign correspondent. Zhang was a Yale World Fellow in 2008 and a visiting scholar at the Yale China Law Center.

COURTESY OF JINGJING ZHANG

Jingjing Zhang, one of China’s top public interest lawyers, is an outspoken environmental advocate. She argues cases on behalf of pollution victims across the country.

At 39, she has been an outspoken environmental advocate for more than 10 years. She won a landmark legal victory against a company in 2005 when she represented farmers in Fujian Province, where a chemical factory released Chromium and killed their bamboo trees, took away their livelihood and made them sick.

It was the biggest environmental class action lawsuit in the country, representing more than 1,000 people. At every hearing, hundreds of farmers would show up in the courtroom, she said. Some had left their homes in the countryside days before and ridden to the city in a rented van.

The plaintiffs won compensation for damage to their livelihoods but not for their health.
Still it showed the power of the law could be wielded to protect citizens.

“We are facing this environmental disaster,” Zhang said. “If you go to Beijing from the plane you see the whole city covered by yellow and brown air. This is our capital city. If you can’t see clean air here, how can you expect industrial cities to be?”

Among NGOs in China, environmental groups are the most active, and public support for environmental protection is growing. The center offers free legal aid to the public and a telephone hotline for people suffering effects of pollution.

Demining is a sign that fear of Chinese invasion is at last ebbing, writes CLIFFORD COONAN in Kinmen, Taiwan

A SHUDDERING explosion is an odd way of illustrating closer relations between self-ruled Taiwan and China, but clearing landmines from the beaches of Kinmen, a few hundred metres from the mainland, is a powerful symbol of how ties are getting ever closer.

Meanwhile, in Taipei zoo, pandas Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, probably the two most politicised animals in the world, happily munch on bamboo as Taiwanese flock to marvel at their antics. China gifted the two bears to Taiwan as a symbol of warmer relations.

Getting to Taiwan from Beijing used to involve a tedious stopover in Hong Kong, but now there are dozens of direct flights, and mainland tourists are much in evidence in the National Museum, home to most of the treasures of the Forbidden City, which Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang took with them when fleeing to the island in 1949 after they lost the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists.

The demining process on Kinmen’s beaches is a sign that fear of invasion by China in this island of 23 million is ebbing.

Kinmen has many tunnels, and in the central command area underground, a painting to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Guningtou battle when the Chinese Communists invaded. This spot is just 8km from the mainland, and between 1954 and 1978 there was constant bombardment of the area by the mainlanders, who rained down two million shells on the island, 480,000 of them in the first two days of the bombing.

Some 30,000 artillery shells fell in 30 minutes. A local craftsman, Tseng-dong Wu, has developed a business making high-precision cooking knives from the shell casings that litter the island. The scale of the assault makes it clear why the Taiwanese are so worried about the hundreds of missiles that remain pointed towards Taiwan.

By Susan C. Young
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 24, 2009

Nancy Kwan sips her coffee in a Los Angeles hotel lobby, still the lithe, delicate beauty who won fans around the world almost a half-century ago.

She reflects on the difficulties she faced as a Chinese actress in Hollywood, recounting a lunch in Hong Kong years ago with rising star Bruce Lee. She didn’t want to squelch his dreams or ambitions, but she knew his hope of starring in the 1972 TV series “Kung Fu” was never going to happen.

“He said, ‘No. No. I’m going to do this.’ And I said, ‘Bet,’” Kwan said of the role that went to Caucasian actor David Carradine. “I had to collect my 10 bucks.”

Despite her own phenomenal success in two early 1960s box office hits, “The World of Suzie Wong” and “Flower Drum Song,” Kwan watched as Hollywood cooled on the notion of Asians carrying major films or TV shows. Kwan and other prominent Chinese actors, directors and filmmakers — including Joan Chen, James Hong, David Henry Hwang and Ang Lee — talk candidly about the history and future of Chinese talent in Arthur Dong’s documentary “Hollywood Chinese.”

Dong’s film made the festival rounds but is being shown for the first time on television as part of PBS’s “American Masters” on Wednesday.

By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

Dallas

From his perch high atop the palatial Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, overlooking what he calls “the most modern, efficient city in America,” Richard Fisher says he is always on the lookout for rising prices. But that’s not what’s worrying the bank’s president right now.

His bigger concern these days would seem to be what he calls “the perception of risk” that has been created by the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities and Fannie Mae paper.

Mr. Fisher acknowledges that events in the financial markets last year required some unusual Fed action in the commercial lending market. But he says the longer-term debt, particularly the Treasurys, is making investors nervous. The looming challenge, he says, is to reassure markets that the Fed is not going to be “the handmaiden” to fiscal profligacy. “I think the trick here is to assist the functioning of the private markets without signaling in any way, shape or form that the Federal Reserve will be party to monetizing fiscal largess, deficits or the stimulus program.”
[Richard Fisher] Ismael Roldan

Richard Fisher.

The very fact that a Fed regional bank president has to raise this issue is not very comforting. It conjures up images of Argentina. And as Mr. Fisher explains, he’s not the only one worrying about it. He has just returned from a trip to China, where “senior officials of the Chinese government grill[ed] me about whether or not we are going to monetize the actions of our legislature.” He adds, “I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China.”

A native of Los Angeles who grew up in Mexico, Mr. Fisher was educated at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. He spent his earliest days in government at Jimmy Carter’s Treasury. He says that taught him a life-long lesson about inflation. It was “inflation that destroyed that presidency,” he says. He adds that he learned a lot from then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who had to “break [inflation’s] back.”

Now would be a good time to convert some of that talk into action. Beijing has been struggling with its own investment strategies: the state gets feeble returns on the U.S. Treasury bonds it owns, and its equity stakes in foreign financial firms are well under water.

So why not diversify by allowing 1.3 billion Chinese citizens have a go rather than a few bureaucrats working for China’s sovereign fund? The many might even do better than the few. And it would give Chinese savers a chance to buy global blue chips at credit-crunch prices.

The idea of opening up China’s equity markets to foreigners may seem fanciful, but it dovetails with another big national objective. China wants to build Shanghai into a global financial centre by 2020, but that requires a deeper and internationalised equity market. Only when that is in place will foreign money descend on Shanghai, together with an army of bankers, lawyers and accountants.

The market capitalisation of Shanghai is now the world’s fourth largest, but it is dominated by state-owned firms with only a handful of foreign joint ventures and a few private companies.

The market is off-limits even to many of China’s own best and biggest companies, such as the world’s largest telecom operator China Mobile and China’s top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC.

They are listed in the offshore market of Hong Kong and despite their expressed interest to return to the mainland, continue to fail to win the green light from Beijing.

Indeed there is no other country which relies more heavily on offshore financing than China. One fifth of the foreign companies listed on Nasdaq are from China, the largest percentage in the world. By pushing its top companies to list abroad, China has gained foreign capital at the expense of the development of its equity market.

Meanwhile back in Shanghai too much money is chasing too few good listed companies. The same companies are often valued at a premium in the mainland versus in Hong Kong.

BY NIRVI SHAH
nshah@MiamiHerald.com

Drywall imported from China used in newer homes in South Florida and other parts of the country contains sulfur, strontium and other substances that are either nonexistent or found in much lower levels in U.S.-made plasterboard, according to Environmental Protection Agency test results released Tuesday.

The EPA conducted the tests at the behest of Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who have received many complaints from homeowners about their homes smelling like rotten eggs, having health problems, corroding wires and appliances and blackening jewelry and other metals that they believe are linked to drywall imported from China.

The complaints stretch across 10 states and are primarily from people living in homes built from about 2004 to 2008.

The problems have triggered many individual and class-action lawsuits, including some on behalf of South Florida residents. Some builders have also sued Chinese drywall manufacturers for failing to control the quality of their product and failing to notify customers it was defective.

”We now know there are three things in there that aren’t in other drywall samples,” Nelson said in a statement Tuesday, after reviewing the EPA’s test results. ‘We’ve got the `what’ and now we need the ‘why’ — and, how do we fix it?”

Millions of square feet of drywall were imported into the United States during the housing boom and following catastrophic hurricane seasons that washed away many homes. U.S. manufacturers could not meet the demand for the product. Some estimates say as many as 100,000 homes contain foreign drywall.

By Janet Ong

May 20 (Bloomberg) — Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou vowed to prioritize economic ties with China even as he stressed the mainland must remove short-range missiles before any peace agreement can move forward.

“There are so many financial and economic issues that haven’t been properly addressed between the two sides,” Ma said in a briefing in Taipei with foreign media to commemorate his one-year anniversary since taking office. “We should deal with those issues first because they are so closely and directly related to the well-being of our people.”

Ma’s first year in power has been marked by improving relations with the mainland after he abandoned his predecessor’s pro-independence stance. His willingness to negotiate with China has also angered the island’s opposition, which held street protests involving tens of thousands of people objecting to his policies on May 17.

Today Ma repeated calls for China to adopt a less- aggressive military stance toward the island.

“If we are to negotiate a peace agreement with the mainland, including military confidence building measures, they should remove the more than 1,000 missiles targeted against Taiwan,” Ma said today. “We certainly do not want to negotiate a peace agreement under the threat of a missile attack against Taiwan.”

Short-Range Missiles

China has increased its force of mobile short-range missiles based in garrisons opposite Taiwan to as many as 1,150 in September from as many as 790 in late 2005, the U.S. Defense Department said in its annual report to Congress on March 25.

Taiwan, with its own defense force, foreign ministry, and elected government, has been ruled separately from China since the Kuomintang, or KMT, fled to the island after its defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in 1949. China has threatened to invade Taiwan if it declares formal independence.

Taiwan’s president has said China is showing signs of softening its policy on the island’s future, in a statement marking the first anniversary of his presidency.

Beijing now places greater importance on preventing the formal independence of Taiwan than insisting it be united with the mainland, Ma Ying-jeou said on Wenesday.

As a result, he said China had shown “a very clear sophistication and flexibility in their policy”.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing still regards the island as part of its territory.

The Chinese government has, on several occasions in the past, threatened to go to war against Taiwan if the island’s authorities move to make the division permanent.

But under Ma’s leadership, Beijing and Taipei have signed nine agreements on economic co-operation, including a pact that allowed for direct flights across the 160km wide Taiwan Strait.

Changing times in China-Taiwan ties
Ma reaffirmed on Wednesday that Taiwan will not conduct unification talks with the mainland during his presidency, which would last until mid-2016 if he were re-elected.

However, he said he would continue to try to build “a solid foundation for peace and prosperity between the two sides”.

By LISA FRIEDMAN, ClimateWire
Published: May 20, 2009

They gathered in July at the incongruously named Commune by the Great Wall, a high-concept luxury hotel nestled in China’s Badaling mountains.

For two days, the secluded group of top U.S. and Chinese officials — including one member of the Bush administration and a handful of now high-level Obama advisers — worked out climate change policy. Participants yesterday said the off-the-record sessions broke new ground and may have laid the foundation for new cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters on the thorny matter of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

“It convinced people in both countries that there was a new spirit of willingness to work this out,” said William Chandler, director of the climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Chandler and officials with the Chinese nonprofit Global Environmental Institute spearheaded the talks, which first were reported yesterday in the London Guardian and were billed as “secret backchannel negotiations.”

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen speaks during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen speaks during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, 20 May 2009
An envoy for the Dalai Lama says Tibet is ready to resume peace talks with China. Kelsang Gyaltsen’s speech to foreign correspondents in Tokyo comes more than seven months after negotiations stalled between the two sides. Tibetan leaders are taking their message around Asia, while they wait for word from Beijing.

Kelsang Gyaltsen stands on the front lines of Tibet’s fight for autonomy. He has met with Chinese leaders eight times to convey the message of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday in Tokyo, Gyaltsen said Tibet is asking for autonomy, not separation from China.

“So that the Tibetan people are able to preserve their own culture, religion, language and identity in their homeland,” Gyaltsen said.

The process hit a major hurdle last year after demonstrations to mark the 49th anniversary of Tibet’s failed uprising against Chinese rule were marked with violence. Chinese authorities quickly put down the protests.

But the two sides resumed talks last October. Gyaltsen says Tibetan leaders laid out a detailed road map for self-government. He says that outline conformed to principles of autonomy written in the Chinese constitution.

“The right to original, national, autonomy is guaranteed in the constitution to the People’s Republic of China,” Gyaltsen said. “It’s to minorities such as the Tibetan people.”

President Obama’s decision to name Utah’s governor John Huntsman as the new US ambassador to China is a master-stroke of political strategy.

Huntsman may be the most important person you’ve never heard of. He’s a moderate Republican governor in one of the most conservative Republican states, where, until the time of his appointment, he enjoyed approval ratings above 80%. A few weeks back, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe unintentionally elevated Huntsman on the national stage by suggesting that he was one of the few Republican politicians that appeared formidable in 2012.

Huntsman is young, exceptionally smart, quick on his feet, amiable and incredibly articulate; when he speaks, he exudes reasonableness, a quality almost entirely missing in the modern Republican party. He has the potential to be for the Republican party what Obama was for the Democrats – a man capable of simultaneously exciting his political base while appealing to the critical group of independent voters. To hear him speak is to know he’s a guy an independent would love.

Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has said efforts to improve ties with China have helped bring peace to the region.

Speaking to mark his first year in office, he said it had been a “fruitful year” for cross-strait ties.

But he also urged Beijing to remove its many missiles that remain pointed towards Taiwan.

In the past, Beijing has threatened to use force to bring the self-governed island under mainland control if it declared formal independence.

‘Conduit of peace’

Relations between China and Taiwan were strained under Mr Ma’s predecessor Chen Shui-bian, who had what Beijing saw as a provocative pro-independence stance.

But Mr Ma has made improving ties with China one of the main priorities of his administration.

“In one year, we have transformed the strait from a dangerous flashpoint to a conduit of peace and prosperity,” he told reporters.

Under Mr Ma’s leadership, Beijing and Taipei have signed nine agreements on economic co-operation, including deals on direct flights.

Taiwan is also currently attending a World Health Organization conference for the first time in nearly four decades, suggesting that Beijing has dropped its long-standing opposition to Taiwan’s inclusion in such meetings.

By Laura Price and Joao Oliveira

May 20 Bloomberg — Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, is seeking additional loans from China after it signed a contract to receive $10 billion from the Asian nation.

Brazil Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said today that the South American nation has been approached by countries including China and the United Arab Emirates to discuss possible financing. Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, needs to secure financing for a $174.4 billion investment plan to develop its so-called pre-salt offshore oil fields.

“Petrobras is investing $130 billion to purchase platforms and drill ships,” Lobao said in a Bloomberg TV interview in London today. “It needs financing from abroad, and the more the better. It’s negotiating further loans with China.”

Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva yesterday signed 13 accords, including a loan from China Development Bank for Petrobras and another $800 million the bank will provide to Brazil’s development bank.

Financing talks with other countries may be affected by a congressional probe into Petrobras’s tax payments, Lobao said. O Globo newspaper said May 11 that Petrobras faces a federal investigation on tax accounting changes.

The company said May 14 it was entitled to 1.14 billion reais $563 million in tax savings after it adopted new accounting rules for foreign currency fluctuations.

April 26, 2009

China’s parliament has revised the nation’s postal law in a move that will ban foreign delivery companies from handling domestic express mail, state press reported Saturday. The revised law was passed by the National’s People’s Congress on Friday despite opposition from express delivery giants including DHL, FedEx, TNT and UPS, the China Daily reported. The newly amended law that goes into effect on October 1 bans foreign companies from delivering express letters within China, the newspaper said.

But foreign delivery companies with operations in China will be permitted to deliver express packages domestically, as well as express letters internationally, it said.

WASHINGTON—The International Monetary Fund will sell bonds as a way to raise funds to lend to struggling nations, the head of the organization said Saturday, in a victory for developing countries.

Emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India pushed for the move as an alternative to providing longer-term loans to the IMF. Those countries want a greater voice in the institution before providing additional resources.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said China and other countries have expressed interest in purchasing the bonds. The IMF has never issued bonds before, although the idea was explored in the 1980s.

The move, announced after the IMF’s annual spring meeting, indicates the world’s leading economies are having difficulty following through on a pledge made in London April 2 to boost an IMF emergency lending facility by $500 billion. The bonds will contribute toward that goal but will provide shorter-term financing than the loans that Japan, the European Union and the United States have promised.

The Group of 20 nations, which includes wealthy and developing countries, pledged in London to provide a total of $1.1 trillion to the IMF and other international lending institutions.

“The major emerging markets have made it clear that they … will no longer be pushed around by the advanced economies,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and former IMF official. While “the net effect” on IMF resources of loans or bond sales is the same, Prasad said, “the symbolic difference between these two types of contributions is huge.”

Meanwhile, more than 100 demonstrators angered by how world leaders have handled the economic crisis took on police outside the headquarters of the IMF and World Bank.

The gloom and doom from the International Monetary Fund about the world economy was understandable.

After all it’s playing catch up and the downgraded growth figures was the 5th reduction in estimates in six months.

Some Australian media outlets fell in behind that line in their reporting, boosting the fact that the Australian economy is forecast to slide by 1.4% this year, with the world economy down by 1.3%. ‘Australia does worse was the line’.

But they should have had a sense of proportion about our performance.

The crunch is no longer the big story; it’s the recession here and overseas.

The credit crunch will continue to have an impact, especially in the US housing and finance sectors.

But even there the job losses flowing from the downturn in the wider economy, rising credit card, car, student and other forms of debt are now being seen as bigger future threats than the impact of the crunch.

But just as the crunch took the world economy to the brink of a very black hole, the recession has pushed us away, but into a trough of known events based on our experience of previous slowdowns.

That’s not to say that the impact won’t be terrible for many companies, employees and others, but at least it will be understandable.

The fear and terror of the period from Lehman Brothers collapse last September to the end of February this year froze markets and economies.

Now they are becoming unblocked, the recession will proceed to steamroller them.

04-26 04:00 PDT Beijing –

“Ma,” a Chinese character for horse, is the 13th-most-common family name in China, shared by nearly 17 million people. That can cause no end of confusion when Mas get together, especially if those Mas also share the same given name, as many Chinese do.
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Ma Cheng’s book-loving grandfather came up with an elegant solution to this common problem. Twenty-six years ago, when his granddaughter was born, he combed through his library of Chinese dictionaries and lighted upon a character pronounced “cheng.” Cheng, which means galloping steeds, looks just like the character for horse, except that it is condensed and written three times in a row.

The character is so rare that once people see it, Ma Cheng said, they tend to remember both her and her name. That is one reason she likes it so much.

That is also why the government wants her to change it.

For Ma Cheng and millions of others, Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority.

The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards - unless they change their names to something more common.

06 Apr 2009

New York—A retired professor and father of a New York resident faces imminent sentencing for practicing Falun Gong after a trial last week in Shandong province that lasted just hours and at which police blocked his legal representation from attending. As part of a recent alarming trend of long sentences given to Falun Gong adherents, Mr. Zhang Xingwu now potentially faces up to 12 years in prison.

Zhang Xingwu (张兴武), a 67-year-old retired physics professor at Jinan Normal University in Shandong, was arrested from his home on July 16, 2008. His detention was part of a broader pre-Olympic round-up of people known to practice Falun Gong living in the vicinity of Qingdao, where the sailing competitions were held.

After over eight months of being held in detention, Professor Zhang was brought before a judge at Jinan Shizhong District Court on March 31, 2009. According to official documents (view), he faces charges of “using a heretical organization to undermine implementation of the law,” a vague provision of the criminal code commonly used to sentence Falun Gong adherents to prison terms of up to 12 years. (see Amnesty International report)

“As with hundreds of thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners, Professor Zhang should never have been arrested in the first place,” says Falun Gong spokesperson Erping Zhang. “Now this 67-year-old man faces the possibility of spending over a decade in jail. For what? For being known to the authorities as someone who practices Falun Gong and for living within 200 miles of an Olympic sporting venue.”

without comments

The Caijing magazine website has a headline news story concerning calls by Cao Kang-tai, the chairman of the Chinese State Council’s Legislative Affairs Office, for greater judicial independence at a meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

According to the news story, the Administrative Procedure Act was promulgated by the Chinese government on this day 20 years ago, and is considered a milestone in the development of “socialist democracy and the establishment of rule by law.” The promulgation of the Act meant that Chinese citizens were allowed to undertake law suits against the Chinese government, and that government conduct is subject to legal restraint.

The news story states that the introduction of the law met with strong opposition at the time, with many members of the Chinese Communist Party feeling that if citizens were capable of suing the government, the government itself would be divested of authority. The drafters of the law responded by stating that “the establishment of an administrative lawsuit system will both maintain and supervise administrative organs in the lawful exercise of their professional duties. Fundamentally speaking, it will make the relationship between the government and the people closer, and augment the reputation of the government. If members of administrative bodies infringe the lawful rights and interests of citizens, (citizens) will be able to obtain prompt redress by means of judicial procedures. This will be able to prevent the intensification of conflict, and avoid the adoption of radical measures.”

During the two decades since the promulgation of the law, the author of the news story states that not only has China promoted the drafting and promulgation of a huge number of administrative laws and regulations, the government’s understanding of the rule of law has also increased. Jiang Ming-an, a professor at Beijing University, has stated that the Administrative Procedure Act has pushed forward China’s transition from “a society ruled by people, to a society ruled by law. Not only is it a milestone in Chinese democracy and rule of law, it is also a means of advancement.”

This story is interesting to anyone following the implementation of China’s still relatively new Anti-monopoly Law and the implementation of a competition law system in this country.

Everyone at this point knows that the most famous case so far was the recent rejection of Coke’s bid for domestic juice company Huiyuan on the grounds of market concentration. If you saw that as the chief use of the AML, think again. The WSJ blog has the latest twist on the use of the AML:

China Mobile, the largest domestic mobile phone operator and the world’s largest operator by subscribers, is being sued in Beijing under China’s new anti-monopoly law. The case was accepted by Dongcheng District Court last week, according to Chinese-language media.

The plaintiff, Beijing-based lawyer Zhou Ze, alleges that China Mobile has abused its dominant market position. Zhou says the company has been charging additional monthly fees and charging subscribers different fees for substantially similar services. Zhou is seeking 1,200 yuan ($175) in compensation (an amount equal to his basic mobile fees for the last two years) and he wants the company to stop charging different fees.

Interesting that the case was brought by a lawyer. Hell of a lot of lawyer-based litigation and activism in China over the past few years. Even more interesting, of course, is that a huge domestic company’s business practices are being challenged on the basis of the AML. Everyone is probably asking whether this is a sign of things to come.

I am wholly ignorant of competition law and practice in other countries, with a tiny exception in the area of IP licensing. So I can’t really come at this from a comparative perspective.

Last week, I attended co-blogger Steve Dickinson’s lecture on China labor law. Steve’s lecture was part of a truly superb Doing Business in China seminar put on by Global Nav. The thrust of Steve’s speech was that labor laws in China have changed, they are being enforced against foreigners, and they are very different from U.S. labor laws. In a nutshell, the biggest differences are that written contracts are required with all employees and that firing an employee generally must be for cause.

Judging from the audience questions (and this was an extremely sophisticated audience), many were surprised by this and many had trouble understanding the full import.

A few days later, Steve and I were talking about this with the Chinese lawyers we work with in Qingdao. In explaining to them some of the cases we have handled for American clients who got themselves into trouble by improperly laying off Chinese employees, it soon became apparent to Steve and me that the Chinese lawyers were not grasping why these American companies were making these mistakes. They would ask questions like, “how could these American companies really believe they could lay off 100 people without first securing their approval and that of the government as well?” When Steve and I told them about US labor laws, the Chinese lawyers found them so bizarre, they actually laughed.

We told them of how there is a saying in the US that one can fire an employee for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all, just so long as the reason for firing is not one prohibited by law (such as racial or gender discrimination). We talked about how one might fire an employee for wearing a green shirt. We told them of how most employees in the United States do not work under written contracts and how companies generally prefer not to use them. It took us at least a half an hour for us to give a basic explanation of employer-employee relations in the US and even then, it was pretty clear that these exceedingly bright lawyers were still nonplussed.

Your editorial “Cap and Trade War” (March 30) claims that Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comments on applying carbon taxes or tariffs to imports is protectionist. With a cap-and-trade system on carbon, we will have a variable market value for carbon credits. Any rational tariffs based upon implied carbon content (carbon footprint) of an import or export would also have to be related to the volatile trade value of the emission credits. This would get overly complex. The political solution to complexity and volatility is to make the tariffs arbitrary, which would make them destructive to world trade. The world would perceive it as being protectionist and respond accordingly.

If instead of a cap-and-trade system, we had a revenue-neutral tax shift to a carbon/oil tax on the raw materials (coal, oil, natural gas), we could apply a carbon tax to imports according to calculated carbon footprints, along with a tax rebate to exports.

Applying a carbon footprint tax to imports and rebated to exports would be functionally equivalent to the value added taxes (VAT) used in Europe, which are refunded for exports and added to imports. Like a VAT, a “carbon added tax” added to imports wouldn’t create a shift of carbon-intensive industries, like steel production, to low carbon-tax countries, and would eliminate the “leakage” problem. There would be a slow shift in carbon-intensive industries, as the markets shift away from their products. But this would be a slow and desirable shift to a lower carbon/oil intensity society, which should be the real objective.

By Fayen Wong

PERTH (Reuters) - Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (FMG.AX), Australia’s third-largest iron ore miner, misled markets five years ago about deals it struck with Chinese firms, Australia’s securities watchdog told a court hearing on Monday.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission laid the charges last week, seeking fines of up to A$6 million ($4.3 million) from Fortescue and A$4.4 million from its chief executive and billionaire founder, Andrew Forrest.

At the heart of the five-week trial is a series of statements Fortescue made in 2004 about agreements with China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC), China Metallurgical Engineering Construction Group Corp (CMCC) and China Harbour Engineering Corp (CHEC) on the financing and building of a A$1.85 billion rail and port project for Fortescue in northwest Australia.

ASIC said the nature of the agreements was overstated as they were actually framework agreements and were not legally binding.

“Despite their knowledge of the terms of the three framework agreements and the many opportunities to release the true position, Fortescue and Forrest maintained and fostered the cloud of illusion that its position with respect to the three Chinese companies was better than it was,” Neil Young, a lawyer for ASIC, told the court in opening submissions.

Forrest, who did not appear on the first day of the Federal Court hearing in the western Australian city of Perth, could also be barred from being a company director if ASIC wins its case.

Fortescue, represented by law firm Clayton Utz, said the agreements signed with the three state-owned Chinese firms were subject to various conditions, including the feasibility of the project being met, according to court papers.

Shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in Chicago, Illinois. The U.S. exported $4.1 billion of U.S.-made products to China in Jan. 2009, while it imported $24.8 billion Chinese-made products. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON—American workers and the U.S. economy have been negatively affected by China’s unbridled industrial dumping efforts, which has caused the U.S. to lose its manufacturing base over the past two decades, testimonies from a recent congressional hearing suggested.

“The U.S. economy is in shambles not because we have been consuming too much, but because we have been producing too little,” said Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., in a speech before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing. “A country can only be as rich as the wealth it produces and America must make boosting its production a priority if we are to avoid a prolonged recession or a depression.”

Jones testified at a hearing on “China’s Industrial Policy and its Impact on U.S. Companies, Workers, and the American Economy” last week.

Economic theory advocates that a country should manufacture first for domestic consumers and then export the excess to countries that for one reason or another cannot produce that particular product. On the other hand, a country should buy from foreign countries certain manufactured products that are produced more economically than it itself can produce. In the end, no trade imbalance should result.

But China does not adhere to this principle. It does not produce products for domestic consumption by the Chinese people, but for export only, dumping its goods on foreign markets—distorting world trade and creating unprecedented trade imbalances.

Research into China’s way of doing business indicates that it dumps cheap government-subsidized manufactured goods on the market, as many Chinese manufacturers hold employees in servitude, paying little or nothing for their labor. Additionally, many products are manufactured in prison camps by China’s notorious forced labor for zero cost.

By Mark Lee

April 6 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Richard Li’s planned buyout of PCCW Ltd., Hong Kong’s biggest phone company, was put on hold after the city’s stock regulator won the right to appeal a ruling that cleared the $2.05 billion takeover.

The Court of Appeal will hear the Securities and Futures Commission’s argument on April 16, Judge Anthony Rogers said today, citing the “serious” nature of the case. Hours earlier, Court of First Instance Judge Susan Kwan approved the buyout, saying PCCW shareholders behaved in a “bona fide” way when they voted in favor of the deal on Feb. 4.

For the 42-year-old son of Hong Kong’s richest man, the appeal prolongs his pursuit to privatize PCCW after three failed attempts since 2006 to reduce his stake in the company. The regulator, in its first attempt to block a takeover through the courts, claimed the vote was manipulated as some investors were given shares to bolster support for the deal.

“Based on the evidence presented in court, the share transfers fall within the letter of the law,” said Timothy Chan, an analyst at CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong, who rates PCCW shares “sell.” “What the SFC was arguing is that the transactions had gone against the spirit of the law, which was designed to give smaller investors adequate representation.”

‘Kill the Deal’

Holding a court hearing on April 16 for the appeal would “kill the deal,” said Denis Chang, a lawyer representing Pacific Century Regional Developments Ltd., one of the Li- controlled companies that made the buyout offer.

On Feb. 24, PCCW said it planned to de-list its shares on April 14. Postponing the buyout beyond the indicative timeframe may allow Li and bidding partner China United Network Communications Group Corp. to scrap the takeover, Jonathan Harris, who represents PCCW, told Judge Rogers today.

The timetable for de-listing the shares is now no longer applicable, PCCW said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange after today’s ruling. The company will make an announcement about a revised timetable “as and when appropriate” after the Court of Appeal hearing on April 16, the statement said.

Banks financing the buyout will need to agree to the delay in the schedule, Pacific Century said in an e-mailed statement today after today’s ruling. The Singapore-listed company hasn’t decided on whether it will accept the delay, the statement said.

Lyncourt, NY — After 34½ years making dinnerware for Syracuse China, Jackie O’Neill is not sure what she’s going to do with herself when the last plates roll out of the kiln today.

“I’m heartbroken,” said O’Neill, 59. “I really don’t have any plans. I’m in the process of denial. It feels like a death in the family.”

She’s not alone. Today, the company’s 275 employees, many of whom have more than 20 years of service to the company, will produce the last pottery stamped with the Syracuse China name and actually made in Syracuse.

The company’s outlet store and its shipping department will remain open until mid-June. But sometime today, Syracuse China’s 138 years of making dinnerware in Syracuse will end.

In a cost-cutting move, the company’s owner, Libbey Inc., of Toledo, Ohio, announced in December it will close the huge Syracuse China factory on Court Street in Salina, where it has been located since moving from Fayette Street in Syracuse on June 7, 1922.

The Syracuse China name will not die with the factory. Libbey says it will continue to sell dinnerware containing the Syracuse China brand name, but the products will be imported from factories in other countries.

By JONATHAN CHENG and LORRAINE LUK

HONG KONG — A Hong Kong judge dismissed accusations of wrongdoing related to the US$2.1 billion buyout of PCCW Ltd., giving tycoon Richard Li a significant victory but dealing a blow to the city’s efforts to project a tough regulatory image.

High Court Justice Susan Kwan said Monday that Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission failed to show that members of a buyout group led by Mr. Li did anything improper to get shareholder approval at a February vote. She also said the practice of handing out shares to investors to clear a Hong Kong regulatory hurdle — a key part of the government’s case — didn’t break the law.

The matter now goes before a Hong Kong appeals court, which Monday halted the buyout until April 16 while it considers the arguments by the commission, known as the SFC.

The case has captivated Hong Kong in part because it pits the son of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing — a major force in city life with local holdings ranging from utilities to supermarkets — against government officials eager to show they are taking a tougher regulatory stance. Monday’s decision could be the latest of several setbacks to that effort, some legal observers said.
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“This will raise questions about the protections of minority investors in Hong Kong,” said Jamie Allen, secretary-general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association and a member of the listing committee of Hong Kong’s stock exchange. “There are many other issues that we need to deal with in Hong Kong, however.”

PCCW Managing Director Alex Arena said Monday the decision on approving the company’s US$2.1 billion buyout plan was a “good judgment.” The company and the buyout group have said the SFC lacked evidence of wrongdoing and was abusing its watchdog position.
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Should it be sustained, the court’s approval gives Mr. Li greater ability to determine the fate of a company that was once a hot property but had increasingly become an albatross. Its shares reached as high as 100 Hong Kong dollars (US$12.90) a share nine years ago as the company unveiled ambitious multimedia plans. But most of its efforts didn’t bear fruit, leaving as its core business the cash-flush but slow-growth operation of fixed telephone lines in Hong Kong.

By LISA FRIEDMAN, ClimateWire
Published: April 6, 2009

“I was quite taken aback for a moment, because it’s not typical for people in that world to do that,” Stern said of the loud applause that broke out in Bonn, Germany, after he pledged to a crowd of staid diplomats that America will “make up for lost time” in reaching a global emissions treaty.

“I was just kind of cranking through my speech, and I looked up a bit surprised and pleased,” Stern recalled. “It was quite gratifying to get a good reception. There’s no question that in the absence of U.S. leadership and engagement for the past eight years, there was a lot of pent-up hopefulness and desire for the United States to indicate that we’re back.”

In his first interview since being tapped to lead the global negotiations toward a new international emissions treaty, Stern acknowledged criticism from Europe’s left and America’s right on everything from emissions targets to raising money to help vulnerable countries confront climate change amid the newfound international goodwill. He also distanced the administration from the possibility that the United States could impose an import tax on countries that don’t put a price on carbon.

But he stood firm on the main goals he has twice outlined since joining the Obama administration: that America will return to 1990 emissions levels by 2020, that the government is intent upon building a clean-energy, low-carbon economy, and that fast-developing nations like China must take serious — but still unspecified — steps to brake their output of greenhouse gas emissions.

March 28th, 2009 by Reggie Garcia Littlejohn Print This Article Print This Article ·ShareThis

So am I. Not only elective abortions. Forced abortions.

It doesn’t matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue. No one can support forced abortion, because it is not a choice.

What do I mean by “forced abortions”? Here are a couple of examples from the U.S. Department of State China Report, just released on February 25, 2009: “In March [2008] family planning officials in Henan Province reportedly forcibly detained a 23-year-old unmarried woman who was seven months pregnant. Officials reportedly tied her to a bed, induced labor, and killed the newborn upon delivery. In April [2008] population-planning officials in Shandong provinces reportedly detained and beat the sister of a woman who had illegally conceived a second child in an attempt to compel the woman to undergo an abortion.”

According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China report, released on October 31, 2008, “Violators of the [one-child] policy are routinely punished with exorbitant fines, and in some cases, subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and torture.”

In my opinion, systematic use of forced abortion is a crime against humanity. And now, you and I will be footing the bill.

Just this month, Congress quietly passed $50 million in funding for UNFPA, the United Nations Family Planning Fund. The bill includes language that voids Kemp-Kasten, which for 23 years has stood to prevent US dollars from funding coercive family planning.

The US cut off funding UNFPA in 2001 because an investigation, headed by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, found that UNFPA was complicit with the Chinese Family Planning officials in coercive implementation of China’ One-Child Policy. According to our own State Department, as well as Amnesty International, China Aid and others, the implementation of China’s One-Child Policy remains coercive.

Why must we fund forced abortion with our tax dollars?

Not only are women dragged out of their homes screaming and pleading in “family planning raids,” but the One-Child Policy has also led to many other serious human rights violations. I’ll name just three:

1. Gendercide. Because of the traditional preference for boys, most of the aborted babies are girls. There are 120 boys born for every 100 girls born in China, and in some areas the number is as high as 130 boys born for every 100 girls. Since the One-Child Policy was instituted in 1978, 400 million births – greater than the entire population of the United States – have been “prevented.” You could say that an entire nation of women is not living in China today because they were selectively aborted before they were born. This is gendercide.

2. Human Trafficking and Sexual Slavery. Because of abortion, abandonment, and infanticide of baby girls, there are an estimated 30 million Chinese men who will never marry because they cannot find wives. This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery from nations surrounding China. According to the February, 2009 State Department China Report, “Over the past five years, there reportedly was an increase in cross-border trafficking cases, with most trafficked women and girls coming from North Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam. Others came from Burma, Laos, Russia and Ukraine.”

car-sales“You said it yourself, Big Daddy. Mendacity is a system we live in.”

–Brick, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

As usual, Tennessee Williams is a good place to go for wisdom. As the Great Recession rolls over us, information about the financial system, built on a lot of mendacity, is coming to the fore.

This morning, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Matt Taibbi’s latest column in Rolling Stone about the economic collapse and the reasons for it. In discussing collateralized-debt obligations (CDOs), one of the new “products” brought to us by the financial services industry, Taibbi explains how these instruments were a bit less sound than advertised:

The problem was, none of this was based on reality. “The banks knew they were selling crap,” says a London-based trader from one of the bailed-out companies. To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really were. “They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who’d been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years,” says one young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. “It was nuts.”

Whenever speculative bubbles burst, it’s interesting to watch what happens to the bullshit artists who were driving all the ridiculous transactions. Certainly the example discussed by Taibbi was egregious, particularly if the folks pushing that paper knew it was crap.

I saw some of this in 2000 with the Net bubble, and at that time, there were lots of young lawyers running around China talking up “deals” that they had in their pockets, often for investments in website-based enterprises, management of which had no clue about sustainable revenue. To be fair, these lawyers (and the investors they represented) thought that the deals were sound.

When the bubble burst, law firms quickly discovered that these guys had no real legal skills and cut them loose. At the time, it was fun challenging people like that on the business assumptions underlying the deals — most of these lawyers had no business background and, moreover, couldn’t care less about whether the enterprise made sense or not (they had faith in the magic of online enterprises). They were simply responding to a need of the market to allocate capital to these pieces of crap.

The bursting bubble this time centers on the financial services industry, and it’s much more difficult to ferret out just what kind of bad investments the hucksters were selling. Again, there has been a local analog to the more egregious practices that took place in London and New York.

What I saw locally that springs to mind is the formation of China funds, pools of capital set up to invest in the PRC market. The private equity funds were the most fun to deal with — some of these folks had no clue what they were doing, despite the fact that they were making recommendations on purchasing or taking large equity stakes in Chinese companies. Moreover, they often never considered exit strategies.

By Thomas Jolicoeur, Canwest News ServiceMarch 27, 2009

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has described life in Tibet as “hell on earth” under Chinese rule.

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has described life in Tibet as “hell on earth” under Chinese rule.
Photograph by: Fayaz Kabli/Reuters,

OTTAWA — Negotiations with the Dalai Lama cannot proceed unless the exiled Tibetan holy man acknowledges the constitution of China, Chinese experts say.

At a Friday press conference at the Chinese Embassy, scholars in Tibetology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences spoke of the Dalai Lama’s request for Tibetan autonomy, which they view as a thinly veiled attempt to establish Tibet as an independent nation.

These demands — detailed in a memorandum of understanding issued last year —violate not only Chinese law, but also the historical development of Tibet, the scholars asserted.

“The so-called (memorandum of understanding) on Tibetan autonomy runs contrary to Chinese constitution and Chinese laws concerning regional and ethnic authority in China,” said Prof. Hao Shiyuan, the director of Tibetan Historical and Cultural Research at CASS.

The delegation said Tibet has historically been under the rule of China and, as such, any independence the region experienced before the most recent occupation by China in 1959 was illegitimate.

The delegates acknowledged Tibet’s spiritual leader has never demanded outright independence from China, but that his desire to see the region as an autonomous province not directly ruled by Beijing amounts to the same thing. “The Dalai Lama has never given up his pursuit and position in seeking whole independence of Tibet,” said Hao.

Through an interpreter, Hao said the Dalai Lama has grown overly ambitious due to his influence overseas and his immersion in western and popular culture.

As a result, he is making demands that he knows contravene the Chinese constitution.

By SCOTT BORGERSON and CAITLYN ANTRIM
Published: March 28, 2009

THE North Pole is under siege by global warming. The sea ice there has lost half its thickness in the past six years, and all signs point to further rapid melting. By 2013, the entire Arctic could be devoid of ice in summer, and the region is likely to experience an influx of shipping, fishing and tourism. Russia planted its flag in the North Pole’s ocean floor two years ago, and other northern nations find themselves under mounting pressure to lay claim to huge swaths of the seabed. Before the land grab goes too far, the nations most involved should turn the northernmost part of the Arctic into a great park — a marine preserve that protects the polar environment and serves as a center for peaceful, international scientific research.

The Arctic’s pristine waters are a leading indicator, and an important regulator, of global climate health. They are the beginning and the end of the so-called great ocean conveyor, the mighty current that connects all the world’s oceans. And they are home to a vibrant ecosystem that supports whales, polar bears and terns.

Driving much of the new interest in the Arctic, however, are the stores of oil and gas that lie beneath the water — amounting to an estimated 22 percent of the earth’s remaining supplies. The largest deposits, however, are likely to be found in the shallower parts of the continental shelf, within the surrounding countries’ existing economic zones. Any fields found at greater depths, within the boundaries of the proposed park, would be prohibitively expensive to exploit for at least decades to come. For sovereignty claims, North Pole oil is a red herring.

The Convention on the Law of the Sea, the international treaty that sets the rules for ownership of ocean resources, recognizes that Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia, the four countries neighboring the Arctic Ocean, may be entitled to extend their seabed boundaries — and even sets a deadline for doing so. (Because the United States has not joined the Convention, it cannot make a claim to the extended continental shelf.) But it leaves it to those countries to resolve overlapping claims among themselves. Disputes over jurisdiction stand to slow the process of setting up a system for protecting the Arctic and could also poison international relations elsewhere. The creation of an international park would head off both problems.

The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, attends the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009. The Second WBF opened here on Saturday.(Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

WUXI, Jiangsu, March 28 (Xinhua) — The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, said here Saturday that China enjoys religious freedom.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum in English, the living buddha said that this event fully demonstrates that China nowadays enjoys social harmony, stability and religious freedom. It also shows China is a nation that safeguards and promotes world peace.

He called on people in the modern world to do more beneficial deeds and serve others.

The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, talks with Xu Jialu, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, before the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009.

The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, talks with Xu Jialu, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, before the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009.(Xinhua Photo)

Extending his gratitude to the central government for the concern for and patronage to the forum, the Panchen Lama said, “This forum is convened in my country — China, which has a Buddhist cultural tradition going back 2,000 years.”

More than 1,700 Buddhist monks and scholars from about 50 countries and regions attended the forum. The event, with the theme “A harmonious world, a synergy of condition,” was jointly organized by the Buddhist Association of China, the Buddha’s Light International Association, the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, and the China Religious Culture Communication Association.

The Panchen Lama said that the rapid development of “external material science and technology,” or material civilization of the present world, brings about convenient facilities for people’s lives.

“But on the other hand, it also causes the environment degradation, growing disparity between the rich and the poor, financial crises, armed conflicts and wars, terrorist attacks and the like,” the 19-year-old monk said.

The Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama are the most important religious figures in Tibet.

“The reason for all the adversity lies in people’s mind – many people are deluded regarding the causes of suffering and happiness, feel discontent, lack of compassion,” he said.

“Sutras tell us: Good is rewarded with good, evil with evil. We should now guide and encourage people with the law of causality to serve others with beneficial deeds,” he said.

“Only if we carry forward the philanthropic moral spirit, will everyone be guided to do good, and not to harm others; can everyone bear love and mercy, benefit all sentient beings and protect the environment, so as to enable people to enjoy a harmonious and happy life,” he added.

Calling for achieving harmony among different Buddhism sects, he said, “different sects within Buddhism should respect each other and coexist in harmony,” he said. “In order that Buddha Dharma can live on and flourish, we should foster more outstanding talents.”

Panchen Lama’s English speech received applauses and appreciation from the participants in the forum.

“The 11th Panchen Lama’s wonderful English speech has joyfully shocked the Buddhist masters and cultural elites present at the forum,” said Master Xue Cheng, vice president and secretary-general of the Buddhist Association of China (BAC). “He has a good command of the Chinese, English and Tibetan languages.”

“The Buddhists from English-speaking countries who I talked with shortly after his speech have highly praised his English proficiency,” said Xue.

“His good command of English shows his endeavors and the care from the Chinese government,” he added.

“Since English is an international language, the 11th Panchen Lama’s speech in English this time will definitely impress the world,” said Shi Yongxin, abbot of China’s famed Shaolin Temple.

“He appeared very mature and moderate,” Shi added.

FUQING CITY, China, March 27, 2009 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall via COMTEX/ —-China Clean Energy Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: CCGY) (”China Clean Energy,” the “Company”), a leading producer of biodiesel fuel and environmentally-friendly specialty chemical products made from renewable resources in The People’s Republic of China (”PRC”), today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2008.

“Our results for the quarter and the full year have been adversely impacted by the global economic crisis as prices for our specialty chemical and biodiesel products fell faster than our raw material costs. We also experienced lower overall demand for our specialty chemical products, notably from our export markets,” said Mr. Tai-ming Ou, China Clean Energy’s Chairman and CEO. “On a positive note, despite the difficult environment, we have continued to generate cash from operations both during the quarter and for the full year, and we have also made good progress in the construction of our new plant which we expect will be completed in the second quarter of 2009.”

Fourth Quarter 2008 Results

China Clean Energy’s net revenue in the fourth quarter was $4.1 million, down 40.4% from the fourth quarter of 2007. The decline in revenue was driven by lower sales volume and lower sales prices for both our biodiesel as well as specialty chemical products, due to the decline in demand caused by the global economic slowdown and rapid decline in crude oil prices.

Gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2008 was $0.6 million, down 68.5% from the fourth quarter of 2007. Gross margin was 14.3% in the fourth quarter of 2008, down from 27.1% during the same period in 2007 as a result of lower sales volume, lower selling prices, higher raw material costs and lower export tax rebates. The decline in gross profit was the result of lower revenue and higher costs, including the year-end inventory write-down caused by falling selling prices.

The opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) is held in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

WUXI, Jiangsu, March 28 (Xinhua) — The Second World Buddhist Forum opened in this eastern Chinese city Saturday with more than 1,700 Buddhist monks and scholars from about 50 countries and regions gathering to discuss how Buddhism can contribute to building a harmonious world.

“Buddhism is a religion boasting openness and tolerance. When he founded the religion, Buddha advocated his moral position — equality of all living beings as well as harmony and amicability,” Du Qinglin, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), told the opening ceremony of the forum in the gigantic Buddhist Palace at Lingshan Mountain.

“We anticipate that world Buddhist circles will carry forward the spirit of ‘harmony and synergy’, manifest the qualities of mercy and compassion, reclaim people’s souls and promote harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, humans and society, among people and within each individual,” said Du, who is also head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, talks with Xu Jialu, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, before the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009.

The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, talks with Xu Jialu, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, before the opening ceremony of the Second World Buddhist Forum (WBF) in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province on March 28, 2009.(Xinhua Photo)
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He said the world faces the financial crisis, social contradictions, culture shock and environmental contamination.

He added: “To persist in ‘harmony and synergy’ and co-create harmony, we are called upon to depend on the people’s welfare, hold high the banner of human progress and create promising conditions for world peace.

“We should respect diversity on the basis of equal treatment, strengthen mutual understanding through communications and achieve common progress while making up for each other’s deficiencies,” he said.

“The Chinese people have always unswervingly held high the banner of peace, development and cooperation, pursued a strategy of mutual benefit and win-win outcomes and actively developed international exchanges and cooperation,” he said.

They have also “positively participated in coping with the financial crisis, committed themselves to promoting world economic growth and the progress of human civilization and worked with people across the world for harmony, lasting peace and common prosperity,” he added.

WUXI: For the first time, a religious conference is being held across the Taiwan Straits, as Wuxi of Jiangsu province and Taipei co-host the second World Buddhist Forum.

The Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the second World Buddhist Forum at the Buddhist Palace in Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu province, March 28, 2009. [Agencies]

Opening today at the Brahma Palace of Lingshan Mountain in Wuxi, the forum will move to Taipei on March 30 and conclude there on April 1.

Over 1,000 Buddhist monks, academicians, lay Buddhists and social elites from both sides of the Taiwan Straits as well as nearly 50 countries and regions in the world have gathered at the forum.

Participants include such famous figures as the Panchen Lama, and Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order in Taiwan.

The forum, organized by the Buddhist Association of China, Buddha’s Light International Association, the Hong Kong Buddhist Association and the China Religious Culture Communication Association, has “A harmonious World, a Synergy of Conditions” as its theme.

“Conditions are the core and foundation of Buddhist teachings. Everything rises and falls according to the law of conditions and dependent origination, and a harmonious world depends on the synergy of conditions,” said Ming Sheng, vice-chairman of the Buddhist Association of China, at a press conference Friday.

“The theme of this forum not only adheres to the concept of synergy in traditional Chinese culture and the core teachings of Buddhism, but is also in accordance with the international trend of dialogue, communication and cooperation.”

Panel discussions on nine topics, including “the opportunities and challenges faced by Buddhist education”, “Buddhism and environmental preservation”, “Buddhism and science”, and “a harmonious development of Buddhist thoughts and business”, will be held at the forum.

“Buddhism in Taiwan and the mainland are of the same origin. We have been carrying on communication and exchange for a long time, but this is the first time that we are holding a Buddhist forum together. With the synergy of conditions, we will continue to do so in the future,” said Yi Kung, spokesperson of the Taiwan part of the forum.

TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.
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Tim Leyes for The New York Times

The Toronto academic researchers who are reporting on the spying operation dubbed GhostNet include, from left, Ronald J. Deibert, Greg Walton, Nart Villeneuve and Rafal A. Rohozinski.
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In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved.

The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.

Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.

The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.

Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information.

The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected.

A mystery electronic spy network apparently based in China has infiltrated hundreds of computers around the world and stolen files and documents, Canadian researchers have revealed.

The network, dubbed GhostNet, appears to target embassies, media groups, NGOs, international organisations, government foreign ministries and the offices of the Dalai Lama, leader of the Tibetan exile movement. The researchers, based at Toronto University’s Munk Centre for International Studies, said their discovery had profound implications.

“This report serves as a wake-up call… these are major disruptive capabilities that the professional information security community, as well as policymakers, need to come to terms with rapidly,” said researchers Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski.

After 10 months of study, the researchers concluded that GhostNet had invaded 1,295 computers in 103 countries, but it appeared to be most focused on countries in south Asia and south-east Asia, as well as the Dalai Lama’s offices in India, Brussels, London and New York. The network continues to infiltrate dozens of new computers each week.

Such a pattern, and the fact that the network seemed to be controlled from computers inside China, could suggest that GhostNet was set up or linked to Chinese government espionage agencies. However, the researchers were clear that they had not been able to identify who was behind the network, and said it could be run by private citizens in China or a different country altogether. A Chinese government spokesmen has denied any official involvement.

GhostNet can invade a computer over the internet and penetrate and steal secret files. It can also turn on the cameras and microphones of an infected computer, effectively creating a bug that can monitor what is going inside the room where the computer is. Anyone could be watched and listened to.

The researchers said they had been tipped off to the network after having been asked by officials with the Dalai Lama to examine their computers. The officials had been worried that their computers were being infected and monitored by outsiders. The Chinese government regularly attacks the Tibetan exile movement as encouraging separatism and terrorism within China. The researchers found that the computers had succumbed to cyber-attack and that numerous files, including letters and emails, had been stolen. The intruders had also gained control of the electronic mail server of the Dalai Lama’s computers.

By Tim Johnson

McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted: 03/28/2009 05:54:52 PM PDT

BEIJING — Amid a downturn in real estate prices, some wealthy Chinese are signing up for home-buying tours to the U.S., and Chinese media tout the trend as another sign of the strength of what’s now the world’s third-largest economy behind the U.S. and Japan.

“The real estate prices in America have gone down drastically,” said Yin Guohua, a partner in a law firm who recently returned from an 11-day U.S. tour with a group of Chinese elite. “It’s a good option for Chinese people who want to buy for investment.”

In prime time last week, China Central Television’s popular Oriental Horizon program dedicated half an hour to the topic of house-hunting tours to the U.S. The tours also have been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, some of them suggesting that the buying power of newly rich Chinese might help salvage U.S. real estate woes.

“We’ll probably take more than 10 groups this year,” said Vincent Mo, chairman of SouFun Holdings, one of two companies known to be organizing the house-buying trips. “There are more than 500 people applying to go with the SouFun team to look at property in the U.S.”

Not all of those on the tours are serious property investors. Some want a quick look around the U.S. Others want a son or daughter to obtain a U.S. education and think that buying property will get a foot in the door.

Mo acknowledged that he doesn’t know if anyone among the first group of 40 Chinese investors, who traveled
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in February, bought U.S. property.

The U.S. real estate slump has made property in major U.S. cities seem cheaper than in China’s larger cities, real estate professionals said.

By Kyunghee Park

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Coca-Cola Co. may abandon its bid to acquire China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd., the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

China’s Ministry of Commerce doesn’t want Coca-Cola to acquire the brand rights of Huiyuan, the report said today. Buying the Chinese company will double Coca-Cola’s share of the fruit-juice market in the world’s most populous nation to about 20 percent, according to data from Euromonitor International.

Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest soft-drink maker, proposed to purchase Huiyuan for at least $2.3 billion in September, which would be the largest foreign takeover of a Chinese company. The transaction is the second-largest scrutinized by the ministry after China’s anti-monopoly law took effect on Aug. 1.

Huiyuan shares slumped 19 percent to HK$8.30 in Hong Kong trading before being suspended.

Dana Bolden, Coca-Cola spokesman, declined to comment. Calls to Chen Rongkai at the Ministry of Commerce’s press office weren’t immediately answered.

The proposed takeover will be the biggest overseas acquisition for the Atlanta-based sodamaker. Coca-Cola offered HK$12.20 for each Huiyuan a share in cash, almost triple the price before the proposed purchase was announced on Sept. 3. The cost of the deal may rise to HK$19.6 billion ($2.5 billion) depending on whether Huiyuan bonds are converted into shares, the Hong Kong-listed juicemaker has said.

A takeover of Huiyuan will help Coca-Cola Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent maintain the company’s lead over Pepsico Inc. as U.S. soda sales slow. Coca-Cola’s sales by volume rose 19 percent last year in China and declined by 1 percent in North America.

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — When asked whether his fellow Tibetans have been imprisoned and tortured for expressing their political views, Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak didn’t mince words.

“I think that some of them are deliberately telling lies, and some of them are saying so because of bias,” said Tenzinchodrak, a delegate to China’s national legislature who is also a spiritual leader.

He was part of a delegation of five Tibetan legislators who were in Washington on Tuesday, meeting with U.S. officials in an unprecedented public relations campaign aimed at dispelling what one Chinese official called “propaganda” regarding human rights abuses in Tibet.

The visit followed a wave of bad publicity for China last week after the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, said that his homeland has become a “hell on Earth” under 50 years of Chinese rule. The delegation also comes at a time when the Obama administration is trying to balance criticism of China’s human rights record with the need for Beijing’s economic support amid the global financial crisis.

At a news conference at the Chinese Embassy, the Tibetan legislators in flowing robes proclaimed that their homeland was a beacon for democracy and economic progress.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009; Page D01

At least 17 of the 20 major nations that vowed at a November summit to avoid protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods, according to a World Bank report unveiled yesterday.

The report underscores a “worrying” trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis. It comes one day after Mexico vowed to slap new restrictions on 90 U.S. products. That action is being taken in retaliation against Washington for canceling a program that allowed Mexican truck drivers the right to transport goods across the United States, illustrating the tit-for-tat responses that experts fear could grow in coming months.

The report comes ahead of an April 2 summit in London in which the heads of state from those 20 industrialized and developing economies will seek to shape a coordinated response to the economic crisis. Their inability to keep their November promises is another indication of how difficult it will be to implement any agreement reached next month on a global scale.