Dear EngagingChina reader,

It has been a LONG time since I added any content to the site but rest assured, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

What should have been a short period of downtime while I worked on another project turned into an unexpectedly lengthy sabatical.

Nevertheless, now recharged and refreshed, EngagingChina will be back online in the very near future -- just as soon as I get back from vacation!

Geoff Nairn

Spansion, the US-listed maker of flash memory chips, has struck a deal with China's SMIC in a bid to get closer to China's electronics industry. Flash memory is a cut-throat business and the pricing pressures are increasing as Chinese electronics companies make great inroads into the mobile phone and consumer electronics markets...   more »

Betex, the London-listed bookmaker focussed on China, is anything but the sure-cert bet it once seemed. Indeed, investors now risk losing their shirts as the company has been delisted from London's Aim market...   more »

The BlackBerry, the de rigeur handheld device for alpha males, has finally arrived in China. Chinese regulators did not approve the BlackBerry handsets for sale in China until the first quarter of this year and Canada's RIM, the manufacturer, had to team up with Alcatel-Lucent, which has a Chinese JV, to get the device approved...   more »

What a difference two years and a US credit squeeze makes. Once, stock brokers were seen as the untouchables of China's financial sector. Fast forward to today and the news that Citic Securities is to invest $1bn for a 6% stake in Bear Stearns, the US investment bank, hard hit by the credit squeeze. Equally surprising, the US firm is reciprocating...   more »

Spain's Gamesa, the world's second largest wind energy company, is making a big bet on China with investments totalling €60m planned for the next few years. The investment will be split between boosting production at four Chinese manufacturing facilities and investing in new wind farms...   more »

Cookson, the UK-based ceramics manufacturer, sees big opportunities in China's solar cell manufacturing industry and plans to build a second crucible manufacturing facility in China to copy with strong demand. All production from this facility will be supplied to Glory Silicon Energy...    more »

DSM, the Dutch nutritional products firm, plans to restructure its Chinese manufacturing sites. The announcement is interesting on two counts. First, it shows that restructurings are not confined to manufacturers' "legacy" installations in the west. Second, its interesting to see DSM stressing how it is working to reduce the inevitable social impact of the factory closure....   more »

Tibco, the US software company, has strengthened its relationship with China's Worksoft in the latest development that shows the growing maturing of China's software development industry. Tibco specialises in middleware -- the "plumbing" of business software projects -- and this arcane area of the software market has not historically been seen as a big opportunity in China...    more »

Foreign firms are strengthening their dominant position in China's mobile phone market, which despite its soarway growth, is now facing intense competition and tumbling average selling prices. China's mobile phone users exceeded 515m at the end of August, a monthly rise of 6.8m, while the number of fixed-line subscribers remained almost the same..   more »