EngagingChina

UPS starts building Shanghai hub

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 03:00:00 +0200

UPS and Shanghai Airport Authority have conducted a formal groundbreaking ceremony for the UPS International Air Hub at Pudong International Airport. The new hub will link all of China via Shanghai to UPS' international network with direct service to the Americas, Europe and Asia...

Foreign investment running at $5bn a month

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:00:00 +0200

Foreign investment in China shows few signs of cooling. It reached $5bn in July, a rise of 18% over July 2006, while total foreign investment in the first seven months of 2007 reached almost $37bn, a rise of 13% over the year-earlier period.

The number of new foreign-financed companies approved in July fell 1% from the same month last year to 2,993, the Commerce Ministry said on its Web site.

Technorati : china, economy, government, investment

Beware of the baozi

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:28:01 +0200

There has been a flood of coverage in western media about China's cavalier attitude to food safety and the recent scares about contaminated toothpaste and pet food exported from China. Why is it so hard for the government to crack down on exporters of dangerously tainted food or counterfeit products?..

Spain trades pigs for pandas

Geoff Nairn — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:19:09 +0200

2007 is the "Year of Spain in China" and Spain is pulling out all the stops to promote its culture, language and institutions -- and, of course, Spanish business. While trade links between the two countries have been pretty limited to date, around 300 Spanish companies have now established a presence in China and the Spanish-Chinese business summit, held this week in Beijing, sought to project a more modern image of both countries' economies...

China's private companies revealed

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:34:17 +0200

Looking for a Chinese partner? Subscribers to QIN, a new electronic database service from Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (BvDEP), will be spoilt for choice. It covers over 300,000 mainly private Chinese companies , providing financial data and detailed information on ownership and corporate structure...

Is it safe to trade?

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:00:00 +0200

At an international product safety conference, being held appropriately enough in Beijing, western experts urged China to improve its act and reduce the number of product recalls. Alarm bells are ringing following a growing number of incidents involving counterfeit drugs and sub-standard agricultural goods imported from China...

Chinese lessons from Jim Rogers

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 11 May 2007 13:17:22 +0200

Investors are still gung-ho on China despite repeated warnings of overheating in local stock markets. Goldman Sachs yesterday joined the sky-is-falling-in crowd, while another sign of the times is the Chinese Initial Public Offering Indicator hitting an historic high. Jim Rogers, legendary invesment guru is very bullish on China, but advises against buying Chinese equities during the bubble periods...

China strives, west stifles

Geoff Nairn — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:08:56 +0200

A wonderfully perceptive article from Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, should be required reading for anyone interested in China's new economy. In a few broad brush strokes, Stiglitz summarised the challenges facing China as it evolves from the traditional economic model that has served it so well in the recent past but is now being questioned -- and not just by hawkish politicians in the west...

Not so green agenda

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:49:56 +0200

China has delayed indefinitely its national "action plan" on climate change, which was due to be released earlier this week. The delay comes at a time of growing international concern at China's apparent desire to back-pedal on earlier commitments to adopt a "green" agenda for economic growth...

Services for all

Geoff Nairn — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:00:00 +0200

Western companies have long pushed for greater access to service industries, but Beijing remains concerned about the ability of domestic service companies to compete. Nevertheless, China is now pushing for a more services-oriented economy and so we can expect a gradual opening to foreign rivals, just as has happened with the country's banking sector...

Red tape eased for western exports

Geoff Nairn — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:38:39 +0200

One less obstacle for western businesses engaging with China. Domestic companies will soon be allowed to freely import a wide range of materials and products that previously required import licences. No prizes for guessing that the reason for this liberalisation is China's huge trade surplus and the howls of protest it draws from China's principal trading partners, such as the EU and US...

That's rich

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:48:37 +0100

Hong Kong and China have overtaken Japan in the annual Forbes Magazine rich list, which offers some interesting insights into where the real opportunities are in China's economy. Ironically, its the old economy that seems to be producing the greatest number of dollar billionaires in China...

Ping An pop

Geoff Nairn — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:42:13 +0100

Seemingly oblivious to the sharp falls that have buffeted the Chinese markets this week, investors piled into the latest China IPO, Ping An Insurance, and sent the price up 50% at the opening of first-day trading on the Shanghai exchange today...

Caveat emptor for investors

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:43:06 +0100

Sure sign of a bubble about to burst when China and India now get lumped together in a single investment theme called "Chindia". We're not saying that China and, indeed, India are not going to be major players in the world economy. They are already and will be even more important in the future. But economic might does not guarantee bouyant stock market returns..

Let them eat check

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:02:56 +0100

Burberry, the British fashion brand best-known for its check raincoats, is not the first western clothes manufacturer to shift production to China. And it won't be the last, for sure. So its surprising to see just how much of an uproar its plan has recently created...

Hotels are going up

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:01:45 +0100

Hot on the heels of China Comservice's hugely successful HK IPO comes another soar-away debut from Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels, China's leading hotel group and a good play on China's tourism boom. The flow of tourists is not all one-way, as increasing numbers of China's middle class are now able to afford a foreign holiday...

Lies, damn lies and Chinese research

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:51:32 +0100

China has leaped ahead of Japan in the R&D spending league table, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. But BusinessWeek suspects the achievement owes more to a statistical sleigh of hand than any great leap forward by Chinese researchers...

small business, big opportunity

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:00:00 +0100

China's 25m small businesses have the highest PC penetration among Asia's four most populous countries. The surprising statistic should provides food for thought for western IT vendors, who have to date been surprisingly slow to wake up to the huge untapped potential of this market -- 85% of China's enterprises are small businesses...

China by the big numbers

Geoff Nairn — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:05:07 +0100

Do you ever struggle to come up with the right statistic to describe China's economic miracle? BusinessWeek has assembled a pretty comprehensive list. Let's start with the big one, GDP growth. China reported that Q3 GDP jumped 10.4% year-on-year after the economy rose 11% during the first half of 2006...

Risks and challenges of China's skills shortage

Geoff Nairn — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:51:05 +0200

The issue that gives US expat managers most sleepless nights is recruiting and retaining staff. Its something we have touched on before at EngagingChina but its worth revisiting because some western businesses still underestimate the size of this problem. They are in for a big shock...