Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Monday, November 21, 2011

EconomicsBrazil: China Construction Bank: Buys up a little bank in Brazil

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Financial Times (November21,2k)
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November 20, 2011 10:03 pm

Chinese lender aims to secure 


Brazil foothold


China Construction Bank is in talks to buy a bank in Brazil
amid plans to open a subsidiary in Latin America’s
biggest economy, according to officials and people
familiar with the matter.
The move comes as the leading Chinese banks are
moving into Latin America to service rising trade 
with the region and to encourage South American
exporters to begin trading in China’s currency, the
renminbi, rather than the dollar.

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John Weinshank,
senior vice-president
at CCB’s New York
branch, told a
banking conference
in Miami that the
executive board of
the world’s second-
largest lender by
market value had
approved a proposal
to open a subsidiary
in Brazil.
“We are following
our customers,” Mr
Weinshank told the
annual conference of
Felaban, the Latin American banking federation,
adding that the proposal still needed the approval
of regulators in both countries.
Separately, a person in São Paulo familiar with the
matter said CCB had opened talks with the owners
of a small Brazilian bank over a potential acquisition
of the institution.
The person declined to name the target, but said
entry into Brazil through an acquisition would
provide CCB with the necessary licences and
permits more easily than starting from scratch.
China overtook the US to become Brazil’s largest
trading partner in 2009 and its biggest foreign
investor last year as companies ranging from car
manufacturers to engineering firms are looking to
set up in the Latin American economy.
Chen Jin, head of international financial
institutions for Industrial and Commercial
Bank of China in Beijing, told the Felaban
conference that the group is establishing
branches in Brazil and Peru as it seeks to
help its clients with their businesses in
Latin America.
ICBC has also bought 80 per cent of
Standard Bank in Argentina, a deal that
is awaiting shareholder approval, she
said.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

China-USA: Diplomacy: Wen Jiabao and Obama — will they give China total claim on the South China seas?

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BBC News (Nov19,2k11)
BBC materials reposted here by Politicarp
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US President Barack Obama (R) meets with China's Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, 19 November 2011

China 'constructive' on 

South China Sea rows, says US


US officials have praised China's attitude on South China Sea territorial disputes after talks between Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and President Barack Obama.


Related Stories

The two men met on the sidelines of an East Asia summit in Indonesia.
A senior US official described China's response as "constructive".
The meeting came after spats between Beijing and Washington over trade, currency and territorial rights in the South China Sea.
The sea holds potentially vast reserves of oil and gas, and is an important shipping route.
China lays claim to the whole of the sea, while other South East Asian nations claim parts of it.
The Philippines had asked the US to step in to help solve the row, but Asean secretary general Surin Pitsuwan said that Asean and China could resolve the issue peacefully by themselves.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

China: Cyber Attacks: USA 'grills' re a 'hacked political site' published by Change.com

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InfoWeek (June15,2k11)
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-- InfoWeek materials re-posted here by Owlb


U.S. Grills China 


about Cyber Attacks



Chinese IP addresses have been implicated in numerous, recent distributed denial of service attacks, which top State Department officials see as a human rights issue. 







(click image for larger view)
Slideshow: Inside DHS' Classified Cyber-Coordination Headquarters
In another sign that the United States government is concerned with the threat of cyber attacks originating from China, a top State Department official recently raised the case of a hacked U.S. political site directly with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to a letter released by the political group Change.org.
The site, which offers tools for online political campaigns, began to be victimized by distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks in mid April, soon after it carried a petition for China to release Chinese artist Ai Weiwi, who helped design the centerpiece of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium, and who was imprisoned earlier this year in the midst of a Chinese crackdown on political dissent.

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The attacks raised the ire of congressional leadership, as both House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., condemned the attacks and called on the State Department to take action and bring the hackers to justice.
In response, the State Department not only condemned DDOS attacks, like the one Change.org experienced, that are "designed to stifle free speech on the net," but also raised the issue directly with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in late April, according to a letter from the State Department to Rep. DeLauro that was released by Change.org. The letter indicates that deputy assistant secretary of state Dan Baker raised the issue of the attack with the Chinese government during a dialogue on human rights.




2010 Threats: Why they happened and the tools available to thwart them.
Take a quick look back to prepare for future threats.
"The Department will continue to press China on the importance of an open and unrestricted Internet," says the letter, written by acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs Joseph Macmanus. "As part of the State Department's Internet freedom initiative, we support efforts to protect groups and individuals from such attacks."
The attack is only one of a number of recent attacks said to originate from China. Google in late Mayannounced that hundreds of its Gmail users, including senior U.S. officials, had been the targets of a spear-phishing campaign that originated in China. A February attack on the G-20 was similarly traced to Chinese IP addresses, and China has also been reportedly eyed in recent attacks on the International Monetary Fund. Leaked State Department cables indicate that the Chinese have been attacking U.S. government agencies and companies since at least 2002.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

EconomicsUSA: Outsourcing loses luster to American companies -- costs too much!


Analysis: 

Will Costs Drive Firms Home?




For years, the U.S. manufacturing sector seems to have been sliding into the Slough of Despond.
Companies have been eagerly outsourcing to lower-cost venues such as China, India and Mexico. And with the production go jobs. Occasionally a company might bring some manufacturing back to the U.S. But it's a trickle, and the exceptions seem to prove the rule.General ElectricCaterpillar, a handful of others—the list is short.
Now, that may be about to change.
A combination of forces—rapidly rising labor rates abroad, loftier materials and shipping costs, deep-discount tax incentives from U.S. states—are changing some of the calculations by which companies decide to move production abroad, or even keep what's there now.
Read more ... click on the time-stamp just below ...

Saturday, December 18, 2010

EconomicsUSA: Construction; Cost of materials in usa rises due to Building Boom in other countries

I found this nooz item in the email nerwsletter of the Associatied General Contractors: of America [Dec17,2k10]  -- Building boom in other countries pushes up materials cost

 The cost of construction materials has increased by 4.8% over the past year and 0.5% in November alone, thanks to burgeoning demand in China and India, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. Prices for copper and brass have risen by 16%; diesel fuel has increased by 18%; and aluminum has grown by 14%. Such sharp cost increases can run construction companies out of business, AGC warns. Los Angeles Times / Money and Company blog (12/16)  
The market is hi-ly sensitive also to precious metals of the newer kind from China, under a new designation, but very important to importers into Ameroica from China of these precious materials [not comparable to 'blood diamonds' as far as i know], China where there's a relative abundance of the necessary mining operations.  For a brief period, China barred exports of these commodities to Anerica 


Telegraph [Aug1,2k10] 'hot political summer as China throttles rare metal supply and claims South China Sea', by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.


-- EconoMix

Thursday, November 25, 2010

New Zealamd Industry: Mining disaster: 2nd blasted blast seals fate of 29 miners

Associated Press via Yahoo! News by Joe Morgan and Ray Lilley (Nov24,2kt0):

 GREYMOUTH, New Zealand – Rescue teams were in full gear and ready to begin searching for 29 missing miners when toxic gas levels suddenly increased touching off an explosion that dashed all hopes of a rescue, a lost miner's brother and police said Thursday.


Prime Minister John Key declared the disaster a national tragedy, and across New Zealand on Thursday flags flew at half staff and many churches held services for people wanting to show respect for the miners.
Wednesday's massive explosion deep inside the mine on New Zealand's South Island came five days after the men were caught underground by a similar blast and only hours after rescuers reported their first progress in the rescue attempt.
A drilling team broke a narrow shaft through to the mine section believed to be holding the missing workers and two robots had crawled their way into the tunnel, providing the first view from inside the mine.
"She was all go," said Geoff Valli whose brother Keith, 62, perished in the mine. "There was going to be more than one or two (rescuers involved)" in the rescue bid.
"They explained just how close they were to going in. It was bloody scary. It could have been so much worse," he told National Radio.
After such close calls with large groups of miners working underground -- thinking of West Virginia, of Chile, of China, and now these deaths in New Zealand, a certain picture forms of an extremely dangerous industry worldw+d.  We thank God in the Mercy (as Charles Williams used to put it) sent the survivors worldw+de; but we turn quissical eyes to this counter-pattern -- too much endangerment of labourers!  What shoud be our global orientation in regard to such a condition of work in this heavy, dirty labour called "mining"?


-- EconoMix

Saturday, November 06, 2010

China: Food: Swiss ethicist examines moral accounts of China

World Council of Churches' Ecumenical News International email newsletter (Nov5,2k10):

China is making a contribution to human rights through its ability to feed its population of 1.3 billion people, says a Swiss ethicist while noting Beijing's violation of individual rights. "If China is able to promote peace to contribute to justice by helping developing its economy to feed 20 per cent of the world's population, then it's a major contribution to human rights," said Christoph Stückelberger, of the Geneva-based Globethics.net group, after delivering a lecture about global and contextual ethics on 28 October in Nairobi. "They [the Chinese] may violate individual rights, which is not justified. Of course they have to respect individual rights, but we should not forget they do something for fundamental rights," said Stückelberger, a part-time lecturer at the University of Basel.
The ethicist Christoph Stückelberger outshines his own topic by introducing a novel way of moral accounting, as apparently China's OK, if not A-OK, becawz it tries to feed its people.  Hmmm, are Tibetans (Buddhists), Uighurs (Moslems), and Mongols (concentrated in Korean-speaking Northwest of China) fed as equitably as are the dominant Han people often treated synonomously as "the Chinese"?  


But that question may be marginal to the main one on which Stuckelberger perhaps runs stuck:  what of the simultaneity of norm realization as a primary norm for the ent+rty of China's (and our countries's) moral-political goals?  Dr Bernard Zylstra (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) posed this question to all the activities of govts, esp in dealing with human beings within a given country's territory.  


Now, Dr Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, m+t want to wei in with the idea he proposes that animals (all sentient beings) shoud also be fed equally and obtain human r+ts equally (does this includes l+c, fleas, bedbugs, etc? Or is he more concerned with species that share more characteristis with humans, l+k gorillas, chimps, and apes?).  


But, of course, China doesn't even afford to all its human beings, Chinese but perhaps not even all the dominant Han ethnic majority, the full range of human r+ts, which must include in a premier place religious r+ts (I use the Oslo Forum18 definition here).  Among those human r+ts are those of conscience when it comes to religion and faith-association.  Read refWr+t's blog-entry yesterday on the Guong Yijun case.  It shows not only the bigotry of the China's Communist-atheist state which denied him and 200 others visas to attend Lausanne III in Capetown, South Africa, but also the bigotry of even the co-workers of Guong Yijun in the Transporation Ministry who squeezed him out of his job (and, thus, out of his paycheck and the food it woud by for his family).  Aspects of this have clearly to do with religion, the puppetry China practices regarding unofficial churches s+nd up to do the Communist-puppteers' bidding.  Thus, aspects of both faith and religious r+ts are communal, and are transgressed becawz China doesn't want a multi-communal society multi-religions society where people may associate in groups differently, faith groups, and also labour unions, for example.  China needs human r+ts, not just food.  Are the prisoners and those prisoners in work camps in China receiving a decent set of decent meals everyday, especially when nutrition coud be considered in exchange for their hard labour, Dr Christoph, sir?  


China m+t get more food onto tables of its ent+r populace if it gave societal and associational space to a w+d range of faith-communities, some of which may want to establish free-standing unions like a Christain Labour Association of China.  I won't here rehearse the list of cr+mz of China's govt and the Party that runs it, cr+mz against numerous citizens of various faiths that exist, despite all of the govt-party's efforts to cage them and erase them.


-- Politicarp

Thursday, November 04, 2010

China: Persecution: Guo Yijun Forced Out of Job, Churches Ordered to Stop Meeting


ChinaAid is a webs+t devoted to reporting and hopefully otherw+z assisting persons persecuted for their Christian faith in China. In a press release (Nov4,2k10), ChinaAid gives notice of the persecution of Guo Yijun who has been squeezed out of his job becawz he had been inv+ted to attend the Lausanne III congress in Capetown, South Africa. If memory serves, there were over 200 Chinese delegates inv+ted to the recent evangeliztion and justice congress, and who planned to make the trip. Sadly, the Chinese sisters and brothers seem to have no broad-scope strategy for justice in the different societal spheres, concentrating only on their churches and house assemblies. What is needed in China is a Christian Labour Association of China, that will spearhead the justice-cawz for r+ts of workers like Guo Yijun, and of all workers whatever their religion or lack thereof, to work without prejudice. And to form free-standing independent labour unions to defend their r+ts at work, in this case, to be Christian at work. The vigilante approach of Guo Yijun's co-workers in the Ministry of Transportation or some more recent employment, is something reprehensible. It evokes disgust and loathing. Whether the Transport job is the last employment or not the press release from ChinaAid does not make clear in this regard.  

-- EconoMix

Click the t+mstamp below to Read more ...


Tuesday, November 02, 2010

China: Urban Plan: Hong Kong will be home to huge new cultural district

Hong Kong plans for "colossal West Kowloon Cultural District," the building of which will cost $2.8 Billion, for which  work will start in 2k15 and continue for at least 5 years.  The plan is to create a world-class tourist city with capacity to accomodate all sorts of artists, as well as amenities for a sophisticated and wealthy international clientele.  Architect's Foster + Partners: "Three key ideas distilled from Hong Kong underpin the master plan -- the village, agriculatural field patterns, and urban streetscapes. Read more:  refWrite backpage ....                                                                                                                                                       

Friday, September 24, 2010

EconomyUSA: China: China's contribution to de-industrializing America via currency manipulataion



Why "Free" Trade Hurts America +  




The sell-off of American companies is greatly rewarded by those doing the selling. Given record low capital gains taxes and other incentives, CEO’s and shareholders of major companies stand to gain more from the one-time bonus of selling their company at a massive premium to a foreign purchaser than from continuing to run them on a salary basis.  Canada has had a long history of China grabbing up firms here on the stockmarket and outr+t buys in private deals.  This rapidizing trend holds here especially true in the extractive and raw materials industries. (I add that China has a huge spy operation here, especially industrial and financial spying. -- EconoMix)



You want to read more of this analysis by Thomas Heffner. Not being sure the "Read more" invite will work to get you beyond the teaser to the main article, I will give the link to it.

Also, not being sure Heffner's article, and the webs+t on which it appears, is payola-financed by the home-groan auto industry (as I suspect), I must point out that the only examples cited by the author are auto industry-related.  Still, I don't want to commit the genetic fallacy to the effect that because so funded the webs+t has nothing to offer, nothing common-gracious, as Herman Bavinck so carefully tawt us.  This applies to both sides of the polarization between Libertarians vs Anti-FreeTraders.  If you have a thawt on this matter, please do let me know.

To be fair to Heff, tho sparse in examples, his wordsmithing in the article does mention in passing other industries besides autos -- retailing (especially textiles, by the way my favorit voracious-capital investment house is recommending cotton stocks, commodities), electronics, freit and shipping, marketing, advertizing, law, and banking -- "all tied directly to American consumption of foreign goods."
On the other side of free trade, encouraging foreign manufacturers to produce in the US creates a big defeat for us. For example, Ohio and Indiana competed to get a new Honda auto factory. Indiana succeeded. They gave Honda an $81 million enticement gift and other intangibles. Honda said they would put up a $500 million facility to produce 200,000 cars per year. They did put up a facility, cost unknown. And 23,000 Americans applied for 2,000 jobs. Two thousand Americans are now turning out 200,000 Honda cars per year in Indiana which translates to one American supplying the labor to turn out 100 cars per year. One American can earn on average about $50,000 per year to turn out $2,000,000 worth of cars (Average car sale $20,000 x 100 cars = $2,000,000). This may be a simplification, but the American labor cost is approximately 3 percent. Almost nothing is made in that factory.
Some 2,000 of us benefit handsomely, while the remainder of our American 300+ million do not -- oh yeah, the consumers (and their families) who buy these 200,000 Hondas presumably have some satisfaction in their auto consumption.  Are the vehicles all green? -- that woud at least help the enviro some, yes?


Further, the prospect looms of China making green cars for export to the USA, reaping huge rewards, employing a workforce under the whip of the Communist "union," underselling American auto products and even underselling Honda's USA-assembled cars.

-- EconoMix