Warning of local governments’ high exposure to bad debts, the credit agency Fitch recently downgraded China’s long-term local-currency rating from AA– to A+. Officials should take note: the downgrade underlines how closely international markets...
A surprise attack by a new strain of the bird flu virus has forced Chinese authorities into the trenches for a two-pronged defense against unseen enemies.
The primary threat is the deadly virus that scientists identified as a new strain of...
Internet cafés covered by the city of Wuhan’s Internet Café Association agreed to set minimum prices for online access nearly a decade ago. And more than one hundred coking coal company-members of the Coke Association of Shanxi Province each...
Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s free messaging service, WeChat, has seen its popularity grow among both individual users and businesses, even amid a dispute with the Big Three telecom operators [China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom].
...
After receiving his delayed wages, thirty-year-old Wang Jie decided to change professions.
On March 7, he pressed a fingerprint onto a receipt that read: “Today I have received settlement of the 12,000 yuan in wages owed to me by Mr. Shao...
When three household brand names in China announced they would cooperate to form a company offering insurance services on the Internet, excitement naturally was the order of the day.
Last year, Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, and Ping An...
Written into the script for China’s once-in-a-decade leadership shuffle, confirmed at the recently concluded National People’s Congress, are macroeconomic policies for the new government that plot a course for future growth.
The policy...
After months of speculation, the reorganization of the State Council has finally been approved by the National People’s Congress.
Under the shake-up, China’s rail business will no longer be managed by the regulator. Three national agencies...
A skin cream customer pays an extra fee and, voilà, instantly becomes a company representative with the right to sell cream and other products, as well as recruit more dealers.
Eventually, she persuades other women to buy the cream and...
Finally, it seems the railways ministry may soon be restructured as part of a wider exercise by the government to streamline its ministries. Putting railway reform on the agenda of this year’s meetings of the National People’s Congress and the...
Imagine a luxury goods shopper so confident and flush with cash that one day he walks into a Shanghai handbag shop, flashes 300,000 yuan, and waltzes out with almost every bag in stock.
That’s what happened last year at a Prada store where...
Flames of a public relations disaster were licking at the heels of a private equity firm when China’s most notorious Internet-scrubbing company rode to the rescue.
Saving the Shenzhen-based firm’s image was not cheap, and it took more than...
Engineers, inventors, and industrial futurists in China are setting sights on a new technological frontier as three-dimensional printing slowly revolutionizes manufacturing.
A Beijing University research team, for example, has been working...
The cameras could be rolling soon for long-anticipated stock listings by the nation’s largest movie producer and foreign flick importer China Film Group, as well as a smaller but ambitious rival, Shanghai Film Group.
The state-owned...
Wiretapping, email hacking, cell phone tracking, and secret videotaping are just a few of the cloak-and-dagger techniques long employed by police in the course of criminal investigations in China.
But now, for the first time, new rules say...
Now is the right time for China to implement its global outreach strategy.
While seizing this opportunity, we should also guard against risk first, with a sense of calmness. This means adhering to business decisions and sound operations,...
The Hong Kong branch of China Development Bank (CDB) has been ordered by its Beijing headquarters to cancel loans that would have been used to finance an acquisition involving the nation’s second-largest insurer, a bank source said.
The...
The notorious system that lets police send detainees to labor camps without trial will be halted this year, said Meng Jianzhu, secretary of the Central Politics and Law Commission, at a conference on January 7.
Meng said the Communist...
Legal experts have called on the government to follow through with hints at abolishing the country’s notorious system of labor camps.
On January 7, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu said at a top conference that the system would “cease to be...
I’m often asked whether it’s more difficult for a Chinese company to survive now than it was in the 1980s, when I started my business. The two eras are indeed different. Many entrepreneurs with whom I shared the stage at awards ceremonies have...
The tumor was growing, and the family of cancer patient Xia Jianqing was growing desperate.
Doctors at a military hospital in Beijing had warned Xia’s family that he would die without the blood needed for a lifesaving operation. But the...
Nestled between mountains and a winding river in a scenic corner of Shanxi province is Zhongyang County, the home of an exquisite Confucian temple built during the Ming dynasty.
The colorful wooden temple graced this idyllic valley for...
A deathbed plea brought an unexpected guest to Li Zhuang’s home one day last March, setting in motion a legal process that soon may clear the Beijing lawyer’s name, throw out a number of convictions, and close a sordid chapter of the Bo Xilai...
Every day, about a dozen mobile phone wholesalers field orders and manufacturer offers from offices inside a nondescript, five-story building on Luthuli Avenue in downtown Nairobi.
The building doesn’t look like a hub for global commerce,...
A crowd of angry investors packed a Shanghai branch of Huaxia Bank on December 3 after they heard that the money wasn’t there for the first of four repayments for a 119 million-yuan wealth management plan. They demanded their money back from...
High-profile talk emphasizing environmental action at the Communist Party’s 18th national congress attracted a lot of attention. News from the November proceedings spurred industry demands for more information and pushed stock prices...
A “tomb-flattening policy” in Henan province has sparked intense controversy, with millions of tombs reportedly destroyed by local authorities in a quest to turn graveyards into farmland.
The policy can be seen as a historical extension of...
Calls for government officials to disclose personal and family assets are growing louder in China, mainly in reaction to the rising number of corruption cases affecting officialdom.
And some officials are listening. A local Communist Party...
Over the past twenty years, economist Zhang Zhuoyuan has witnessed and actively participated in building the nation’s economic policy.
He participated in the drafting of reports at each of the Communist Party’s three previous national...
Is China’s wealth management business a booming profit volcano for investors, or just another smoke-and-mirrors pyramid scheme?
It’s a question dividing the nation’s bankers and banking regulators as investors of all kinds pour cash into...
The crestfallen former chairman of fast-food restaurant giant Kungfu Catering Management Co. Ltd. is awaiting a verdict after a trial on corporate embezzlement charges apparently instigated by his former business partner’s wife.
If Cai...
Investing like an angel now costs no more than an average duck dinner in Beijing.
The force driving China’s growing ranks of small-scale angel investors are crowdfunding websites, which offer individuals access to business financing pools...
No matter how you look at it, the disciplinary process surrounding the case of Bo Xilai will have historic implications.
Details of the crimes committed by Bo, his wife, Bogu Kailai, and his former right-hand man, Wang Lijun, reflect a...
The Communist Party has expelled Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing, who’s been embroiled in corruption allegations since early this year.
The Politburo made the decision on September 28, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Bo...
There is growing public skepticism about the veracity of a government report detailing a demolition-related incident in Panjin, Liaoning province, during which a police officer killed a villager for allegedly threatening his life.
...
A reality-talent TV songfest popular in more than forty countries around the world has become an instant hit in China, underpinning enthusiasm for an experimental business model linked to media sector reform.
The Voice of China’s...
On the afternoon of September 16, rows of policemen and security personnel in black T-shirts lined Beijing’s Liangmaqiao Road near the Japanese embassy during protests over the Diaoyu Islands controversy. Security guards were visible everywhere,...
Putting the right spin on one’s words is a science, and civil servants with fiduciary responsibility have to master this subject. It helps to shift blame to someone else; a child, a spouse, or a convenient foreigner will do.
Several weeks...
SHENYANG—Morning breezes turn chilly in late August, signaling fall’s approach in the Tiexi factory district.
For the unemployed men and women standing on sidewalks between a labor bureau office and a park every day at 6 a.m., the change...
They’re still hung over from a 4 trillion yuan spending spree initiated by the central government nearly four years ago, but local governments across China are pressing ahead anyway with huge new investment plans.
In late August, for...
Thirty-six people died recently on a Shaanxi province highway when a double-decker bus slammed into a fuel tanker.
The crash underscored ongoing demands for beefing up traffic law enforcement and improving the design of these often-crowded...
