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Latest stories from China Journal 


06 Nov 09 visit Looking for iPhone Users in Beijing See a video of The Wall Street Journal's Loretta Chao on a hunt for iPhone users around Beijing after China Unicom said it had as few as 5,000 users of the Apple phone that just officially launched in China.
06 Nov 09 visit BYD’s Wang: Upward Mobility in China Chinese auto and battery tycoon Wang Chuanfu, who was named China’s richest individual this week by Forbes magazine, grew up anything but wealthy in Anhui province and had lost both his parents to illness by the time he was a teenager.
06 Nov 09 visit Bird’s Nest: A ‘Financial Albatross’ Beijing's iconic Bird's Nest stadium may have attracted a crowd of 91,000 for the Olympic opening ceremony, but the stadium's director is having a hard time trying to recreate the enthusiasm. A story by state-run newspaper China Daily this week called the...
06 Nov 09 visit Xinhua Sends In Back-Up Last week, China Real Time Report wrote about a story published by Economic Information Daily, the first economic publication to be founded under the sprawling Xinhua umbrella after China’s economic reforms that began in 1978.
05 Nov 09 visit Cnooc Dips Toes Into American Waters It's official: the U.S. is no longer off limits for Chinese oil companies.
05 Nov 09 visit So Many Trade Disputes, So Little Time So Many Trade Disputes, So Little Time With so many trade disputes flaring up these days, it seems China doesn’t have time to issue an in-depth response to every one. At least that’s the impression conveyed by China’s “response” today to an esc...
05 Nov 09 visit Lenovo’s China Challenge Lenovo is back in the black, recording its first net profit for three quarters in the three months to September. Its benefiting from a refocus this year on its domestic market in China - though with margins getting squeezed, that's not the solution to...
05 Nov 09 visit Shanghai Salary Raises Slow Employees in China's richest city, Shanghai, saw salaries stagnate this year – at least compared with what they have grown used to.
05 Nov 09 visit Bond, Swap Curves Foretell Rate Hikes Even as Beijing remains reluctant to abandon the loose monetary policy that has propelled China's swift economic recovery, China's fixed-income market sees two interest-rate hikes by the central bank in the coming year.
05 Nov 09 visit China’s Graduates: An Ant’s Life What do Chinese college graduates have in common with ants? The recent book "Ant Tribes,", about the life of some young people who flock to Beijing after leaving university, depicts the graduates, like ants, as smart but insignificant as individuals,...
05 Nov 09 visit Cold Shoulder From CSRC China’s stock regulator, China Securities Regulatory Commission, Wednesday released a new set of rules banning departing employees from going straight to new jobs at financial firms under the regulator’s supervision. Senior officials have to wait...
05 Nov 09 visit Stanley Lubman: A Letter to Obama Stanley Lubman, a long-time specialist on Chinese law, writes a letter to President Obama on the eve of his visit to China this month.
05 Nov 09 visit ChiNext Fills Financing Hole It's easy to mock Chinext, the volatile new market for SMEs launched in China last week. But by providing a funding source for China's small companies, it's playing a role China's banks have been all too reluctant to perform, says Heard on the Street's...
04 Nov 09 visit Poll: Stimulus Impact On China’s Growth Is Fading The surge in China’s growth will continue to ease over the coming year as the initial impact of the massive government stimulus plan fades, a new poll of economists by The Wall Street Journal shows. The pace of expansion in China’s gross domestic pro...
04 Nov 09 visit The Argument for Less Yuan Rigidity From China's perspective, there is no perfect time to let its currency appreciate -- and policy paralysis on that front could constrain Beijing's ability to raise interest rates to cool off surging bank lending.
04 Nov 09 visit Obama’s Brother Speaks (And Writes) Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, Barack Obama’s younger half-brother, has finally broken his media silence, just weeks before the U.S. president’s first visit to China. Ndesandjo, who has lived in the south China city of Shenzhen since 2002, appeare...
04 Nov 09 visit China-Taiwan Trade Round Postponed Over the past 18 months, China and Taiwan have quickly reached agreements on various issues, and created high expectations for peaceful cross-Strait relations. So when Beijing earlier this week unilaterally postponed the fourth round of the unofficial...
04 Nov 09 visit Disney Plans Get a Cold Reception Online Walt Disney Co. won’t make Shanghai the happiest place in the world. That’s the early reaction from a surprising number of netizens, or Chinese Internet users, to confirmation early Wednesday that plans for Shanghai Disneyland have the green ligh...
04 Nov 09 visit Recipes from China’s Alternative Swine Flu Frontlines Against a backdrop of rising anxiety over the spread of the H1N1 virus, Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) offers some alternative measures for prevention of the flu.
04 Nov 09 visit Cisco Hits the Gas With Another Deal Cisco Systems announced plans to buy the set-top box business of China’s DVN, continuing its recent buying binge
03 Nov 09 visit World of Online-Game-Regulation Warcraft The turf battle between two Chinese bureaucracies appears to be escalating, with NetEase and the World of Warcraft game still at the center.
03 Nov 09 visit China Fund Tied To Angola and Guinea Owns Wall Street Real Estate China International Fund, the little-known Hong Kong-registered company whose $7 billion minerals-and-infrastructure deal with Guinea last month grabbed headlines, has drawn scrutiny for its connections with a Chinese government-owned entity. But the Hong...
03 Nov 09 visit Only 5,000 iPhones Sold So Far In China? China Unicom seemed to give the world its first peak at some numbers on how the iPhone’s been selling in China. But it’s not exactly clear what we saw.
03 Nov 09 visit ‘Rape on a Whim’? New Catchphrase Raises Ire You might have heard ironic uses of the Chinese phrases “getting soy sauce,” “doing push-ups,” and “playing hidden cat,"but the latest catchphrase to catch fire among China’s Internet users just sounds wrong from the get-go: “Temporary...
03 Nov 09 visit Chongqing Godmother They called her Chongqing’s "godmother of the underworld," according to Xinhua. But on Tuesday, Xie Caiping’s alleged criminal reign formally ended, as she was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
03 Nov 09 visit Punching for Peace The Japanese government has a new plan for improving relations with China: wrestling, kicking and punching. Tokyo said Tuesday it intends to grant about $96,400 to upgrade facilities in the eastern city of Nanjing that train in the martial arts,...
03 Nov 09 visit Bloggers Put China’s Pollution on the Map A Chinese blogger said his effort to produce a big online China pollution map is attracting public enthusiasm, although the sensitive nature of the issue makes its fate uncertain.
03 Nov 09 visit Is Geely Capable of Managing Volvo? The world isn’t kind to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. Ltd. when it comes to assessing the Hangzhou-based auto upstart’s ability to acquire and manage Ford Motor Co.’s Volvo unit.
03 Nov 09 visit Goldman’s BRICs Built On C(hina) Jim O’Neill, global chief economist for Goldman Sachs, is now famous – or maybe infamous – for creating the acronym BRIC.
03 Nov 09 visit A Chinese Oil Giant Learns Lessons From Abroad China National Offshore Oil Corp. is learning from the past.
03 Nov 09 visit Not So Imminent: Domain Names in Chinese Icann will allow Web addresses to be expressed in Chinese characters, starting with government domains, but the change is unlikely to have any big immediate impact on the landscape of the Chinese Internet, where some 338 million users have long been used...
02 Nov 09 visit Legislative Affairs: News from the NPC A brief update on what came out of the bimonthly meeting of China’s top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which wrapped up this past weekend
02 Nov 09 visit Cracks in the Banks’ Facades Keeping up appearances is about to get harder for China's banks and the sector's regulator, says Heard on the Street. Third quarter profits at the top four listed banks rose on year, despite a sharp narrowing of net interest margins; so profits are...
02 Nov 09 visit Will China Miss Out On Electric Car Investment? So far it’s unclear whether China’s central government is ready to roll out consumer incentives to spur sales of electric cars.
02 Nov 09 visit Beijing Snow, Man Made in China Beijing residents of the Chinese capital woke up to a surprisingly heavy snowfall Sunday morning, thanks to efforts of the Beijing Weather Modification Office
02 Nov 09 visit iPhone Arrives in China, But Where Is Pleco? For students of the Chinese language, there is one electronic dictionary application that seems to stands in a class of its own, made by a small New York-based software company called Pleco. Certain language learners (myself included) have been known to...
02 Nov 09 visit China Braces for Rapid Spread of H1N1 Just as the weather in Beijing has taken a steep turn below freezing, reported H1N1 cases are skyrocketing, and health officials are bracing for more.
30 Oct 09 visit Zhang Yimou Takes On Coen Brothers Film Chinese director Zhang Yimou, lately busy directing operatic spectacles in Beijing, is returning to film with a curious choice: a remake of Blood Simple, the 1984 noir-inspired Coen brothers film.
30 Oct 09 visit Chant in Beijing: ‘iPhone! iPhone!’ China Unicom may have gotten a bad rap for its lackluster iPhone announcement this week, but its Beijing launch upstaged the event at the Apple store.
30 Oct 09 visit Chinese Military (Singer) Invades Taiwan For decades, China's People’s Liberation Army has threatened Taiwan with possible military invasion. Now it's sending over one commando: a propaganda singer.
30 Oct 09 visit Crash Testing Geely’s Volvo Bid Will the Chinese be able to close a deal with Volvo? The view from the peanut gallery of politicians, analysts and auto industry bloggers is that Geely Holding Group’s $2 billion bid for Volvo has to navigate many potholes
30 Oct 09 visit Doping Scandal at China’s National Games China’s 11th National Chinese Games may have ended this week, but the scandals live on after at least three athletes tested positive for banned substances and as judges were accused of having picked the winners beforehand.
30 Oct 09 visit China iPhone: The Cost Equation Tonight we get a first glimpse of whether Chinese cell phone users bite when the iPhone (finally) officially goes on sale here.
30 Oct 09 visit New Market, Old Trend at ChiNext An investor in China might feel either ecstatic or worried when seeing all of the 28 companies trading on ChiNext, the country's new Nasdaq-style stock market, more than double on their first trading day.
30 Oct 09 visit Lone Star, Meet Red Star: China’s $1.5 Billion Wind-Power Deal in Texas Another day, another big Chinese energy-related investment. This time it’s a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas, paid for by Chinese banks and to be supplied with Chinese-made wind turbines.
30 Oct 09 visit Xinhua, the Voice of Insurgence? Outside China, the state-run Xinhua news agency is often cast as the wooden mouthpiece of the state, seen by a Western audience to do little more than parrot the official line. But in fits and starts, something new might be stirring at Xinhua,...
29 Oct 09 visit Transparency Stirs Up a Cloud in Guangzhou A pioneering effort at transparency by the Guangzhou city government has led to a burst of public comment and criticism about official spending priorities.
29 Oct 09 visit Public Pajamas Persist in Shanghai Government memo to pajama-wearing Shanghainese, whether shopping, gossiping, playing mahjong or walking dogs in their sleepwear: Get dressed.
29 Oct 09 visit Replacing the U.S. Consumer: Is China Up To The Job? China's rapid growth is leading the recovery in the Asian and world economies, the International Monetary Fund says in its latest regional economic outlook. The fund now forecasts China will grow an outsize 8.5% in 2009 and 9% in 2010, driven by strong...
29 Oct 09 visit The French Connection’s China Connection Pierre Falcone had recently joined the long parade of those seeking to ride China’s overseas investment wave in Africa and elsewhere.

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