China this week

President Jacques Chirac of France ended his state trip to China this week after spending five days in the country visiting the capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu, as well as Beijing and Shanghai. Chirac's trip was viewed as highly successful among the European business world as his country's firms racked up deals worth billion of euros.

Chirac traveled in the country with a following of 52 French business executives pushing their products and industrial and technological expertise. In all, the visit ended with agreements for more than US$4 billion in industrial orders, a number that has grabbed the attention of Europe's other major economies that have been doing business in China and for the most part outpacing France's presence in the country. This trip though, has heightened other recent advances by French businesses in China, and has enabled the country to catch up with some of its fellow European Union members in their involvement in the Chinese market.

French firms Alstom and Total Oil Co. finalized the largest of the many deals made during Chirac's visit to China. ...more

The world's third largest buy-out firm announced last week that it is planning to significantly increase its presence in the Chinese mainland. To date, the group has invested US$150 million in China, but plans to increase this to US$1 billion in the next year in order to take advantage of the growing number of private start ups seeking capital as well as state owned assets that the government is expected to divest in the near future.

The firm, with more than US$18 billion managed worldwide, made the announcement as part of an overall plan that will see its Asian investments doubled to about US$2.2 billion next year and will look to maintain investments in China at about 60 percent of total Asian investments.

The group has up until now, limited its China investments to private firms with high-growth potential. It has invested in such companies as online travel booking agency, Ctrip International, and the department store chain, Pacific China Holding Ltd. Its initial US$8 million dollar investment to purchase a 32 percent stake in the former, made a 13-fold return after Ctrip ...more

As the threat of Chinese textiles flooding the world markets when the textile quota system is abandoned on January, 1 of next year gets closer and closer, the US textile industry is stepping up its fight to protect its domestic industry. A coalition of textile manufactures and the unions representing textile workers petitioned the Bush Administration this week to limit textile imports coming from China next year, the first year where Chinese textile manufacturers would be unconstrained by world quotas. And the coalition has promised that there will be more petitions to come in the weeks leading up to November's presidential election.

In the face of a tight election, the Bush administration has agreed to consider the first petition that was filed by the coalition on October 8 which covers such items as cotton trousers. Although Bush is expected to win such key textile states as North Carolina and South Carolina, the decision made by the administration could possibly have some effect in these states as it will need to make a decision on whether or not to take steps that will ...more

Yao Ming's Houston Rockets arrived in the Chinese basketball star's hometown on Tuesday as the team prepares for a pair of exhibition games on the mainland against the Sacramento Kings. The two games in Shanghai and Beijing will be the first time an NBA team has played in China since the Washington Bullets played an exhibition game against the Chinese national team in 1979.

The anticipation running up to Yao's homecoming and the NBA events to be held has been tremendous as the NBA's popularity in the country of 1.3 billion people has grown to incredible levels, particularly as Chinese fans have had the opportunity to watch a national hero in Yao Ming play for the Houston Rockets. The NBA states that the league had one billion viewers on the mainland last season and therefore it unsurprisingly sees China as an important and profitable market. As the unofficial ambassador to China for the NBA, Yao Ming's role in promoting the NBA and the products of the companies that he endorses will therefore make this trip which he calls "a business trip", a busy one.

"This trip home is most ...more

General Motors announced early this week that it planned to build its first hybrid bus in China next year to try to provide the country with a cleaner and more fuel efficient means of ground transportation. GM will start off by building only one hybrid bus with its Chinese partner, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. (SAIC), while it tries to spur interest among the Shanghai and other city governments to determine if mass production is commercially viable.

The number of vehicles on China's street has been rising dramatically over recent years and as the idea, at least in China's largest cities, of every household owning there own car becomes less and less of a far fetched idea the streets will become increasingly crowded and the air increasingly polluted. With the nation's number one killer already being respiratory disease, the damage that too many dirty cars on the road will inflict on the environment, is a problem the government will need to deal with in the near future.

The government is also extremely concerned with the nation's growing demand for imported oil in order to ...more