Rumors continue to circulate in new energy circles in China as to the extent to which the central government will approve and then roll out a policy to breathe life into a nascent electric vehicle (EV) industry. At the beginning of July 2011 the industry awaited publication of “The Plan for Saving Energy and Developing [...]
A Slice of the Pie A deal announced in Beijing on July 5, 2011 between Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Baidu, the Chinese online search engine, sees Microsoft supporting Baidu in Baidu’s offering refined search results in English language. Microsoft will be licensing to Baidu the technology underpinning its own BING search engine, which still holds [...]
Lights Off for Western Manufacturers in China Western companies in the Yangtze River Delta recently began receiving notices from local power bureaus that their factories would suffer power outages through the summer. The first half of 2011 was marked by Chinese suppliers throughout the country suffering power cuts. Western companies, it seems, are not immune [...]
Like the ending of a dramatic Hollywood movie, just weeks after China’s central government had declared 2011 as the year China would experience its worst drought in 200 years[1], the heavens opened and poured a deluge of torrential rain on the country in June, forcing nearly 80,000 people to be evacuated from their homes in [...]
China’s Development is Already Reaching Its Limits in Some Parts of the Country. Wang Xiushun has a pipe dream. He intends to transport sea water from the Bohai Sea on China’s east coast through a pipeline to Inner Mongolia, as a pilot project, then on to Xinjiang, in the northwest. The Inner Mongolia stage of [...]
Investment % Change Year-on-Year The new decade began tragically in China with the collapse of a newly constructed overpass to the new Kunming international airport, in Yunnan Province. The accident killed seven workers and injured 34. The central government has slated Kunming as a logistics entrepot between China and Southeast Asia, and between China’s [...]
The global financial downturn of 2008-2009 forced companies with projects in China to, as one expat General Manager (GM) put it to TrendsAsia, “reduce costs and increase revenues.” What this meant for a lot of businesses in China was laying off staff and having those remaining on board work longer hours to cover the resource [...]