141 « Week In China

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WiC 141 (Mar 9, 2012)

Economy, Talking Point A new economic target stimulates debate at this year’s NPC

Shen Jilan hit the headlines again at this year’s National People’s Congress (NPC). As WiC pointed out in issue 98, she got a lot of media ...

Setting standards

Telecoms China Mobile plans 4G domination

China has long been the world’s biggest mobile market. Now it has claimed a new title: the first country in the world to reach one billion mobile ...

The secret of my success

Chinese Character Zhu Gongshan’s GCL-Poly manages to unite private and state ownership

Austin Powers billed himself as an “international man of mystery”. He was, of course, a fictional character created for the big screen by Mike ...

The big spenders

China Consumer Taobao releases data on online shopping habits

According to Taobao, Putian, a small fishing town in Fujian province is China’s breast-enhancement capital. The country’s biggest online shopping ...

Government car-tel

Auto Industry A new procurement list for official vehicles

For many years, a Red Flag limousine was the height of communist chic. These bulky, but surprisingly elegant, cars are still rolled out at important ...

Energy & Resources Diluted petrol is choking up the engines of China’s cars

Up until a few years ago, melamine was known primarily for its use in industry, as a material used to produce hard-wearing plastics. In 2008, it became ...

Brush Strokes The rich and powerful

Chinese netizens were shocked last week to read that the richest 70 members of their legislature, the National People’s Congress, were extremely ...

Air of Opportunity

China Consumer Air purifiers are big business

Since the beginning of this year, Beijing – caving to public pressure – has started publishing hourly air pollution readings (including the highly ...

It all went sour

Who’s Hu Li Chuntu

Li Chuntu was born in 1961 to a farming family in Linxiang, Hunan province. Despite training to become a teacher, his first job was in a state-owned ...

Sport No meat, we’re Olympians

What do Western celebrities and Chinese pig farmers have in common? On the face of it, not much, but one thing potentially connects them is the use ...

Till death two us part

Society The death of an actress highlights the problem of domestic violence

Love, deceit, and murder: the tale of Bai Jing, China’s best-known kung-fu actress seems to have all the elements that would spawn a successful ...

Softer messages

Society Old posters to be taken down

Kill all your family if you don’t follow the rule” or “If one person has an excess birth the whole village will undergo tubal ligation [i.e. ...

What’s in a name

China Consumer The thorny issue of translating a brand into Chinese

The importance of names goes back a long way in China. More than 2,500 years ago Confucius wrote: “If names be not correct, language is not in ...

Planet China In the BBC documentary series Frozen Planet, viewers watch as a…

In the BBC documentary series Frozen Planet, viewers watch as a woolly bear caterpillar reacts to a drop in the Arctic temperature. It first freezes, ...

Changing the bowl

And Finally No more jobs for life for civil servants

China’s 10 million strong civil service is often viewed as the last vestige of China’s ‘iron rice bowl’ culture. If an applicant passes the ...