51 Archives | Week In China

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WiC 51 (May 5, 2010)

Standards are slipping

Economy, Talking Point Has China started a campaign to freeze out foreign businesses?

Call it customer inflation. Carl Crow, the American owner of China’s first foreign advertising agency, is best known for his 1937 bestseller 400 ...

China’s Achilles heel

Economy Beijing is worried that local governments could create $439 billion of…

Last June a 13 storey building in Shanghai caused a sensation. That’s because rather than standing vertical, it ended up horizontally on its side. ...

The $6.1 billion question

Banking & Finance Analysts think HSBC will invest in Bank of Communications rights issue

Michael Geoghegan only moved to Hong Kong in January, but based on his frequent references to the Chinese economy at this week’s annual results, it ...

Watch out Rolex…

China Consumer Chinese watchmaker goes upmarket

Mao Zedong wore one; Deng Xiaoping too. Shanghai Watch, China’s homegrown watchmaker, was for decades a status symbol among China’s revolutionary ...

China’s new money man

Rise of the RMB Zhu Min’s IMF posting may herald a new world order

No one can exactly say when America’s financial hegemony began in the twentieth century, but for historians a symbolic, and convenient, date is ...

Rail & Infrastructure The stock market will partially fund China’s most high-profile railway line

It became known as “Railway Mania”, a period in the UK during the 1840s, when irrational exuberance created one of history’s most notorious stock ...

Road to nowhere

China Ink General Motors announced last week that it had dropped efforts to…

Why did the deal fall through? It was the timing – according to Tengzhong – which has complained that it couldn’t get ...

Who’s Hu The Glorious entrepreneur

Born in Jiangsu province in 1972, Zhang Zhirong moved to Shanghai when he was three years-old. He started his own business at the age of 19, having ...

Rail & Infrastructure Exports are recovering, but China’s ports are not as busy as…

China started the year by passing another economic milestone – in January it overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter. The next ...

Energy & Resources Why life’s a breeze in Zhangbei

Zhangbei County is a poor windswept collection of villages high on a plateau in Northwest Hebei province. Its ancient grassland pastures were once home ...

Fast Food Beijing's hippest eatery

Perhaps the hippest eatery in Beijing, Capital M has a lot going for it. The restaurant is housed in a traditional building at the entrance to Qianmen ...

Society China’s Jeffersonian moment?

Mao’s ‘planned’ economy wasn’t just about designating how much steel to make, or how many bushels of wheat to harvest. In a country as populous ...

Breaking the ice

Sport China’s victors in Vancouver

When Shi Dingwei watched coverage of the Winter Olympics on television, he had more than a passing interest in the shapes of the snowboards. That’s ...

Entertainment How a South Korean entertainer provoked a cultural controversy

China’s netizens are on the rampage again. But surprisingly, this time the object of their vitriol is not Zhang Ziyi but Korean singer-actress Jang ...

Planet China Tennis has never been more popular in China – thanks to…

Tennis has never been more popular in China – thanks to Zheng Jie and Li Na, who recently made it to the ladies semis of the Australian Open. But not ...

Empire state of mind

Cartoons Empire state of mind

Wars of words and trade battles have soured Sino-American relations in recent weeks (see WiC47 and 49). But New York’s iconic Empire State Building ...

Victorian values

And Finally Maoren’s not so secretive strategy to emulate the US lingerie giant

Move over, Victoria’s Secret. Maoren wants to be China’s largest lingerie retailer. The mainland undergarment maker, which means “Cat ...