Full Contents - April 2005

New China, new world
We don't need to take over the world ... China will join the whole world and we will party together.

-Beijing bar owner Henry Li

Enforcing the rules
Despite economic pressures to turn a blind eye, China's regulators have started putting their best foot down

A romp
China's year-to-date $11.1bn trade surplus, a 39% gain over last year, was helped by a surge in its apparel and textiles exports, spurred by the end of the global quota regime.
BBC brings its hot seat to Shanghai
BBC-TV brought its popular debating show Question Time to Shanghai last month, corralling a lively panel that included Liu Jianchao, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson; China's chief WTO negotiator Long Yongtu; David Tang of fashion label Shanghai Tang fame; Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last governor before its return to China in 1997 - and Isabel Hilton, writer, broadcaster, but most notably for debating purposes, an outspoken critic of China's policy on Tibet.
Insurance
China's insurance industry was a crucial issue in negotiating the country's entry into the WTO because of its huge potential.

Surf & Turf
Hainan has long had its place in the sun. Now if only it were 22km closer to the Mainland.
Hollow ring
China's allure grows. But that doesn't mean sayonara Japan.

The overcapacity thing
At Harvard recently, GM China Chairman Phil Murtaugh called talk of overcapacity in China's auto industry "overblown."

Online economy gets real
Games and ring tones make way for ads and shopping
Shopping till they drop
Mergers & acquisitions picked up AFTER regulators added more hurdles. Go figure
Steel story bends a bit
If it's not one thing, it's another for China's over-populated steel sector - although by foreign standards, the sector is doing more than all right.
Fine-tuning time
On the heels of legislators talking up prospects for 8-9% growth at the annual National People's Congress last month, China's National Development and Reform Commission Vice-Chairman Lu Jiang was in London telling a meeting of energy ministers that the world needed to be thinking hard about developing a lower-carbon economy.

Doing what they said they
The main game in China last year was capital inflows. You only have to look at the end-of-year figures for China's foreign reserves - up by more than US$200bn to more than US$600bn - to see that.

'A new paradigm'
Lehman Brothers on how the yuan will rise 5%, and other Asian currencies much more:

Aiming for eight
Premier Wen Jiabao told deputies at the Third Session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) that China is targeting 8% GDP growth for 2005.
A taxi driver speaks
I was in Lanzhou city over a weekend, and went for a walk on a Sunday morning grey with smog.

The doll bares all
Being unconventional in any culture is difficult, and the conventional wisdom is that being unconventional in Chinese culture is tougher to achieve than in others.

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