Swan urges China to act on climate change
ABC Online, Australia - 4 hours ago
Mr Swan has told an Australia-China Business Council lunch that climate change is a test for China as well. He says the region's growing prosperity must be ...


DHL China Updates Their Olympic Contingency Plan for Logistics (Jul 4)
I have just received the latest contingency plan from my friends at DHL. Major update includes: Traffic control Traffic to skirt around BJ AFR DG embargo regulation OFR Tianjin Standby warehouse For the previous plan, you can go to DHL’s Beijing Olympics Memo & Contingency Plan If you would like me to send to you, please send me an email rbrubaker (at) [...]


Downpour lashes China's Hubei, forcing some 6,000 to evacuate (Jul 4)
Source: Xinhua


Ping An Insurance denies tax evasion rumour (Jul 4)
(BEIJING) Ping An Insurance (Group) Co, China's second largest life insurer, yesterday denied market talk of a government investigation into tax evasion. The rumour prompted panic selling of its shares and drove the price down by the daily maximum of 10 per cent on Wednesday.


China faces tough task on capital curbs (Jul 4)
(BEIJING) Beijing's latest drive to stamp out unauthorised capital inflows is likely to be no match for resourceful speculators determined to bring money into China to catch the wave of a rising yuan, bankers and officials say.


McEconomics: The price of McDonalds in China (Jul 3)
Pettis over at China Financial Markets has a nice little comment on the role of McDonalds in China (and Asia generally). In my view he has it spot on making an excellent observation that I think deserves to be retold.

The rest of the article is also interesting.

Inflation? Or stagnation? [China Financial Markets]

Occasionally I like to bring foreign visitors to the neighborhood McDonalds, partly because it always generates a lot of outrage and partly because you are far more likely to find a McDonalds outlet replete with local residents conducting their everyday life than you ever would in Nan Luo Gu Xiang, which is much more likely to be peopled by European tourists and upwardly-mobile Chinese who like to eat and shop in the places foreigners do. McDonalds, on the other hand, is as local as it gets for young urban life in most Chinese cities, and it is rare to see one that is empty.

Sorry for that non-economic digression. I mention all this not because I own McDonalds stock or like the...


In China, the death of a mountain town (Jul 3)
Landslides and mudslides in the Beichuan region added to the high death toll in May’s earthquake. Now, writes Taige Li, familiar warnings are being heard. Will historic errors be repeated?The most shocking of the many tragedies of the Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008, was that of the town of Qushan, the county seat of Beichuan.
The quake left the town virtually flattened. Official statistics put the dead and missing at 13,000 – out of a population of only 40,000. The town is no longer habitable, and a memorial is to be built on its ruins. Beichuan, the only Qiang-nationality autonomous county in China -- and under the jurisdiction of Mianyang municipality -- suffered not just from the tremors themselves but also from the landslides and mudslides triggered by the quake. If these geological-disaster risks had been considered when the county seat was located here or as it expanded, the destruction may not have been so total.  Beichuan before the earthquake
Beichuan lies in the n...