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The Economist (Free subscription) | 26/06/2008
A South Korean retailer plans a bold move into China WOMEN in South Korea have a reputation for being some of the world's most demanding shoppers. Keen bargain hunters, they have an eye for quality and if something falls short of their expectations they are not shy of venting their anger. They photograph shops or goods that fail to make the grade, and post pictures online with detailed and withering...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 26/06/2008
Emerging markets start to falter CONFIDENCE has begun to crack in emerging markets. Earlier this year, many people had still dared to hope that much of the developing world would decouple from the slowing American economy. But it has achieved this feat rather too well. There are signs of overheating; most developing economies are grappling with, and so far failing to defeat, the inflationary effects...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 26/06/2008
Despite strict capital controls, China is being flooded by the biggest wave of speculative capital ever to hit an emerging economy A POPULAR game this summer among watchers of the Chinese economy is to guess the size of speculative capital or ?hot money? flowing into the country. One clue is that although China?s trade surplus has started to shrink this year, its foreign-exchange reserves are growing...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 26/06/2008
To be a Chinese tyremaker is glorious IT IS not, you would have thought, an auspicious name for a company that makes circular products. But Triangle Group, a big Chinese tyremaker, is flourishing even though the price of oil'the single most important ingredient in making and selling tyres'has reached record highs. Global passenger-tyre sales are growing by an average of 6% annually; Triangle?s are...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 23/06/2008
A booming country's quiet corner CHINA may be rushing toward superpower status, but not all of it is in a hurry. Life in the country's south-west glides along rather sedately. The road into Guilin, a smallish city of 650,000 people in Guangxi province, was strangely quiet as I looked out at the countryside through rain-streaked taxi windows. The driver could see nothing: her windscreen wiper scraped...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 15/05/2008
The credit crisis has cooled Asia's ardour towards Western banks. But the region stands to gain even more from opening up than Wall Street does WHEN China's three leading state-run banks finally felt confident enough to list their shares in 2006 and 2007, after years of losses from bad lending practices, the initial public offerings contained two common elements: big Western banks acting first as...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 24/04/2008
A shake-out looms in China's booming but overcrowded car market THE fierce competition for attention at Beijing's motor show says something about the increasing brutality of China's auto market, now the second-biggest in the world. On nearly every stand, young women in eight-inch heels pose and pout beside the cars. At regular intervals, deafening rock music erupts and the crowd rushes to ogle skimpily...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 28/02/2008
Shame fills a vacuum in China's financial law enforcement THE vast gaps in the regulations governing China's financial markets are no secret. The risks are spelled out in mind-numbing detail in every Chinese share prospectus issued to Western investors. They run the gamut from the possibility of full-blown Communist expropriation to bad accounting, insider trading, market manipulation and fraud. There...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 28/02/2008
A Chinese gang is charged with printing $147 billion in fake receipts THE sums are impressive by any standards. Had it been uncovered five years ago, the scam would have amounted to nearly 10% of China's GDP at the time. It is equal in value to Google's stockmarket capitalisation today. In what is being described as the biggest scandal of its kind since 1949, four men pleaded guilty in a court in...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 21/02/2008
Putting caps on prices is only a short-term solution ACROSS Asia inflation is rising, largely because of higher food and energy prices. China's inflation rate surged to an 11-year high of 7.1% in January and looks set to climb further this month, after some severe snow storms. India, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore all have inflation rates above 4%. Central banks are reluctant to raise interest...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 21/02/2008
An orthodox approach to fixing the unavailability of decent health care STARTLING economic growth in China has not been matched by similar improvements in health care. The cost of treatment is becoming ever more prohibitive for the poor. Government spending is meagre. But nearly three years after declaring the system a failure, officials are at last getting ready to unveil a plan to fix it. Some Chinese...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 21/02/2008
A loss at the WTO over car parts signals a tough new era for Chinese companies GIVEN the time, expense and complexity involved, bringing disputes before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is often said to be a fruitless task, regardless of the merits of the case, and regardless of the verdict. Viewed narrowly, that pretty much sums up China's unprecedented loss before the WTO on February 13th, over...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 14/02/2008
China's race to build roads, railways and airports speeds ahead. Democracy, says an official, would sacrifice efficiency "IT'S like approaching the Forbidden City, it's absolutely incredible." The adjective is one that Mouzhan Majidi, chief executive of Foster + Partners, liberally attaches to Beijing's new airport terminal, designed by his British firm. The world's largest, designed in the gently...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 14/02/2008
Peasants for privatisation "LAND to the tiller" has been a slogan of Chinese revolutionaries since Sun Yat-sen used it in 1924. Mao Zedong came to power in 1949 with just such a promise. Now some of China's peasants want his party to make good on the pledge. Late last year groups in different parts of China began simply claiming land as their own individual private plots. China's constitution decrees...
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The Economist (Free subscription) | 14/02/2008
China has plenty more room than India to stimulate growth THE Chinese invented the abacus; India invented the binary and the decimal systems. So both nations are deft at playing with numbers. All the more reason to look carefully at their governments' finances (see chart). According to official estimates, China's government ran a budget deficit of around 1% last year. But some economists reckon that...
