Tests continue on China’s largest cargo aircraft
Mar-28-2013 By : agxadmin
China completed two more ground tests for the Y-20, its biggest home-grown transport aircraft, following its successful maiden flight on January 26. Tang Changhong, Chief Designer of the Y-20, or Transport-20, said it took five years for Chinese designers to manufacture and test-fly the jumbo air freighter. Other large strategic air freighters in active service globally include the Antonov An-225, the Ilyushin Il-76 and the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. The Y-20 will serve as China’s jumbo transport aircraft “over a very long period of time”. It will probably be put in service within five years. The 15-meter-high Yun-20 has a load-carrying capacity of 66 metric tons and a maximum take-off weight of 200 tons. Domestically designed and manufactured engines will be tested and once they have passed, they will replace the Russian engines which are currently used. The Chinese engines perform better in terms of fuel efficiency and thrust-weight ratio.
Hefei expanding as business hub
By : agxadmin
Hefei is 500 kilometers inland from Shanghai, but the provincial capital of Anhui province has ambitions to become a player in the business world. Over the past year, it has defied the national decline in foreign direct investment (FDI), and already attracted multinationals such as Unilever, Coca-Cola and Hitachi Construction Machinery to set up shop, thanks to lower wage and land costs, according to city Mayor Zhang Qingjun. Now it plans to build on those gains by rolling out an infrastructure program of road, water, power and rail networks to lure more business from the coast. “The trend of businesses moving inland from coastal regions is becoming very clear,” the Mayor said. “Our priority is to establish high-end manufacturing as well as research and development facilities.” The migration of funds to Hefei is reflected in the CNY43.9 billion in direct investment in the city in the first two months of the year. That amounted to a 20% year-on-year increase, with 94% of the total coming from other provinces, he said. Over the same period, Hefei’s exports more than tripled year-on-year while China’s exports rose by less than a quarter.
Complaints about courier companies on the rise
By : agxadmin
Shanghai YTO Express has apologized to a local customer after a delivery man threatened to spread her personal information on the internet if she complained. The customer, surnamed Fu, called after a courier was late in picking up a package, asking him to come right away because it was urgent. The delivery man not only refused but also threatened her by saying “if you dare to lodge a complaint against me, I will publicize all your personal information on the internet,” according to Fu. YTO has punished the man with a salary cut and started new training for all its staff to prevent similar incidents. Leaks of private information have become one of the major problems of the courier industry in China, said Li Bin, Director of the Customer Complaints Reception Center of the State Post Bureau. The center received 192,000 complaints in 2012, and 27% were about company couriers, including some about information leaks, Li said. An industry has grown up around such leaks. On the Dan114 website, customers’ courier numbers from major firms including YTO, Yunda and ZTO are being sold at CNY0.4 to CNY1 each. Merchants can create fake favorable reviews of their services using such information. Courier service managers can be fined CNY5,000 to CNY10,000 if couriers are found collecting or selling personal information of customers, according to the Courier Industry Regulation issued by the Ministry of Transport that took effect this month. There are now more than 800,000 delivery workers nationwide and the number has been increasing by about 200,000 annually. Some 30 million parcels are delivered across China every day.
Yangshan copper premium price launched
By : agxadmin
The Yangshan copper premium – which is paid on top of the benchmark London Metal Exchange cash copper price – has been launched as the first in a series of commodity prices under the “Yangshan Price” banner, designed by the Shanghai Free Trade Zones to develop the Yangshan bonded area into a bulk commodity trading platform. As China’s first physical price for nonferrous metal in bonded areas, the Yangshan copper premium will be published on authoritative and independent platforms including Bloomberg and Xinhua 08. Up to 63 leading commodity enterprises have established divisions in Yangshan port, with a combined registered capital of CNY3.5 billion, laying a solid foundation for the port to develop broader futures delivery businesses, said Wang Xinling, Deputy Director of the Management Committee of the Shanghai Free Trade Zones. “The launch of the Yangshan Price will create closer links between the domestic and international market, and help Chinese bulk commodities enterprises gain more of a say in international pricing,” said Chen Quanxun, Chairman of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. Fan Xin, President of the Shanghai Metals Market website, a leading metals information provider, said: “The release of the Yangshan copper premium is backed by the rapid growth in copper imports and exports via Yangshan port, as well as huge inventories in the port.” Around USD10 billion worth of electrolytic copper was imported through the Shanghai Free Trade Zones in 2012, accounting for a third of the nation’s total imports. It is expected the Yangshan Price will become a benchmark with international influence on copper trading in the future, said Wang. Shanghai will add 80,000 to 90,000 square meters of storage capacity for metals by the middle of this year to the existing 50,000 sq m, the China Daily reports.
Tom’s JV with China Post will step up mobile e-commerce initiative
By : agxadmin
Tom Group, which narrowed its net loss last year, has started to ramp up the mobile retail capabilities of its e-commerce venture with China Post after the operation saw sales volume double. Tom’s Chief Executive Ken Yeung said he agreed with Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba Group, that e-commerce in China was entering a golden age and that online transactions would make up about 30% of the country’s total retail sales in the next five years. Beijing Ule E-Commerce, which Tom and China Post rolled out in 2010, provides an e-commerce platform that supports online and offline store integration, distribution and logistics, and marketing and promotion to merchants. Unlike Alibaba’s market-leading Taobao online retail operations, which rely on third-party logistics service providers, Ule.com is backed by the resources of China Post. This infrastructure includes 52,000 postal outlets, 150,000 postal delivery workers, 80,000 postal vehicles, 433 train carriages, 16 cargo aircraft and three ships. Ule.com’s gross merchandise value, the total worth of goods sold, reached CNY500 million.
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