A senior Chinese official put pressure on around 30 foreign firms including General Electric and Siemens at a recent meeting to confess to any antitrust violations and warned them against using external lawyers to fight accusations from regulators, sources said. The meeting is evidence of what many antitrust lawyers in China see as increasingly aggressive tactics to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law and highlight a worsening relationship between foreign companies and China’s regulators. Two sources who were at the July 24-25 closed-door meeting said the senior official showed in-house lawyers how to write what they called “self-criticisms” and displayed copies of letters from companies admitting guilt in past antitrust cases. Lawyers employed by some of those firms were in the room. Three sources said the official who delivered the blunt remarks was Xu Xinyu, Division Director at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The message was: if you put up a fight, I could double or triple your fines. The NDRC has been conducting an investigation into whether companies effectively force retailers to sell their products at a minimum price. On August 7 it announced fines totaling a record USD110 million against five foreign milk powder firms and one Chinese producer for price fixing and anti-competitive behavior. Three other milk powder makers were investigated but not fined because, among other things, they carried out “self-rectification”, the NDRC said. Representatives of GE, Siemens, Samsung Electronics, Microsoft, Volvo, IBM, Michelin, Tetra Pak, Intel, Qualcomm, Dumex, and Arris Group attended the meeting, the South China Morning Post reports. “The battle is not targeted at foreign companies. It is aimed at creating a fairer, cleaner and better-regulated environment for economic competition,” Xinhua News Agency said. The NDRC is offering leniency for some companies in return for cooperation. “So far, no companies have challenged the NDRC for a judicial review because they are afraid of retaliation, the same reason why they would sign a confession letter,” one lawyer said.

China’s inbound foreign investment (FDI) rose at the quickest pace in 28 months in July, surging 24.1% year-on-year to USD9.41 billion last month, after rising 20.1% in June, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. China’s non-financial outbound direct investment (ODI) gained 20% to USD50.6 billion in the January-July period. FDI inflow into the manufacturing sector in the first seven months fell 2.4%, while that in the service sector gained 15.8%. Property accounts for 41% of the service sector FDI, while the latter makes up half of the total FDI. FDI from the United States rose 11% in the first seven months while that from the euro zone gained 16.7%, led by a 58.3% jump from Germany.

China has become the top target of the European Union’s punitive trade measures in the first seven months of 2013, according to the latest report issued by the European Commission. All of the EU’s four anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations from January 1 to July 31 were targeted against China, said the report. The investigations covered products including seamless steel pipes, solar panel glass and agglomerated stones. Meanwhile, five of the seven definitive duties imposed by the EU were against Chinese products ranging from steel products to kitchenware. Currently there are 84 anti-dumping and 10 countervailing measures in force in the EU, according to the report. At the end of July, 36 investigations were ongoing.

Chinese people have far more antibiotic-resistant genes in their gut microbes than Europeans, a study revealed. This is blamed on overprescription by doctors and the extensive use of antibiotics by farmers and food producers. It could mean antibiotics would be unable to fight serious infections, enabling them to spread quickly. The study, published in the science journal Nature Communications, found mainland Chinese have genes resistant to 70 major types of antibiotics in their gut microbes, compared to 49 in Spain and 45 in Denmark. Per capita use of antibiotics is among the highest in the world in mainland China, while in Denmark it was one of the lowest. Zhu Baoli, Researcher with the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) who led the study, said the most abused antibiotics were tetracycline, penicillin, amoxicillin and erythromycin. “This certainly increases the emergence of superbugs,” he said. Zhu added that Chinese doctors tended to prescribe many more antibiotics than their European counterparts, but a more serious issue was the unregulated use of veterinary antibiotics at poultry, fish and pig farms. The drug-resistant bacteria could easily be passed from animals to humans, he said. “Heaven knows how many antibiotics the farmers have been feeding to their livestock to reduce sickness and increase production every year,” he said.

China’s manufacturing activity expanded for the first time in four months. The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), the earliest available indicator of operating conditions at private and export-oriented industrial companies, settled at 50.1 this month, up from July’s final reading of 47.7, which was the lowest in 11 months. The flash estimate is based on approximately 85% to 90% of total PMI survey responses each month. Final August figures are to be published on September 2. The new order component rose by 3.9 points to 50.5, the highest reading since April. Export orders fell modestly in July by 1.2 points to reach 46.5, still registering the second lowest level since October last year. Qu Hongbin, Chief Economist for China at HSBC, said new business and companies’ restocking activities are driving manufacturing recovery. “While we do not expect any major significant stimulus measures, the government appears keen to selectively support infrastructure investment, including railways, urban basic facilities, and environmental and energy conservation industries, hinting at solid public sector fixed assets investment growth in coming months,” Zhu Haibin, JP Morgan China’s Chief Economist, said. Data for July showed upbeat results from factory output and exports to retail sales, raising hopes that China’s economy may be stabilizing, the Shanghai Daily reports.