Shanghai to increase support for internet finance
May-26-2015 By : fcccadmin
Shanghai will increase support for internet finance, Wu Jun, Deputy Director of Shanghai Financial Service Office, said during the China (Shanghai) Internet Finance Summit. The boom in internet finance in China started in 2013 when Alibaba offered online financial services with Yu’ebao, an online money market fund. At the end of 2014, there were 2,000 peer-to-peer lending platforms and 128 crowdfunding companies in China. Of China’s 270 online third-party payment firms, 55 are based in Shanghai, with their trading volume taking up 75% of the country’s total. “Financial regulators now are working together to build a supervision framework to enhance risk control and crack down on malpractice in the industry,” said Ji Jiayou, an official at the Shanghai headquarters of the People’s Bank of China (BOC).
Non-Asian countries to be included in AIIB Board
By : fcccadmin
The Chinese government is proposing to include non-Asian countries on the board of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to give smaller shareholders a voice in the institution. No country will have more than one seat on the 12-member Board of Directors. China says it will not hold veto power in the AIIB, unlike the World Bank where the United States has a limited veto. Germany will have a Director on the Board of the AIIB, according to German Ambassador to China Michael Clauss. He added that Germany wanted the Board’s make-up to reflect the various regions joining the Beijing-led bank, and that Frankfurt would be a good candidate for the bank’s European headquarters. Founding members of the bank will initially pay up to one-fifth of its USD50 billion authorized capital, which will be raised to USD100 billion. The founders of the bank also wrapped up negotiations over the text of the organization’s charter during a three-day meeting in Singapore. The articles will be signed at the end of June and will then be presented to each nation’s legislature for approval. Delegates who attended the Singapore meeting said China is likely to take a 25% to 30% stake in the AIIB, and India is likely to be the second-largest shareholder. In all, Asian countries are expected to own between 72% and 75% of the bank. The Singapore meeting was the fifth to be held since the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on establishing the AIIB in Beijing in October last year.
Americans on Chinese companies’ payrolls rising
By : fcccadmin
The number of Americans on Chinese company payrolls has surged more than five-fold over the past five years along with growing foreign direct investment (FDI) by China in the United States, according to a report by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the economic think tank Rhodium Group. Observers said this underscored the growing interdependency between Beijing and Washington despite their strained bilateral relations. The report, titled “New Neighbors: Chinese Investment in the United States by Congressional District”, showed Chinese firms had invested USD46 billion in the U.S. since 2000. Considering only full-time jobs, it said Chinese firms now provided more than 80,000 direct jobs in the U.S. “While this is still modest compared with the total number of jobs provided by foreign firms, it is significant growth from less than 15,000 jobs five years ago,” the report said. As of the end of last year, there were 1,583 investments by Chinese firms in the U.S. The biggest recipients in terms of cumulative investment between 2000 and 2014 were districts in North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Virginia, and Texas, the South China Morning Post reports. The report estimated the U.S. could receive between USD100 billion and USD200 billion of investment from China by 2020, and between 200,000 and 400,000 full-time U.S. jobs would be created.
Import tariff cuts announced
By : fcccadmin
China will cut import tariffs by about 50% for some consumer goods in June to boost domestic consumption. Tariffs for imported skin-care products will be slashed from 5% to 2%, diapers from 7.5% to 2%, leather boots from 24% to 12%, and woolen suits from 17.5% to 10%, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement. Tariffs for fur clothing, cashmere jumpers and sneakers have also been halved to between 7% and 12%. The Chinese government decided in late April to cut import tariffs as the country seeks to boost domestic consumption as more wealthy Chinese tourists shop abroad. But Zhang Junwei, Researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, noted that cutting import tariffs alone could only have limited effect in bringing consumption home as the tariffs only make up a small part of the total price. Value added tax (VAT), consumption tax, distribution costs and the brand’s pricing strategy play a greater role in prices of imported goods, experts said. China has so far cut import tariffs for some infant food, medicine and camera lenses, the Shanghai Daily reports. The average tariff across all products in China is currently 9.8%. The average duty rate on the items included in the cuts is much higher than that figure, and considerably higher than the average in many other Asian countries.
Five top IP offices meet in Suzhou
By : fcccadmin
The heads of the world’s five largest intellectual property offices had a meeting in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, to explore further increasing the efficiency of their work. The State Intellectual Property Office of China, European Patent Office, Japan Patent Office, Korean Intellectual Property Office and United States Patent and Trademark Office between them handle about 80% of the world’s patent applications. This year, the five offices are expected to sign an agreement on providing better services to the public, especially to small businesses and individual users, in a bid to reinforce IP’s role in innovation-driven development, according to the meeting organizers. The delegates discussed a wide range of issues, including quality control in processing patent fillings, statistics, automation and patent documentation. Joerg Wuttke, President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, suggested that the IP “Big Five” harmonize international patent law between them, adding that “the EU business community in China expects a robust implementation of the country’s IP laws.”
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