Walmart Stores took full control of Chinese e-commerce firm Yihaodian.com (YHD) by purchasing the balance 49% stake that it did not already own to further accelerate its online presence in the country. The company bought the stake from YHD Founders Yu Gang and Liu Junling, as well as from Ping An Insurance Group. Industry experts said the acquisition will give the U.S. retail group a clear edge over other brick-and-mortar retailers in China’s fast-growing consumer market. “YHD’s rich big data assets will help build more shopper insights for Walmart and enable it to have a successful online-and-offline strategy. Despite the fact that YHD is relatively small compared to the likes of Tmall and JD.com, it is still a key player in the online shopping for fast moving consumer goods. YHD is strong in the eastern parts and more popular with urban white collar females,” Jason Yu, General Manager of Kantar Worldpanel China said. Founded in 2008, YHD operates logistics centers in Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, Beijing and Guangzhou.

Outbound real estate investment from China topped USD10 billion last year and is set to cap five years of rapid growth by hitting USD14 billion this year, according to international property consultant CBRE. In its latest research report – The Expanding Role of Chinese Capital in Global Real Estate Markets – CBRE said outbound investment had experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 72% over the past four years, with investors looking to diversify a rapidly growing pool of domestic wealth, while lifestyle and business goals also played a significant role in driving offshore investment. CBRE China research head Frank Chen said the past two years had seen “explosive growth” in purchases of offshore real estate by Chinese investors, including individuals, corporations and institutions. Britain, the United States and Australia were the top three overseas markets for commercial real estate investment by Chinese last year. JLL, another property consultant, said Chinese investors were looking at global gateway cities such as London, New York, Sydney and San Francisco. JLL estimates that China invested USD17 billion in commercial real estate overseas last year, compared to USD14 billion in 2013, and predicts a total of USD20 billion this year, the South China Morning Post reports.

China’s Gome Electrical Appliances Holding plans to acquire a retail unit from controlling shareholder Wang Guangyu for HKD11.27 billion. China’s second-largest home-appliance retailer said the acquisition target is engaged in the retail sale of electrical appliances and consumer electronic products under the trademark “GOME Electrical Appliances” and related operations mainly in cities in which the company already operates. As of 31 March 2015, Artway Development, Wang’s retail unit, had 578 stores located in 181 cities in China. The transaction will be settled by HKD2.2 billion in cash, an issue of 6.2 billion new shares. Following the deal, Wang and his partners will see their interest in Gome Electrical increase from the current 32.4% to 50.2%.

With the launch of two navigation satellites, China took another step toward building it’s own positioning system with global coverage, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System. Named after the Chinese term for the Big Dipper constellation, the Beidou project was launched in 1994, some 20 years after the inception of GPS. The first Beidou satellite was launched in 2000. By 2012, a regional network had taken shape, and the Beidou system was providing positioning, navigation, timing and short-messaging services (SMS) in China and several other Asian countries. Beidou is now one of the four dominant navigation systems worldwide, along with GPS, Russia’s Glonass and the European Union’s Galileo. The plan is to set up a constellation of 35 navigation satellites and expand their coverage to the whole world by 2020. The July 25 launch of the two satellites – the 18thand 19thof the Beidou project and the third this year – is part of this plan. 98% of the components for the satellites launched on July 25 were made domestically, including the rubidium atomic clocks that send synchronized signals so that receivers can triangulate their position on earth, the China Daily reports.

The Chinese government’s propping up of the stock markets has failed to revive trading turnover, which is down more than a third on the mainland and in Hong Kong, hurting stockbrokers’ income and share prices. The Shanghai Composite Index climbed above 4,000 points last week for the first time in three weeks, with many crediting rescue measures introduced by Beijing since July 4 for stabilizing the market. But the average daily turnover in Hong Kong has dropped below HKD100 billion since July 16 and stood at about HKD80 billion last week, down 70% from its April 9 peak of HKD293.91 billion at the start of a rally that took the Hong Kong and mainland markets to seven-year highs. Last week’s average turnover was also 36% lower than the HKD125.34 billion average for the first half of the year. Chinese markets have shared a similar fate, with turnover in Shanghai last week averaging about CNY650 billion, 50% down on its June 8 peak of CNY1.312 trillion and down 32% from the June average of CNY952.3 billion. Turnover in Shenzhen dropped to just CNY247 billion on July 10 when up to 60% of the companies listed there suspended trading of their shares. About 20% remained suspended last week, with daily turnover rising to about CNY600 billion, still just half the May 28 peak of CNY1.205 trillion. Hong Kong Securities Association Chairman Jeffrey Chan said investors understood that the improvement in share prices was due to the rescue measures implemented by Beijing and lacked fundamental support, the South China Morning Post reports.