Private investors are being invited to help build 100 tourism projects with an estimated investment of about CNY25 billion in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in the next five years. The China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) and Xinjiang tourism authorities have released a list of about 100 proposed tourism projects that private investors are being invited to fund, build and operate. The list includes the Silk Road tourism hub, cross-border tourism and a medical tourism service. Wu Wenxue, Deputy Director of CNTA, said the market, instead of the government, should be the driving force for the tourism industry in Xinjiang. “Now is a great time for the private sector to invest in Xinjiang,” Wu said. “Xinjiang has abundant tourism resources but an immature tourism industry. The region has great potential,” he added.

Automotive

• Foreign brands are producing less cars in China. The average level of capacity utilization has fallen to 94.3% in the first half of this year, according to Sanford C Bernstein Analysts led by Robin Zhu. “We are confident 2015 will be remembered as a turning point in industry capacity utilization,” Zhu wrote in a report. “We still expect China to sell a lot more cars in the coming years, but returns in the market may never be the same again.”
• Audi is replacing its top China Executive from September 1 amid slowing growth in its largest market. Dietmar Voggenreiter, who headed the China business since 2007, will be replaced by Joachim Wedler, the company’s head of product planning. Sales at Audi fell for the first time in more than two years in May and again in June, as the Chinese auto market weakened. Under Voggenreiter’s leadership, Audi’s annual sales have jumped sevenfold, accounting for 2.5 million of the 3 million Audis ever sold in China.

Expat corner

• Canada’s new wealth-based immigration scheme has received just six applications worldwide, in stark contrast to the thousands of mostly Chinese millionaires who flocked to the program’s defunct predecessor. The new Immigrant Investor Venture Capital (IIVC) scheme was touted as a replacement for the Immigrant Investor Program (IIP), long the world’s most popular wealth-determined immigration vehicle.

Finance

• The HSBC China Monetary Conditions Indicator (MCI), which measures the easiness of monetary conditions, rose to -5.4 in June from -5.9 in May and -6.2 in April. The May reading was the first monthly pickup since February, and HSBC considered that monetary conditions were “slowly improving.” The increase of M2 to 11.8% in May from 10.8% in April, was among the major contributors to the easier environment.
• China Construction Bank (CCB) has been ordered to tighten money-laundering controls at its New York branch to resolve “deficiencies relating to the branch’s risk management and compliance” with the Bank Secrecy Act, U.S. regulators said. The order calls for better oversight of account holders and the creation of a new internal audit program.
• China recorded an intensified net capital outflow in the first six months. Chinese banks bought foreign exchange worth CNY5.31 trillion in the first half and sold the equivalent of CNY5.96 trillion, resulting in a net sale of CNY647.4 billion, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said. This compares with a CNY383.8 billion deficit in the second half of last year. Experts say too much capital outflow in the long term could reduce liquidity in the domestic market, push down the value of the yuan and even slow down real economic growth.
• The Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) is accelerating the process of introducing strategic investors, Vice President Xu Xueming said. Wholly-owned by China Post Group Corp, the bank is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2016, aiming to raise up to USD25 billion. UBS, Temasek Holdings and BNP Paribas were among six preliminary bidders to buy up to a 10% stake in PSBC for at least USD3 billion.
• Bank of Communications (BoCom), China’s fifth-largest lender by assets, announced it will issue offshore preference shares to raise CNY15 billion to boost its capital adequacy ratio. The offshore issuance will increase the bank’s tier-1 capital adequacy ratio (CAR) by 0.34 percentage points to 11.64%.
• The Chinese government has decided to allow the renminbi to trade in a wider range against the U.S. dollar to help boost exports and improve use of the currency globally. The timing and scope for the potential adjustment were not announced. The real effective exchange rate of the renminbi appreciated by 6.4% on a year-on-year basis in 2014 and rose by 4.2% in the first quarter of this year.

Foreign investment

• China’s outbound direct investment (ODI) rose 29.2% to CNY343.2 billion in the first half, with funds flowing 4,018 overseas companies in 147 countries and regions. Investment in the ASEAN countries nearly doubled during the period, while more than USD7.05 billion was directed to the 48 countries involved in the “Belt and Road” initiative.

Foreign trade

• China filed 169 anti-trust cases to tackle unfair competition at home and in overseas markets during the first six months of the year, up 46% on a year-on-year basis, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. About 153 cases have been approved by the Ministry after the review. Manufacturing industries, including shipbuilding, auto parts, mechanical and electric equipment businesses, accounted for 53% of the cases.
• More than 51,000 enterprises have benefited from the unified customs clearance reform in Chinese provinces along the Silk Road Economic Belt, customs authorities said. Some 1.2 million declarations have been handled by customs in the nine provinces along the Belt since the customs reform was introduced on May 1. The more efficient service can cut companies’ customs costs by 20% to 30%.
• The World Trade Organization’s 1997 Information Technology Agreement has been expanded to abolish duties on 201 technology products from advanced computer chips to GPS devices. The updated agreement covers products that generate USD1 trillion in annual global revenue, but only 49 of the 161 WTO member economies signed up to the expanded deal. Talks on revising the technology agreement began in 2012. Negotiators must still complete details and a timetable for eliminating the tariffs.

IPR protection

• Zxipr.com, China’s first intellectual property service trading website, has started operation. The system provides information about IP agencies such as success rate, price and comments, so clients can choose one directly or call for a bid. The platform enables clients to track the entire process to reduce risks.
• The seventh China Trademark Festival will be held in Haikou, Hainan province, from October 16 through 19, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). This year’s event, which is jointly organized by the China Trademark Association and the Haikou city government, will include activities such as a Belt and Road Initiative brand protection forum and a trademark financial service innovation forum, in addition to a themed meeting and exhibition.

Macro-economy

• Rich individuals from China claimed nine of the spots on a list of Asia’s 10 wealthiest individuals born between the years 1981 and 1997 issued by Wealth-X, a wealth intelligence consultancy firm. Three of the nine featured on the list are women from China, who have a combined wealth of approximately USD10 billion, about 44% of the top 10’s total wealth. The three wealthiest millennials in Asia are Yang Huiyan, Vice Chairperson of real estate developer Country Garden Holdings; Adrian Cheng, Executive Vice Chairman of New World Development; and Zong Fuli, President of her father’s company Hangzhou Wahaha Group.
• China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) posted a slower 0.1% drop in combined profit of CNY1.23 trillion in the first half of 2015, the Ministry of Finance said. The decline eased from a 21.4% slump in the January-February period, the biggest drop so far this year. The 0.1% drop trailed an 8.9% growth during the first half of 2014. Coal and steel industries turned losses into gains in June. But the SOEs still suffered a 5.8% drop in total business revenues from a year earlier to CNY21.77 trillion by June.
• A shortage of talent continues to be the primary concern for Chinese companies, with technicians, sales representatives and sales managers being the most in demand, according to a new industry survey conducted by ManpowerGroup. It indicated that about 24% of employers in China suffered from an acute talent crunch. About 53% of employers said they faced difficulties in filling some positions this year compared with 2014.
• Business confidence in China has slumped to its lowest level in more than six years, an indication of the influence of the recent stock market rout on the economy despite better-than-expected economic growth. The MNI China Business Sentiment index of current business conditions sank to 48.8 this month from 53.3 in June, MNI Indicators, which is owned by Deutsche Boerse, said. It was the lowest reading since January 2009.
• China’s industrial overcapacity problems remain severe and the only way to solve them is by shifting production facilities abroad where demand still has the potential to grow, Huang Libin, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), told a briefing. He said China’s efforts to boost economic cooperation along the old “Silk Road” route, known as the “One Road One Belt” plan, would provide opportunities for domestic industries to shift production abroad.
• The number of new company registrations jumped 19.4% from a year ago to 2.1 million in the first six months. By the end of June, there were around 74.2 million businesses in China, up 7% from the end of 2014. The number of new firms registered in the service sector accounted for 80.3% of the increase, or 1.6 million during the first six months, 22.6% more than in the same period last year.
• China gave private refineries the green light to import crude oil, opening up a heavily monopolized sector. To qualify non-state companies must have an annual refining capacity of more than 2 million tons and meet efficiency and environmental standards. They should also have storage capacity for at least 300,000 tons of crude, with terminals that can handle more than 50,000 tons. Crude imports are dominated by state-run Sinopec, CNPC and CNOOC.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Danone plans to sell its Dumex infant formula brand to Yashili International Holdings, a unit of China Mengniu Dairy Co, amid a downturn in demand for locally made baby food. Danone plans to use the proceeds from the sale to buy more shares in Mengniu. The deal would also turn Mengniu into one of China’s largest baby milk powder sellers, in a market that Euromonitor International forecast will be worth CNY122.1 billion in 2015. Danone expects to boost its 9.9% stake in Mengniu by about 2 percentage points.

Real estate

• Hong Kong’s Link Real Estate Investment Trust has bought two commercial buildings in Shanghai from Shui On Land for CNY6.6 billion, four months after it bought a Beijing shopping center for CNY2.5 billion. The two properties bought from Shui On are Corporate Avenue One and Two – next to Shanghai’s Xintiandi prime retail and entertainment area – which include grade A office and retail space.
• Sunac China Holdings announced the planned acquisition of a company which owns seven property projects in Chengdu for CNY3.2 billion. Prior to the acquisition, the seven properties were 80% indirectly owned by Hong Kong-listed CC Land Holdings and 20% by Sichuan Guojia Real Estate. The seven property projects in Chengdu have a total salable area of about 24.1 million square meters.

Science & technology

• A research team in China led by Professor Fang Zhong with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics in Beijing confirmed the existence of Weyl fermions after years of research, a particle that had eluded scientists for decades. With just one “pole” and no mass at all, the Weyl fermions could have a dramatic effect on smartphones in particular, solving the problem of having to charge a device’s battery.
• Chinese technicians have begun assembling the world’s largest radio telescope with a dish the size of 30 football fields in the mountains of Guizhou province. The telescope’s reflector is 500 meters in diameter and made up of 4,450 panels. The surrounding area has “radio silence” as there are no towns and cities within a 5-kilometer radius.
• Figures from the Ministry of Education show that China had 459,800 students going abroad for education last year. More than half of them headed to the United States. According to the 2014 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange, nearly 280,000 students from the Chinese mainland went to study in the U.S., of which 110,000 were about to enter college.
• Chinese scientists have developed a credit card-sized chip that could be powered by radio waves, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Improvement of the technology could eventually lead to battery-free electronic devices such as a smartphone that could stay powered on forever. The chip harnessed energy from ambient radio waves with frequencies similar to the 2G mobile network. The Chinese chip now cost CNY10 to make, and mass production could further cut the price.

Stock markets

• The halt of new IPOs following the stock market crash has led to a considerable loss of income for brokerages. With 38 companies’ share sales blocked, as much as USD386 million in fees has evaporated for now, based on averages for deals in the first six months. The securities firms also face costs from government-led efforts to prop up the market. Twenty-one big firms have pledged a combined CNY120 billion for a stock-purchasing fund and promised not to sell their proprietary trading positions until the Shanghai Composite Index rises to 4,500.
• Ratings agency Moody’s warned that margin financing poses market and credit risks to securities firms and may cause further losses in China’s equity markets. “The rapid growth in margin financing, which peaked at 4.3% of the A-share tradable market cap on 18 June 2015, has in the current market downturn exposed securities firms to substantial market and credit risks, even as the business generated interest income and boosted profitability,” said David Yin, Assistant Vice President and Analyst of Moody’s.

Travel

• China’s Ministry of Transport announced that it would further cut the number of tollways and enable more private enterprises to invest in roads. By the end of last year, China had 162,600 km of highways with tolls, including 106,700 km of toll expressways. Toll highways comprised 3.6% of China’s 4.46 million km road network last year. It is planned to reduce the percentage of toll roads to 3%.
• A Chinese-led consortium hopes to buy one of Spain’s “ghost airports” for a knockdown price of €10,000 and turn it into an European freight hub for Chinese companies. Ciudad Real’s Central Airport, south of the capital Madrid, became a symbol of Spain’s spending frenzy during a construction boom that ended with the financial crisis of 2008. Costing between €450 million and €1.1 billion to build, the airport opened for international flights in 2010. Three years later, the airport operator CR Aeropuertos went bankrupt after it failed to attract enough flights and passengers.
• Airbus’ China plant is expected to deliver its first A330 wide-body passenger jet in 2018. The company earlier this month signed an agreement to establish an A330 “cabin completion center” in Tianjin, where it already has a final assembly plant for smaller A320 jets. The plant will be capable of fitting out two A330 planes a month.
• Hong Kong’s MTR Corp is to spend HKD6 billion on its largest-ever order of trains from a mainland manufacturer. The purchase of 93 eight-car subway trains will replace all of the first-generation, British-made trains – now 30 years old – currently operating on the Kwun Tong, Tsuen Wan, Island and Tseung Kwan O lines. Under the new contract, the trains will be delivered by CSR Qingdao Sifang between 2018 and 2023.
• Ctrip, China’s biggest online travel agency, has purchased train-ticket-booking app Suanya for CNY100 million. Nasdaq-listed Ctrip, which is based in Shanghai, has already been offering train ticket bookings, but these have hitherto focused mainly on leisure travel. Booking a train ticket in China can be fraught with problems due to the limited availability of seats on certain routes, times and festive periods, a clunky, government-run official booking site, and finicky logging-in details.
• This summer’s’s top 10 destinations among Chinese travelers according to Ctrip.com, are: Thailand; Japan; Hong Kong; the U.S.; Taiwan; Singapore; Indonesia; Italy; South Korea and the Philippines. South Korea was the most popular destination last year, but fell to ninth place due to the MERS virus outbreak.
• CRRC Corp, the merged new entity of China’s two largest train makers, announced recent contracts worth CNY12.2 billion, alongside another CNY4.84 billion deal to supply metro trains to Hong Kong. It has 90% of the domestic market for the production of railway locomotives, bullet trains, passenger trains and metro vehicles.
• Guangzhou’s iconic 34-story White Swan Hotel has reopened for business on July 15 after a three-year long renovation. White Swan drew 20,000 visitors on its reopening day, Less than a third of the hotel’s 520 rooms are currently ready, but the hotel will return to full operation by September. The hotel opened in 1983.

• The Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where foreign heads of state and government are staying when visiting Beijing, has sued the Chinese subsidiary of Philips over alleged false advertising of air purifiers. Philips (China) Investment Co claimed its air purifiers had been specifically designed for the hotel.
• The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said that 19,000 officials were punished for violating frugality rules in the first half of this year, bringing the total number of those punished since late 2012 to more than 120,000. Violating the rules on usage of government vehicles ranks top among the violations, including lavish banquets and overseas sightseeing trips on public funds.
• Shanxi Haixin Iron and Steel Group, one of China’s biggest private steel makers bribed more than 120 government officials, one of the steel firm’s creditors said. The company is undergoing bankruptcy and reorganization proceedings. The company was owned by tycoon Li Zhaohui, and those who took the bribes between 2009 and 2011 allegedly included officials from Wenxi county, Yuncheng, as well as Shanxi province.
• Shanghai has overtaken Dubai and taken the sixth spot on the 2015 Xinhua-Baltic Exchange International Shipping Centers Development Index. The rating covers 46 major ports around the world. Singapore is No 1 on the list.
• President Xi Jinping called for more economic cooperation between China and New Zealand as he met with Jerry Mateparae, the country’s Governor General in Beijing. Both countries should expand cooperation in traditional areas, including agriculture and animal husbandry, and explore cooperation in sectors such as food safety, biological medicine, new energy and infrastructure, Xi said.

The EU-China Business & Technology Cooperation Fair has been held for nine consecutive editions attracting 4,400 Chinese companies and 12,400 European companies in total. The Fair provides a dominant cooperation platform in China for investment, trade and technology between the EU and China. 22,291 bilateral meetings between companies took place at the matchmaking event. Around 1/3 of the participants already informed about their successful match. The Fair is organized by the EU Project Innovation Centre and supported by the European Commission, the EU-China Business Association and several other EU institutions.

The 10th EU-China Business & Technology Cooperation Fair will be held from 4-6 November 2015 in Qingdao.

Qingdao, the most important transport hub and trading port in the North coastal region of China, is located at the intersection of land and maritime Silk Roads. With its well-established industries and rich resources, Qingdao is playing a leading role in developing the blue economy. As one of the first Chinese cities to open to the world, Qingdao is willing to work with other ocean-driven EU countries to forge partnerships in developing ocean economies, exploiting the resources, and promoting maritime research and innovation. Topics at the Fair will be:

Maritime Industry:

• Aquaculture & Fishery
• Shipbuilding, Mechanical Engineering & Precision Instrument
• Port Industry
• Shipping & Logistics
• Offshore Renewable Energy, New Materials & Environment
• Ocean Aviation
• Tourism

Other Industries:

• Bio-pharmacy & Bio-technology
• Modern Agriculture & Foodstuff
• ICT Industry & Services
• Universities, Innovative Clusters & Scientific Research Institutes

A cooperation forum will be held, as well as seminars on:

• Maritime research and industry cooperation
• High-end machinery industry cooperation
• New energy and environmental protection

B2B and cluster-to-cluster matchmaking session will also be organized.

More information is available at www.eu-china.org.cn The website for Qingdao’s matchmaking is: https://www.b2match.eu/tenth-eu-china-cooperation-fair-qingdao

The Chengdu event of the of 10th EU-China Business & Technology Cooperation Fair will be held from 9-11 November 2015 in Chengdu.

The Chengdu Event will focus on:

• Frontier technological achievements and trends
• Short, sharp 30-minute meetings to foster effective networking
• Share information with Event experts, scholars and business players
• Get your problems solved – Matching enterprises offering or seeking solutions
• See an exhibition of successful examples of B2B match-making meetings

Main topics:

• Environmental Protection
• New Energy & Energy-saving
• Bio-pharmacy & Bio-technology
• Modern Agriculture & Foodstuff
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• General Aviation, Space and Aerospace
• ICT Industry & Services
• Universities, Innovative Clusters & Scientific Research Institutes

More information on the Chengdu Event is available at: https://www.b2match.eu/tenth-eu-china-cooperation-fair-chengdu

The Fair is organized with the support of the EU-China Business Association (EUCBA) and the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC).

The United States will impose punitive duties on certain passenger vehicle and light truck tires imported from China. The U.S. Commerce Department determined that these Chinese tires had been sold in the U.S. at dumping margins ranging from 14.35% to 87.99%. The Department also said producers and exporters of these Chinese products received countervailable subsidies ranging from 20.73% to 100.77%. In 2014, imports of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China were worth about USD2.3 billion. The Commerce Department launched the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese tires in July last year, at the request of United Steelworkers, a U.S. labor union. “None of the tire firms have joined the petition seeking trade relief; the sole petitioner is the United Steelworkers union,” Tyler Moran and Gary Clyde Hufbauer, trade experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote in a recent article. The U.S. invoked a China-specific safeguard to impose punitive duties on imports of Chinese passenger vehicle and light truck tires from 2009 to 2012, with the total cost to U.S. consumers estimated at USD1.1 billion, the Shanghai Daily reports.