New e-commerce tax policies may lead to cheaper imported cosmetics but higher costs of food and baby products for Chinese consumers. Under the new tax policy, the government will remove the parcel tax, the only tax currently levied on imported items sold online. Instead, it will levy an import value-added tax (VAT) and consumption duties but with a 30% discount, as long as a purchase doesn’t exceed CNY2,000 and the annual gross transactions by an individual consumer are below CNY20,000. For deals above the cap, consumers will get no tax discounts and will also need to pay customs tariffs. The new policy, which will take effect on April 8, comes a year after the government implemented the parcel tax to promote cross-border e-commerce in China. The parcel tax rate for lower-end products such as food and infant items is 10%, according to Wang Wei, Director of the Institute for Market Economy of the State Council Development Research Center. “Such low tax rates are in fact giving cross-border e-commerce sites an unfair advantage over offline retailers,” she said. E-commerce site Alibaba Group said that lower-end products such as food and baby products will be subject to heavier taxes after the tax adjustment. The price of cosmetics on the other hand may become cheaper if a single deal exceeds CNY100. Last year, online sales of imported goods reached CNY638 billion and accounted for 17% of China’s total online retail sales, according Mintel Group, a London-based market research company. The most popular categories of products purchased online in China are food, beauty products, consumer electronics, clothing and shoes, the China Daily reports.

China has 88 universities that have at least one subject ranking in the world’s top 400, according to the latest “QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016” report from London-headquartered education company Quacquarelli Symonds. It looks at 42 individual subjects taught around the world and names the top 400 institutions in each of those subjects, based on the institutions’ academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact. A total of 58 colleges and institutions from the Chinese mainland, eight from Hong Kong, 21 from Taiwan and one from Macao were included in the ranking for breaking into the top 400 in at least one subject. The good performance of the 88 educational institutions was second only to the U.S., which had 164 colleges and institutes ranked. “This year, China has five subjects in the global top 10, 65 subjects taught at seven universities that are in the top 50 and 134 subjects from 24 universities in the top 100, these are internationally recognized achievements,” Zhang Yan, China Director at the QS Intelligence Unit, said.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange has for the first time delisted a company for breaching rules on information disclosure. An investigation found that Zhuhai Boyuan Investment Co’s violation was “very grave,” the bourse said. The company forged bank’s acceptance bills to cover up CNY380 million in earnings its controlling shareholder had failed to pay. It also inflated assets, revenues and profits. The delisting highlights the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s zero tolerance of major violations. Hopefully the move will encourage listed companies to disclose information in accordance with rules and this could help better protect investor’s legitimate rights and interests and promote the stable and healthy development of the capital market, the stock exchange added. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) launched an investigation into the case in June 2014 and handed it to the police in March 2015. Boyuan received a delisting warning on March 31, 2015, and halted trading of its shares on May 25 the same year. The last company delisted by the Shanghai exchange was China Erzhong Group (Deyang) Heavy Industries in April 2015. The reason was years of losses. CSRC said in February that it punished 10 companies last year over information disclosure by fining them and confiscating funds, the Shanghai Daily reports.

Shares of Zhuhai Boyuan will return for pre-delisting trading for 30 days from March 29. The CSRC may force out more problematic listed companies in 2016. However, the CSRC dismissed reports that it had created a blacklist of 30 to 40 problematic listed companies, which it planned to delist. Spokesman Deng Ge said: “Stock exchanges are responsible for the delisting of listed companies.” He also said that plans for the introduction of a new strategic emerging industries board in Shanghai were excluded from the country’s 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20) earlier this month because they are still at the discussion stage.

China has scrapped 18-year-old regulations governing taxi services, paving the way for the legalization of online ride-hailing services such as Uber. In a move aimed at leveling the playing field between old and new business models, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Public Security signed a document on March 16 that approved the scrapping of the previous regulation, which had been effective since 1998. It is not known when the new rules, which are also expected to abolish the high franchise fees paid by taxi drivers to their companies, will be released. Transport Minister Yang Chuantang said he hoped the new regulations, covering both taxi and car-hiring services, would be released “as soon as possible”. He said they would “reflect public opinion received last year”. “As a new invention, online ride-hailing services have been a good experience for consumers, and welcomed by some passengers. So our solution is to provide a legal way forward for the industry”, Yang said.

Didi Chuxing Technology, China’s largest car-hailing app operator, is now processing over 10 million orders a day, making it the second-largest online transaction platform in China after Alibaba’s Taobao. Didi Chuxing, which rebranded last September from Didi Kuaidi to represent its broader portfolio of services including carpooling, shuttle buses and more, saw its 250 million users complete a total of 1.43 billion rides last year, the company said. Its carpooling service Didi Express Pool saw over 1.57 million daily rides just three months after its launch in June. By the end of last month, the total number of people using this service in 15 of China’s biggest cities had passed 83.2 million, according to Didi. The cities include Beijing, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, Chengdu in Sichuan province, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, it said. Carpooling is becoming more popular among Chinese customers.

At the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting in Sanya, Hainan province, China and five other countries along the 5,000-km Mekong river agreed to deepen cooperation and build a comprehensive connectivity network covering railways, highways, waterways, ports and aviation. China also promised CNY10 billion in preferential loans and a credit line of USD10 billion to support infrastructure and production capacity projects. The Mekong river, whose upper part is known in China as the Lancang, is an important water source for the five countries on the Indochinese Peninsula – Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who co-chaired the meeting with Li, called the gathering a “new chapter” in the Lancang-Mekong cooperation process. China is the biggest trading partner of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, and the biggest source of investment in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. China’s bilateral trade with the five nations reached USD193.9 billion last year. The meeting decided to set up a water resource center to coordinate hydropower development and jointly deal with Mekong floods and droughts. China’s dam and hydro-electric project had sparked complaints from downstream states, but a week before the meeting, Beijing agreed to discharge water from March 15 to April 10 from a dam in Yunnan at the request from Mekong Delta countries suffering the worst drought in 90 years.