Alibaba Health Information Technology has reached an agreement with six other parties to establish a joint venture for internet health insurance related operations in China. The joint venture has a registered capital of CNY1 billion. It is awaiting approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC). China Taiping Insurance Holdings Co is the largest shareholder with a 21% stake.

Chinese judges have called on legislators to revise a law on unfair competition. Last year alone, Chinese courts accepted 2,181 civil disputes involving unfair competition, a year-on-year increase of 53%, according to Song Xiaoming, Chief Judge of the Supreme People’s Court’s Intellectual Property Tribunal. Such disputes arising from the internet have increased rapidly, Song said. “New and complicated problems are emerging online that the current law, established in the 1990s, cannot solve,” he added. To keep the online market in order and protect online intellectual property rights, he suggested that legislators update the law on unfair competition. Further clarification is also needed on ways to reduce the cost of protecting IP rights and the online evidence that needs to be collected. Last year, the number of IP cases heard by Chinese courts rose by 11.73% year-on-year, with most of them taking place in Beijing and Shanghai, and in Jiangsu, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

The China Center for International Economic Exchanges has warned that recent better-than-expected economic data might reflect only a short-term rebound, rather than a long-term reversal of slowing growth. The Center said an expected imminent cut in the central bank’s reserve requirement would help stabilize the economy, but that there was little room to cut benchmark interest rates this year. Economists are concerned over the sustainability of recent growth. They say it has been driven the old-fashioned way – through property investment and infrastructure construction – and that the increase of credit will add to an already heavy corporate debt load. Zhang Xiaoqiang, Executive Vice Director with the think tank, said some big companies were putting the banks loans into their deposit accounts, instead of investing it in the real economy. China’s banks extended CNY4.61 trillion in new loans in the first quarter of the year, up CNY930 billion from a year earlier.

Chinese robotics maker Zhejiang Wanfeng Technology Development Co has acquired Paslin, a U.S. robotics firm focused on the automotive sector, for USD302 million. Wu Jinhua, Wanfeng’s Chairman and CEO, said: “Paslin has accumulated advanced technologies and client groups in the field of automated welding in North America, and this acquisition could not only help Paslin realize its globalization, but also enhance Wanfeng’s competitiveness in industrial robot system integration technology.” The company’s robotics business could exceed USD10 billion in the future, considering the huge demand for robots in the Asian market. Established in 1937, Paslin is the world’s leading provider of welding robot application systems to the global automotive and heavy industries market. Founded in 1994, Wanfeng’s parent, Wanfeng Auto Holding Group, has interests in auto parts manufacturing, industrial robots, intelligent equipment, aviation and financial services. In 2013, the group purchased Canada’s MLTH Holding, the world’s leading manufacturer of magnesium alloy auto parts for CNY1.1 billion. Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics show that sales of industrial robots reached 57,000 units in 2014 in China, accounting for one-fourth of global sales. China has become the largest industrial robots market for the three consecutive years since 2013, the China Daily reports.

Public concern over land-use rights in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, has prompted official media to call for a clear legal framework concerning home ownership. Hundreds of homeowners in Wenzhou face uncertainty as their 20-year land-use leases approach expiration. Local authorities have reportedly asked them to pay hundreds of thousands of yuan to renew each 20-year land lease on 70-year terms or risk losing ownership. In China, the government retains ownership of the land on which all houses are built. Individuals may own a house, but must lease the land itself from the government. Since the commercialization of the property market in the 1990s, residential properties have been built based on land-use leases ranging from 20 to 70 years. The shortest leases, such as those in Wenzhou, are now coming up for renewal. The issue has arisen at a time that property prices in major cities such as Shanghai are surging, with some homeowners paying up to CNY5 million for a two-bedroom home. Millions of homeowners are watching what happens in Wenzhou fearing that their own property investments could be questioned when their leases expire. The official Xinhua News Agency said that a blurry definition of home ownership could potentially cause social unrest. “It doesn’t make sense if homeowners or their offspring are required to pay further millions of yuan to continue to own their houses,” said Shen Ye, 42, a Shanghai homeowner. “The question could be answered when China officially starts imposing property tax,” said Joe Zhou, JLL’s Director of Research in China. “With the property tax, homeowners can continue to own their houses and automatically renew the land-use agreement after 70 years as long as they continue to pay the tax,” the South China Morning Post reports.