Humanwell Healthcare Group and Citic Capital Partners are paying USD600 million to acquire the world’s No 2 condom maker, owned by Australia’s Ansell. The deal will give the two firms a ubiquitous condom brand, Jissbon, which sounds like “James Bond” in Chinese. Ansell is second only in terms of market share to Reckitt Benckiser, which owns the Durex brand in China. China is the fourth largest maker of condoms in the world, and its domestic market is predicted by American market researcher Reportlinker to witness significant growth.

The outlook for China’s real estate investment market is expected to be positive in 2017 despite a decline in transactions in the first quarter, Colliers International said. Between January and March, en bloc property transactions across the country fell 25% year-on-year to USD5.3 billion because of scarce high-quality property assets available for sale rather than lack of demand. “We expect investment activity to pick up over the rest of 2017 and come close to last year’s record, as China’s economy continues to expand while concerns over international trade and politics are easing,” said Andrew Haskins, Executive Director of Research for Asia Operations at Colliers.

Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com plans to build a low-altitude drone logistics network in Shaanxi province to better service rural areas. The network will span a 300-kilometer radius and include hundreds of routes and drone air bases for e-commerce shipments. Heavy-load drones are expected to be able to carry loads of over a ton, and will be able to transport products to both remote areas and cities. Rural areas with poor infrastructure have long posed a challenge for Chinese e-commerce companies, as deliveries can be difficult to make. Drone deliveries would open up a larger customer base for e-commerce companies like JD.com and Alibaba, since about half of China’s population still live in rural areas, where delivery may be difficult. “JD.com will be the first in the world to test drone delivery on this scale. “We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future,” said Wang Zhenhui, Chief Executive of JD Logistics, JD.com’s newly-established business group. JD.com already operates its own logistics network across China, with its own warehouses and delivery workers. In contrast, its largest rival Alibaba works with a network of delivery companies via its logistics arm Cainiao. Last year, JD.com started trialling drone deliveries to the countryside outside of Beijing, and in Jiangsu, Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces, the South China Morning Post reports.

China has pledged to further expand its presence in Antarctica, including building its fifth research station. Officials in Beijing said the country was still lagging behind the U.S., Russia and Norway in exploring and studying the polar regions, which did not match China’s status as “a great country”. But they said China had no ambition to exploit the vast resources underneath the frozen continent. “China is expected, on the basis of advancing scientific cognition of the polar regions, to elevate its Antarctic activities,” according to a white paper issued by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) on the occasion of the 40thAntarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Beijing. Since 1985, China has built four stations in Antarctica, two in the past decade, with the Kunlun station occupying the highest spot on the continent, Dome A. The U.S. has five research stations in Antarctica and Russia has eight. Qin Weijia, Director of SOA’s polar expedition office, said China had not spent enough on its polar efforts in the past. The white paper also expressed China’s willingness to enhance international polar cooperation, naming Norway as a potential partner, the South China Morning Post reports.

China’s month-long stock market correction has suppressed investor appetite for risk and pushed margin lending to its lowest level in three months. Margin lending, whereby investors can multiply their investible funds by using their securities as collateral, dropped 6% between mid-April and mid-May. Current margin trading levels are 60% lower than their peaks two years ago. Margin lending stood at CNY932.4 billion before the drop-off in mid-April. Margin financing was allowed from early 2010, and reached a peak of CNY2.26 trillion in mid-2015. Only institutional investors and retail investors with CNY500,000 or more in their share trading accounts can trade shares on margin. Margin financing collapsed in the aftermath of the stock market crash of mid-2015, during which the Shanghai stock index lost 40% of its value in three months.