It is strategically important for China’s economy that the country enhances protection of intellectual property rights, the state news agency Xinhua quoted Premier Li Keqiang as saying, as the cabinet promised to improve regulations. Inadequate protection of intellectual property had contributed to the decline in private investment, he added.
Companies and foreign business lobbies have often accused China of doing too little to rein in risks related to intellectual property rights, despite having anti-piracy laws. To protect these rights better, the Chinese government said it would look into punitive fines for infringements. It plans to increase costs for those caught infringing on intellectual property rights and will make rights protection more affordable.

Private businesses will enjoy equal rights similar to public sector companies, a government statement said. “Enhancing the protection of intellectual property rights is a matter of overall strategic significance, and it is vital for the development of the socialist market economy,” Premier Li Keqiang said. “The wider opening up of the country calls for enhancing IPR protection,” he added. The government vowed to “clear, revise or abolish” regulations or documents that were contradictory to the 2007 Property Rights Law and 2016 guidelines on improving property rights protection. “Wayward and arbitrary” law enforcement would be strictly prevented, it added. IPR law enforcement will be channelled towards cases related to the internet, exports and imports, as well as rural and urban areas, where counterfeiting is rampant, the South China Morning Post reports.

Tencent Holdings, Asia’s most valuable firm, is planning to set up a financial technology lab and digitize public medical services in the Xiongan New Area, as part of a broader push to gain a foothold in China’s latest economic zone, the Xiongan New Area, southeast of Beijing.

Xiongan will serve as an “innovation experimental platform” to build the so-called smart society, and is poised to become a role model for digital upgrading, said Tencent Chairman Pony Ma at a forum ahead of the signing ceremony with the local authorities of the zone, held in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. “The digital economy will contribute to over 70% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year,” Ma said. Under the agreement, the company would team up with six local hospitals to adopt artificial intelligence in disease diagnosis. Tencent will focus on computer vision and image recognition for medical diagnosis, combining algorithm models such as deep learning with medical data to assist doctors in accurate diagnosis and treatment. “Tencent is becoming a key enabler of AI for digital innovation as its strong cloud structure provides the essential building blocks for an array of AI works,” said Charlie Dai, Principal Analyst at consultancy Forrester.

Beijing has called for deeper integration between the real economy and advanced technologies, including internet, big data and AI, and has unveiled a three-step road map with the goal of making the country a global technology leader by 2050, the China Daily reports.

China and Canada’s Ontario province have inked 25 deals worth almost CAD600 million, mainly in the technology, e-commerce, finance and healthcare sectors.

Highlights of the signed deals included Tencent’s cooperation with Ontario’s OTT Financial Group to build a business accelerator center in Toronto and to develop the tech company’s cloud market, as well as China CITIC Bank’s agreement to provide education services to Ontario’s U Education Group. “Partnerships with international leaders like China are critical to Ontario’s economic success,” said Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, Canada’s largest province by population and economy. “Ontario’s diverse and innovative economy makes it one of the best, most competitive places in the world to invest, and we encourage Chinese businesses to take advantage of what Ontario has to offer,” she said. In 2016, China was Canada’s second largest trading partner and its second largest source of imported merchandise.

Ontario’s trade with China has surged by nearly 40% over the past five years, totaling CAD42 billion in 2016. Science and technology are two priority areas of cooperation. In these sectors, bilateral trade between China and Ontario accounted for 42% of the total, according to the Ontario government. Lepu Medical Technology Co signed an agreement with Ontario’s Communication & Power Industries, valued at CAD2.85 million, under which the latter would supply Lepu with a high-voltage generator product – a key component in angiography and cardiovascular X-ray systems for medical applications. Ontario spends about CAD50-55 billion every year to strengthen the medical sector, the China Daily reports.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has issued its harshest set of restrictions yet to rein in the country’s peer-to-peer and micro-lending businesses, putting a tight leash on an industry that was feeding off young borrowers living beyond their means.

Effective immediately, the central bank and its regional branches must stop licensing any new online micro-loan lenders, while offline “brick-and-mortar” lenders must be constrained to operating within their registered locations. “In recent years, some regional authorities have approved the set up of online small lending companies, or allowed small-loan companies to run online lending services, while the consumer lending business provided to some institutions contained relatively big risks,” the bank said in its November 21 instruction. China’s economy is awash with billions of yuan of cheap capital, as scores of micro-loan lenders have sprouted in recent years in place of traditional state-owned banks to provide funding and capital to everything from start-ups and entrepreneurship to personal borrowings.

China’s outstanding short-term consumer loans grew by CNY1.49 trillion through the first nine months of 2017, almost double the CNY830 billion growth in the whole of 2016, the South China Morning Post reports.

BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu has drawn up an ambitious plan for the Chinese carmaker, envisioning the creation of a new-energy corporate giant with sales of CNY1 trillion by 2025, nearly 10 times its revenue last year. “We want different teams to create synergies with each other while giving full play to their own specialities,” he told company officials. Wang, 51, said BYD will eventually evolve into a pioneer in providing a complete set of new-energy solutions for clients.

His remarks were made at a ceremony to mark the 23rd anniversary of Shenzhen-based BYD, whose annual sales were valued at CNY104 billion in 2016. BYD is part owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and is often dubbed China’s Tesla since it specializes in electric and plug-in petrol-electric hybrid vehicles. The Chairman announced that BYD will conduct a drastic restructuring to form a new industry chain, a move designed to chase rapid growth in the coming eight years. BYD’s different divisions, including passenger vehicle, commercial vehicle, battery and electronics, will be developed into various “clusters of businesses,” he added. BYD was established in the 1990s, initially as a battery manufacturer before it started building vehicles in 2003.

Wang, ranked the 39th richest mainland Chinese by Forbes, defined BYD as more than just a manufacturer of batteries and cars, pushing hard his message that BYD will take advantage of the increasing demand for new-energy vehicles (NEVs) to expand scale. BYD also plans to open its first assembly plant in Canada, the South China Morning Post reports.