Chinese car buyers used to visiting traditional car dealers, now have a new venue to include on their shopping itinerary – the car supermarket. The new format allows buyers to look at a large array of cars in one place and compare specifications and prices. Suning was among the first to jump on the “one-stop shop” bandwagon when it opened a car supermarket in Nanjing last month. The market displays both domestic and foreign models, including Maserati, Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. It also provides a car leasing service, auto parts and after-sales maintenance. “For consumers, this is a way to save time, get to know more brands, and make decisions after careful comparisons,” said Liu Donghao, Manager of Suning’s Automotive Business Section. “We aim to break the mold of single-brand dealerships.” In the next three to five years, the company said it expects to open more than 100 car supermarkets in China. Gome Electric Appliances, a major rival of Suning, said it plans to add car sales areas in most of its 1,700 stores in China. “Gome has the advantages of a large number of stores in China,” said Zhang Haifeng, Manager of Gome’s car business. “Our stores are located in downtown areas, and that’s a strength in the automotive business.” However, car supermarkets are facing fierce competition from traditional car dealers and encountering some wariness by consumers. So far, foot traffic in the new supermarkets has been fairly light. Most of the car brands are luxury brands, but customers want to see all kinds of brands and models in different price ranges, one prospective buyer said. “Mainstream car manufacturers have spent a huge amount of time and money working with traditional car dealers. They are unlikely to abandon those ties to work closely with car supermarkets,” Luo Lei, Deputy Secretary General of the China Automobile Dealers Association, said.

Expats living in China often have problems when shopping on the Alibaba platforms Taobao and Tmall, online marketplaces offering 800 million products. If they can’t read Chinese, they have to ask a local for help when ordering merchandise. But two years ago, three American expats – Charlie Erickson, Jay Thornhill and Tyler McNew – decided to create an e-commerce website called Baopals, which navigates Taobao and Tmall in English translation. Baopals provides product descriptions, price and delivery information, customer comments and a channel for ordering goods all in English. The Baopals team said it is trying to build a bridge between Taobao and customers, not only those living in China but also those living overseas. The target market may not be very large, but most expats living in China have strong buying power. According to the latest data available, there are more than 600,000 foreign residents in China, and more than 170,000 of them live in Shanghai. The website will be updated in about two months to include more social functions, such as allowing English-language users to leave their own comments and recommendations about products they see on Alibaba sites. For payments, Baopals accepts Alipay, WeChat Wallet and UnionPay. The website charges a commission fee of 5% of the price of an ordered item, plus CNY8 per item type. Baopals staffers then use their own Taobao accounts to communicate with and pay online vendors. To date, Baopals has handled more than 120,000 orders and nearly 600,000 items from 16,000 registered users. The site turned a profit for the first time earlier this year. The Baopals team now numbers 26 full-time staff, the Shanghai Daily reports.

The desire among China’s wealthy to convert their yuan-based assets into foreign currencies has been a headache for the government. Despite its efforts to curb capital outflows, the problem has become one of the “grey rhino” risks to the economy that are considered too big to ignore. China’s foreign exchange reserves rose for a sixth straight month in July, suggesting efforts to slow capital outflows and boost inflows were paying dividends, but the growth should not be overplayed. “The rise in foreign exchange reserves is partly a result of currency valuation changes in the portfolio,” said Wang Tao, Chief China Economist with UBS. “A rise in reserves doesn’t mean a net capital inflow.” While the government does not release the currency structure of its reserve portfolio, it is generally estimated that the U.S. dollar accounts for about two thirds of the USD3 trillion foreign exchange reserves. The weakening dollar led to a relative rise of the yuan and also an appreciation in euro and yen assets, resulting in a nominal rise in foreign reserves. Xie Yaxuan, Chief Economist with China Merchants Securities, estimated that the valuation change contributed to a nominal rise of USD29.1 billion in July, which in effect means China’s reserves fell by USD5.2 billion during the month. Similarly, if measured by Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), China’s reserves have fallen in each of the past five months, from 2.2196 trillion SDR at the end of February to 2.1884 trillion at the end of July, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Yuan positions resulting from foreign exchange purchases have also been in decline for 21 months, indicating a steady capital outflow, although the fall in July was only CNY4.6 billion, down from CNY34.3 billion in June. Companies famous for acquiring assets abroad, such as Dalian Wanda Group, HNA Group and Anbang Insurance, have been told by the government to curtail their overseas purchases. Nevertheless, the problem of capital flight is unlikely to go away any time soon, the South China Morning Post reports.

China’s central government has told ministries to open up more sections of the economy to foreign investors, as foreign firms operating in China have expressed increasing frustration over limited access to markets, and government policies which they say discriminate against overseas companies. The central bank and foreign exchange regulator were told to ensure that “foreign investors can freely remit their profits, dividends and other forms of investment returns in China overseas”. The Chinese government said ministries and related government agencies must draft clear timetables on opening up sectors of the economy, including new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacture, ship design, aircraft repairs, maritime transport, railway passenger transport, petrol stations and call centers, as well as banking, brokerages and insurance. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Public Security were told to make it easier for foreigners to live and work in China. In particular, the cabinet said China must issue more long-term, multiple entry visas lasting five to 10 years to “qualified” foreigners. Some of those measures have been proposed before, but it is the first time the government has put them together in one list and urged ministries to deliver on the promises. Foreign stakes in Chinese securities houses and insurance firms, which are now capped at 49%, may be raised in the coming months. Ministries were also ordered to crack down on the infringement of foreign firms’ intellectual property rights (IPRs), and the tax authorities and land ministry were told to work out tax breaks and preferential land policies to encourage foreign companies to expand investment in China, especially in high-tech sectors and less developed regions of the country. China attracted CNY485 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) from January to July, down 1.2% on the same period last year.

China has launched an anti-dumping investigation into imports of Brazilian broiler chicken and products after a complaint from the domestic industry that Brazil has been selling the meat below market value. Brazil accounted for more than 50% of broiler product supplies to China, the world’s second largest poultry consumer, between 2013 and 2016. Brazil accounted for 85% of China’s frozen chicken imports last year, which totaled almost 600,000 tons, valued at as much as USD1.23 billion. Any move to penalize imports worth more than USD1 billion a year would be a major blow to Brazil’s meat industry following a scandal over its beef exports earlier in the year. Brazil replaced the United States as the top supplier of chicken after China slapped anti-dumping duties on U.S. broiler chicken products in 2010. China relies on imports for its supply of white feather broiler chickens, which are favored by fast-food chains like KFC and McDonald’s for their more rapid development and plumper meat, compared with yellow-feathered birds, which are native to China and generally sold retail. The investigation comes just months after Beijing slapped hefty penalties on sugar imports from top growers such as Brazil and Thailand after lobbying by domestic mills, the South China Morning Post reports.