68370143
submission
hackingbear writes:
Two Chinese ministers offered support for Russia as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up the plummeting ruble without depleting foreign-exchange reserves which is already the largest in the world. Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said expanding a currency swap between the two nations and making increased use of yuan for bilateral trade would have the greatest impact in aiding Russia. Western governments and experts have been criticizing China for restricting exchange and suppressing the value of its currency, even though anyone who lived in China during the 1990's knew that the value of Yuan was cut to align the same as in the (vibrant) black market that is still thriving. But as grandma has warned us, be careful of what we wish for. China has recently greatly sped up the relaxation of currency exchange and is promoting the yuan as an alternative to the dollar for global trade and finance and has signed currency-swap agreements with 28 other central banks to encourage this. Once accomplished, back by China's growing military might, Renminbi would be a formidable competitor to U.S. Dollar and which means U.S. wouldn't borrow almost freely from the world and our state of finance would be like that of Greece.
67639317
submission
hackingbear writes:
China is conducting preliminary research on a super-heavy launch vehicle that will be used in its manned missions to the moon. Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028, comparable to US's SLS Block II in terms of capability and likely beating its schedule. The China National Space Administration has started preliminary research for the Mars exploration program and is persuading the government to include the project into the country's space agenda, according to Tian Yulong, secretary-general of the administration. Separately, China's Long March series of rocket has completed the 200th flight on Dec 7. It took 37 years to complete the first 100 flights but only 7 years for the second 100 flights. In addition, it claims (link in Chinese) a success rate of 98%, on par with EU's and beating US's 97% and Russia's 93% success rates.
67440677
submission
hackingbear writes:
Sheng Fu, CEO of Cheetah Mobile, a public Chinese mobile software company you probably haven't heard of but have top downloaded products in Android markets around the world, said that the intense competition of the Chinese market leads to products that can compete globally. There are so many recent university graduates working in tech, all with their startups looking to find their place in the market, he said. Chinese companies saw the impact that piracy played in the PC software era, and China’s mobile companies grew up knowing they would need to make money without getting consumers to open their wallets. “Chinese companies are so good at making free but high-quality products,” he said. Sounds like we have a good race to the bottom.
66358821
submission
hackingbear writes:
Bummed that you're home alone on date night, or stuck in your mom's basement, yet again? Don't worry. A new gadget or some scuba gear could help. Observed on November 11 — or "11.11," for the date with the most 1s — Singles Day, which started out as a joke among a group of male college students attending Nanjing University in the 1990s, has become the world's biggest online shopping day, thanks to the e-commerce prowess of China's Alibaba Group, which on this day last year, sold twice what all US companies sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. This year, Alibaba has decided to take its 11.11 promotions worldwide, highlighting global brands including online jewelry store Blue Nile, clothing brand Juicy Couture, and even Costco. Amazon has tried to get a piece of the action. The Seattle-based company launched promotions for the holiday last year on its Chinese site, and it's done so again this year.
66076031
submission
hackingbear writes:
China has two high-speed train makers, the China Northern Railcar Corp. (CNR) and China Southern Railcar Corp. (CSR). Despite both being state-owned companies, the two are really competing with each other in the international high-speed train market, undercutting prices. Now, the Chinese government is set to fix that by asking the two to merge. Such a deal also would raise questions about China’s determination to enforce monopoly laws that have been under a microscope in recent months as foreign companies including dairy makers, car makers including Volkswagen AG ’s Audi and technology companies Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Corp. have been investigated by antitrust authorities. However, as we haven't been complaining about China's ow prices hurting our business, shouldn't China raising the price be good for other train makers?
65337261
submission
hackingbear writes:
The Supreme People’s Court, China's top court, has outlined the liabilities of network service providers in a document on the handling of online personal rights violation cases. “Rights violators usually hide in the dark online. They post harmful information out of the blue, and victims just can’t be certain whom they should accuse when they want to bring the case to court,” said Yao Hui, a senior SPC judge specializing in civil cases. Those re-posting content that violates others’ rights and interests will also answer for their actions, and their liability will be determined based on the consequences of their posts, the online influence of re-posters, and whether they make untruthful changes to content that mislead. This essentially tries to ban the so-called human flesh searching. Though this does not stop others from using the chance to highlight the country's censorship problems even though the rulings seem to focus on personal privacy protection.
63758627
submission
hackingbear writes:
According to the new Boston Consulting Group Global Manufacturing Cost-Competitiveness Index, the often perceived as low-cost manufacturing nations — such as China, Brazil, Russia, and the Czech Republic — are no longer much cheaper than the U.S. In some cases, they are estimated to be even more expensive. Chinese manufacturing wages have nearly quintupled since 2004, while Mexican wages have risen by less than 50 percent in U.S. dollar terms, contrary to our long-standing misconception that their labors were being slaved. In the same period, the U.S. wage is essentially flat, whereas Mexican wages have risen only 67%. Not all countries are taking full advantage of their low-cost advantages, however. The report found that global competiveness in manufacturing is undermined in nations such as India and Indonesia by several factors, including logistics, the overall ease of doing business, and inflexible labor markets.
61467739
submission
hackingbear writes:
Burdened with Alabama's highest unemployment rate, long abandoned by textile mills and furniture plants, Wilcox County, Alabama, desperately needs jobs. And the jobs are coming from China. Henan's Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group opened a plant here last month, employing 300 locals. Chinese companies invested a record $14 billion in the United States last year, according to the Rhodium Group research firm. Collectively, they employ more than 70,000 Americans, up from virtually none a decade ago. Powerful forces — narrowing wage gaps (Chinese wages have been doubling every few years), tumbling U.S. energy prices, the rising Yuan — up 30% over the decade — are pulling Chinese companies across the Pacific. Perhaps very soon, Chinese workers will start protesting their jobs being outsourced to the cheap labors in the U.S.
61445419
submission
hackingbear writes:
According to British patent consultancy CambridgeIP, China has filed for more than 2,200 graphene patents, the most of any country, followed by the U.S. with more than 1,700 patents, and South Korea with just under 1,200 patents. In terms of institutions, Samsung, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and IBM lead the way of number of patent filing on this futurist materials with seemingly unlimited potentials, followed by Qinghua University of China. As China's moving its economy to be more innovation based and strengthening its IP laws, American companies will perhaps soon be at the receiving ends of frivolous patent law suits.
58698581
submission
hackingbear writes:
Qin Zhihui, a user of the Chinese Twitter-like website Weibo, has confessed in court to spreading false rumors about the Chinese government in the first public trial under a Chinese crackdown on online rumors. China has threatened criminal penalties against anyone who spreads rumors on microblogs that are reposted more than 500 times, or seen by more than 5,000 users. Qin invented a story that the government gave 200m yuan (US$32m) in compensation to the family of a foreign passenger killed in a high-speed train crash in 2011 in order to incite hatred to the government which gave much lower compensation to Chinese nationals. The Chinese government did have policies in the past to give more compensations to foreigners than locals in disasters, though those policies have been phased out in recent years. Online rumours are particularly pervasive in China, where traditional media is heavily regulated by the government and public trust in the media is low.
58225155
submission
hackingbear writes:
In China, censorship is not just about politics but is also a vibrant business. Police in Beijing have detained at least ten people, including employees at web giant Baidu and a web censor working at the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, over allegations that they deleted defamatory online posts about companies and government enterprises in return for money, the Beijing News reports. The case was first surfaced when Baidu noticed and reported several of its workers illegal activities. From 2010 to 2012, Gu, an ex-Baidu employee, is believed to have deleted over 2,000 posts on Baidu, 500 on news site Sohu and 20 posts on qianlong.com, with over 2 million yuan ($322,000) reportedly changing hands. While Gu can delete negative Internet posts for topics ranging from environmental issues to product quality problems on behalf of companies, he could not delete posts relating to his government clients. So he paid and asked Liu, a Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau web censor, to issue official orders to the web sites to remove the posts (in Chinese, here's the google translation). Liu was found to have accepted 770,000 yuan ($124,000) from Gu for deleting posts. He also received 150,000 yuan ($24,000) from other sources.
57772847
submission
hackingbear writes:
China e-commerce giant Alibaba Group confirmed early Sunday that it plans to become a public company in the US. The proposed US IPO, which is expected to raise more than $15 billion and giving Alibaba a $130 billion valuation, is a bid winning over Hong Kong stock exchange, which had been competing for the offering with US stock exchanges but objected to some of Alibaba's proposed listing terms. Founded in 1999 by former English teacher Jack Ma, the Hangzhou, China company, of which Yahoo owns 24%, provides marketplace platforms that allow merchants to sell goods directly to consumers controlling 80% of Internet e-commerce market in China.
57313355
submission
hackingbear writes:
In a side-by-side comparison, China's People's Daily, the main mouth piece of the Chinese government, slams Western media of double-standard in the reporting of the Kunming train station terrorist attack in which 29 people were killed and 140 injured. The Western media named include BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, and The Fox News are accused of using words such as "violence", "knife attack" that paint the event as a regular crime, but used the word "terror attack", "terrorism" to describe the London attack last year that resulted in a single military personnel dead. The newspaper also accused CNN of double-quoting the word "terrorists" in a later report. The article also compare the official U.S. responses which use similar wordings.
56016719
submission
hackingbear writes:
The Chinese moon rover, Jade Rabbit, encountered abnormality in control mechanism before its planned sleep during the 14-day-long lunar night. In the form of a diary, the Jade Rabbit said, "The shi-fu ("kung-fu maters", meaning the scientists and engineers) are working around the clock trying to fix the problm and their eyes look like rabbit's (in red due to fatigue), but I may not be able to survive over this lunar night." (translated, original in Chinese.) The rover. landed on moon on Dec 14 and was designed to operate for three months, vowed to continue the mission with Chang'e 5 in 2017.
52838427
submission
hackingbear writes:
While the Cyber Monday after Thanksgiving is the busiest online shopping day in the U.S., it pals in comparison to China's Single's Day on November 11 (11/11), which started out in the 1990s as a protest to Valentine's Day. Sales on Singles' Day last year for Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-retailer, totaled more than $3.1 billion, doubling the $1.5 billion spent by U.S. consumers on Cyber Monday in 2012. This year, Alibaba's two ecommerce sites, Tmall and Taobao Marketplace, are expecting sales of at least $4.9 billion. The websites across China will be offering 50% discounts on items like boyfriend body pillows and hoodies that read "I am single because I am fat."
