Finance | Wandering China

May 25, 2013 • 9:49 am 0

[Full text] Li Keqiang’s article published in Swiss newspaper [China.ORG] #RisingChina #LiKeqiang

The Chinese have much to glean from the Swiss model. For instance – they too share the ambition of mastering topography. The Swiss proved centuries ahead with mass transit across the most heinous terrain accomplished already in the late years of the Qing dynasty.

Top of the Jungfrau, often marketed to tourists as the top of Europe – is a plague and bit of Chinese cultural capital (see the locks?) that is revealing.

Top of the Jungfrau: Swiss with the foresight of the Chinese tourism wave – back in 2004.

Switzerland is the first European destination on the list of countries I will visit after becoming China’s premier. In Chinese culture, being “first” always carries symbolic meaning. My choice of Switzerland is in no way haphazard: we have got a few important things to do here. They are all landmark events in China’s opening-up, and they all have something to do with Switzerland. Li Keqiang

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[Full text] Li Keqiang’s article published in Swiss newspaper
published in Neue Zuricher Zeitung
Source – Xinhua, published May 24, 2013

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang published on Thursday a signed article titled “Why Switzerland?” in Neue Zuricher Zeitung, a German-language Swiss daily ahead of his visit to the European country.

The following is the full text of the English translation of the article:

Switzerland is the first European destination on the list of countries I will visit after becoming China’s premier. In Chinese culture, being “first” always carries symbolic meaning. My choice of Switzerland is in no way haphazard: we have got a few important things to do here. They are all landmark events in China’s opening-up, and they all have something to do with Switzerland.

The first job is to secure progress in the building of China-Switzerland FTA. It was during my last visit in 2010 that the two countries agreed to speed up preparations for an FTA. Over the past three years and more, the relevant departments and agencies of the two countries have worked energetically in the negotiations, and reached the final conclusion after nine rounds of talks. With the advent of FTA, Switzerland will become the first country in continental Europe and the first of the world’s top 20 economies to reach an FTA with China, the implications of which will be significant. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, China Dream, Chinese Model, Culture, Economics, Europe, Finance, Government & Policy, Influence, International Relations, Lifestyle, Mapping Feelings, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, Switzerland, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Tourism, Trade

May 21, 2013 • 11:40 am 0

China’s 20 year plan to pay 8 trillion to urbanize 500 million people by 2034 [Next Big Future] #RisingChina #Urbanisation

For more on the macroeconomics agency of the Chinese State Council, go to the National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China’s (中华人民共和国国家发展和改革委员会) English online presence.

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China’s 20 year plan to urbanize 500 million people by 2034
Posted by Brian Wang
Source – Big Next Future, published May 19, 2013

After extensive consultation, co-ordinated by the National Development and Reform Commission, the long-term plan for China’s urbanisation is being finalised. Behind all the complex issues is one fundamental question: how will it be paid for?

Here the ballpark costs of $400 billion per year are suggested to use increased taxes and temporarily increasing the budget deficit from 2% of GDP to 5% and redirecting funds from rural land acquisition.

The costs of urbanization could be reduced by leveraging the factory mass produced skyscraper technology of Broad Group. China’s Broad Group is building the Sky City One using factory mass production. It is to likely completed after 90 days of assembly late in 2013 and the projected cost for the building is RMB 4 billion (US$628 million). Sky City will boast 220 floors, 1 million square meters (11 million square feet) of floor space and 104 elevators, according to the preliminary plans. It will cost $63 per square foot and house 30000 people in 4500 apartments. Five hundred Skycities would cost $314 billion (and costs could go down by having the follow on buildings being learned to be built for less). They would house the 15 million people each year that are urbanized. They would also have all of the schools, offices, hospitals and other facilities that were needed.

Please click here to read the full article at Next Big Future

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Migrant Workers, Migration (Internal), Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Uncategorized

May 20, 2013 • 4:35 pm 1

How Chinese Subsidies Changed the World [Harvard Business Review] #RisingChina #Solar #GovernmentSubsidies

Unfair or unacceptable paradigm? China finances its economic reach to extend its soft power. It is perhaps, simply, a more synergistic strategy between state and its business sector.

Chinese solar products I use have proven ruggen and hardy, down to the little solar toys.

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How Chinese Subsidies Changed the World
by Usha C.V. Haley and George T. Haley |
Harvard Business Review, published April 25, 2013

Last week, LDK Solar, a struggling Chinese manufacturer of solar wafers and panels, announced that it had missed $24 million in bond payments. This news followed the bankruptcy in March of Wuxi Suntech, the main operating subsidiary of the world’s largest maker of solar panels, after it defaulted on a $541 million bond payment.

It is no coincidence that this upheaval in the Chinese solar industry is occurring at a time when the central government’s subsidies that had financed the industry’s explosive expansion have declined even as problems in the global solar-panel market have soared.

Since 2008, through government subsidies, the manufacturing capacity of China’s solar-panel industry grew tenfold, leading to a vast global oversupply. A surge in exports of Chinese panels depressed world prices by 75%. In 2012, China’s top six solar companies had debt ratios of over 80%. Our research showed that without subsidies, these companies would be bankrupt. If the Chinese government sticks to its decision to stop funding unprofitable solar-panel manufacturers and support a revamping of the industry, more bankruptcies and restructurings are sure to follow.

Please click here to read the full article at the Harvard Business Review.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Collectivism, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Harvard Business Review, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Media, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Soft Power, Solar, Strategy, The Chinese Identity, Trade

April 30, 2013 • 8:46 am 0

Iron Man 3 illustrates a Chinese puzzle Hollywood is hoping to solve [Guardian] #RisingChina #Hollywood #Ironman3

Hollywood finds it tricky to produce their own cultural capital while willingly winning Chinese consensus.

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Iron Man 3 illustrates a Chinese puzzle Hollywood is hoping to solve
US-Chinese co-productions don’t appear to be hitting the spot, as Chinese film-makers are catering for domestic audiences with growing success
Source - Guardian Film Blog, published April 24, 2013

There’s all sorts of meta-cinematic devilry going on in one of the strangest blockbusters of the decade – Iron Man 3. In one scene Ben Kingsley’s nemesis, the Mandarin, halts for a lecture on the authenticity, or otherwise, of the “Chinese” fortune cookie – right before laying waste to Grauman’s Chinese theatre in Hollywood: “Another cheap American knock-off.” You can’t help but wonder whether this particular tirade is Iron Man 3 writers Shane Black and Drew Pearce comment on the process of trying to adapt the film for Chinese audiences, and the bigger, east-facing game the whole of Hollywood is playing.

With an eye, like everyone else, on a fistful of yuan, Iron Man franchise-holders Disney and Marvel partnered with Shanghai-based media agency DMG, who also helped produce Looper last year, for the third film. But the suggestion last summer that Tony Stark might be making a radical turn towards China never quite transpired. The Mandarin was tactfully steered away from the yellow-peril caricature of the comics, becoming a prototypical icon of terrorism instead. Some scenes were filmed in Beijing in December; Fifth Generation veteran Wang Xueqi appears in an early party scene, and more of this material – including a cameo for starlet Fan Bingbing – will appear in a special Chinese cut.

And that’s it. Another cheap American knockoff. It’s essentially the same piece of blockbuster chinoiserie that we’re seeing more and more these days as the studios make eyes at China: like The Karate Kid remake’s relocation to Beijing (still with an American protagonist), the Asian-scented water approach of GI Joe: Retaliation, or James Bond’s luminescent Shanghai skyscraper fight in Skyfall.

Please click here to read the rest of the article at its source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Entertainment, Finance, Government & Policy, Ideology, Influence, International Relations, Lifestyle, Media, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, People, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.S.

April 30, 2013 • 8:00 am 0

Rhodes East: Why is the Schwarzman Scholarship in China? [New Yorker] #RisingChina #SchwarzmanScholarship #CrossPollination

200 scholars annually to bridge a great divide in bilateral relations:

For more, see

China’s Internet Users to Schwarzman Scholarship: Meh (Tea Leaf Nation blog, April 24, 2013)

The Limits of Stephen Schwarzman’s Scholarship Diplomacy (The Atlantic, April 26, 2013)

Private equity titan eyes China for a rival to Rhodes Scholarship (The Conversation, April 24, 2013)

Related on WanderingChina
S$370m scholarship aims to cool Beijing-West tensions [TODAYonline] April 22, 2013

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Rhodes East: Why is the Schwarzman Scholarship in China
By Evan Osnos
Source – New Yorker, published April 26, 2013

“Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.” So said Cecil Rhodes, the diamond miner and an ardent believer in British colonialism, who, in 1902, established the Oxford scholarship that bears his name, so that some of the world’s best young minds could come as near as they might hope to being English.

This week, Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, invoked Rhodes’s gift as the inspiration behind a large new scholarship for study not in America but in China. He is hoping that familiarity with the world’s rising superpower will blunt growing American anxiety about changes in status. “Anger can lead to trade problems, and ultimately to military confrontation,” he told me. “We had to find a way to stop or ameliorate that situation.” The scholarship will draw two hundred students a year to a one-year English-language master’s program at a dedicated new college inside Tsinghua University. Twenty per cent of the winners will be from China, forty-five per cent from America, and the remainder from elsewhere. Schwarzman is giving a hundred million of a personal fortune estimated at $6.5 billion, and raising another two hundred million largely from blue-chip companies with big investments in China, to create an endowment that the Times calls “one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China.”

In the China-watching world, the announcement created a stir, and a few questions: Will this inspire more giving from Chinese tycoons? When will the program expand to include African applicants? How much of China can one learn in one year?

Before Schwarzman announced it at the Great Hall of the People, I sat down with him in Beijing. Here is an edited transcript.

Please click here to read the full article at its source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Economics, Finance, History, Influence, International Relations, Peaceful Development, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.S.

April 29, 2013 • 8:57 am 0

5% of foreign reserves – ‘Australia to buy Chinese government debt’ [Financial Times] #RisingChina #Australia #ForeignReserves

Australia broadens relations with its top export destination by investing 5% of foreign reserves in Chinese government bonds.

Earlier this month, Australia became only the third country to establish a direct currency trading link with China, after the US and Japan. The RBA and the People’s Bank of China also set up a currency swap facility in March 2012. The RBA had around A$38.2bn ($39bn) in foreign reserves at the end of March. Financial Times, April 24, 2013

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Australia to buy Chinese government debt
By Josh Noble in Hong Kong
Source – Financial Times, published April 24, 2013

Source – Haver Analytics

The Australian central bank plans to invest about 5 per cent of its foreign reserves in Chinese government bonds, in the latest move to build closer economic ties between the two countries.

“This decision to invest in China is an important one. It reflects the broader economic relationship between China and Australia and our increasing financial ties”, Philip Lowe, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, said in a speech on Wednesday in Shanghai. “It provides greater diversification of our investments and will help with our understanding of the Chinese financial markets.”

Earlier this month, Australia became only the third country to establish a direct currency trading link with China, after the US and Japan. The RBA and the People’s Bank of China also set up a currency swap facility in March 2012. The RBA had around A$38.2bn ($39bn) in foreign reserves at the end of March.

Please click here to read the rest of the article at its source.

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Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Economics, Finance, Financial Times, Government & Policy, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Peaceful Development, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade

April 28, 2013 • 11:38 am 0

Growing breed of Chinese moguls Down Under [Straits Times] #RisingChina #OverseasChinese #Australia

Chinese moguls keeping a toe down under.

‘Australia has more links to China’s tycoons than any other country except the United States, according to the compiler of the Hurun list.’

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Growing breed of Chinese moguls Down Under
Based in China, they have big investments in Australia and some have political clout as well
By Jonathan Pearlman, In Sydney
Source – Straits Times, published April 28, 2013

Xu Rongmao. –
PHOTO: by APPLE DAILY

When a rare chance arose to buy a World Heritage-listed resort island in the Great Barrier Reef last year, Australian-Chinese media mogul William Han decided to invest in paradise.

“Aussie Bill”, as he is known, outbid 200 others for the 584ha Lindeman Island off the coast of Queensland from Club Med, shelling out A$12 million (S$15.3 million) for it. He now plans to spend another A$500 million at least to turn it into a high-end resort for Asian holidaymakers.

Mr Han is one of a growing breed of Chinese-Australian moguls, several of whom are on China’s top 1,000 rich list compiled by the Hurun Report magazine.

Shanghai-based property mogul Xu Rongmao was ranked No. 12 last year with an estimated worth of US$4.7 billion (S$5.8 billion). An Australian citizen, he has invested in properties in Sydney and Darwin and educated both his children in Australia.

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Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Channel News Asia, Chinese Model, Chinese overseas, Economics, Finance, Greater China, Influence, International Relations, Overseas Chinese, Peaceful Development, Public Diplomacy, Social, Soft Power, Straits Times, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Australian, The Chinese Identity

April 26, 2013 • 3:55 pm 0

China Seeks Soft Power Influence in U.S. Through CCTV [NPR] #RisingChina #SoftPower #CCTV

NPR on the Chinese Charm offensive: broadcast and transmission parity to get its side of the story out first, traditional media style remains a priority for the Chinese.

“We see what the British have done; what CNN has done for years. We need to be part of that… China is a big power; the state broadcaster is a big company. We want to be part of that dynamic.” Jim Laurie, lead consultant for CCTV America when relating what Chinese executives told him.

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China Seeks Soft Power Influence in U.S. Through CCTV
By David Folkenflik
Source – NPR, published April 25, 2013

Before joining CCTV America, Phillip T.K. Yin was an anchor and reporter for Bloomberg Television. Source – NPR

At a time when so many major American news organizations are cutting back, foreign news agencies are beefing up their presence abroad and in the U.S. One of the biggest new players arrives from China and, more likely than not, can be found on a television set near you.

CCTV, or China Central Television, is owned by the Chinese government. With more than 40 channels in China and an offshoot in the U.S., the broadcaster has been highly profitable for the country’s ruling Communist Party, which is liking profits a lot these days.

Navigating Two Media Traditions

CCTV America Business News Anchor Phillip T.K. Yin was born and raised in the U.S. by parents who emigrated from mainland China. Yin used to work in investment and for CNBC and Bloomberg. He says he is mindful of the tension between the American tradition of an independent press and Chinese expectations that the media serve the state. And yet, he says, CCTV America has broadcast interviews involving allegations of major computer hacking incidents originating in China — hardly a flattering story.

“It’s changing very quickly,” Yin says. “I can tell you even from the time that we came onboard here to where we are today, we’ve changed a lot. We’re covering stories from sometimes very controversial angles.”

CCTV America has its home in a new building just two blocks from the White House, in the heart of Washington, and it’s carried by cable providers in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, among other big cities.

Please click here to read the full article at its source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Censorship, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Economics, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Government & Policy, Greater China, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Media, Modernisation, Nationalism, NPR, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Technology, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, U.S.

April 25, 2013 • 6:42 am 0

China’s Dream World [Project Syndicate] #RisingChina #ChinaDream #NewLeadership

Professor Minxin Pei on propaganda, presenting self, and substance of the new Chinese leadership’s sloganeering of ‘China Dream’.

‘Today, it is the responsibility of China’s new leadership, headed by President Xi Jinping, to avert another decade of missed opportunities. Without missing a beat, Xi, like his predecessors, rolled out a new slogan to inspire popular confidence in his leadership. As a catchphrase for his administration’s objective, “the great renaissance of the Chinese nation” is bit long, but it has lately morphed into the simpler “China Dream’

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China’s Dream World
By Minxin Pei
Source – Project Syndicate, published 16 April 2013

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA – Ruling elites almost everywhere – whether in democracies or in authoritarian regimes – believe that clever sloganeering can inspire their people and legitimize their power. There are, of course, crucial differences. In functioning democracies, government leaders can be held accountable for their promises: the press can scrutinize their policies, opposition parties are motivated to show that the party in power lies and cheats. As a result, incumbents are frequently forced to carry out at least some of their promises.

Autocratic rulers, by contrast, face no such pressures. Press censorship, repression of dissent, and the absence of organized opposition allow rulers the luxury of promising whatever they want, with no political consequences for failing to deliver. The result is government of the sloganeers, by the sloganeers, and for the sloganeers.

China appears to have perfected this form of government over the last decade. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in response to rising public demand for social justice, has devised numerous slogans, such as “governing for the people,” “building a harmonious society,” “balanced development,” “scientific development,” and so on.

Please click here to read the full article at its source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Environment, Finance, Government & Policy, Greater China, Human Rights, Influence, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Nationalism, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, People, Politics, Population, Project Syndicate, Public Diplomacy, Random, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity

April 22, 2013 • 10:00 am 0

S$370m scholarship aims to cool Beijing-West tensions [TODAYonline] #RisingChina #SchwarzmanScholarship #Education #Tsinghua

“China is no longer an elective course, it’s core curriculum,” Stephen Schwarzman in Beijing. (Associated Press, in Fox News, April 22, 2013)

When it begins in 2016, the Schwarzman Scholarship programme will match the 111-year-old Rhodes in the numbers of students and the size of its endowment. (Today Online)

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S$370m scholarship aims to cool Beijing-West tensions
Creation of programme for study in China shows country’s importance to Wall Street financiers, corporate leaders
Source – TODAYonline, published April 22, 2013

Mr Stephen Schwarzman is creating a S$370- million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes Scholarship in prestige and influence. Photo: Bloomberg

HONG KONG — The private-equity tycoon Stephen Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly Western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a US$300 million (S$370 million) scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes Scholarship in prestige and influence.

The programme, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts in China, was announced by Mr Schwarzman in Beijing yesterday.

The Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s programme at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the country’s top universities.

The programme’s creation underlines the tremendous importance of China and its market to Wall Street financiers and corporate leaders, who have become increasingly anxious as security and economic frictions grow between China and the West.

Please click here to access article at its source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Economics, Education, Finance, Influence, International Relations, New Leadership, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Today Online, U.S., Xi Jinping

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Wandering China

[Full text] Li Keqiang’s article published in Swiss newspaper [China.ORG] #RisingChina #LiKeqiang

How Chinese Subsidies Changed the World [Harvard Business Review] #RisingChina #Solar #GovernmentSubsidies

Rhodes East: Why is the Schwarzman Scholarship in China? [New Yorker] #RisingChina #SchwarzmanScholarship #CrossPollination

5% of foreign reserves – ‘Australia to buy Chinese government debt’ [Financial Times] #RisingChina #Australia #ForeignReserves

China Seeks Soft Power Influence in U.S. Through CCTV [NPR] #RisingChina #SoftPower #CCTV

S$370m scholarship aims to cool Beijing-West tensions [TODAYonline] #RisingChina #SchwarzmanScholarship #Education #Tsinghua

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