Economy

China faces "very grim" job situation ahead
China will face a "very grim" job situation in the coming years, as the labour force grows and more workers are laid off due to economic reforms to the decrepit state-owned economic system, Labour Minister Zhang Zuoji said. Over the past four years the state has doled out nearly CNY 85 billion in living expenses for laid off workers. To date, only 140 million Chinese workers are covered by pension insurance, while only 100 million workers have unemployment insurance. China boasts a work force of 730 million people, of which 490 million live in rural areas and 240 million live in urban areas. Since 1998, state-run enterprises had laid off a total of 26 million workers, of which 17 million have already been re-employed. (Business Times, 27 October)

Trade between China, ASEAN surges
The total trade volume between China and the ASEAN during the period from January to September of this year hit USD 38.55 billion US dollars, surging 27.19% compared to the same period last year. Since 1995, the annual trade volume between China and ASEAN has increased by an annual average rate of over 15%. (People's Daily, 27 October)

Asean, China near accord to set up Free-Trade Area
Southeast Asian nations and China have agreed on a list of hundreds of products on which tariffs will be eliminated early as part of plans to establish a free-trade area within 10 years. After six rounds of negotiations, Beijing and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations have settled most broad questions about the FTA, except for when it should be fully implemented. They are leaving that to their leaders, who will choose a date and sign a framework FTA agreement at their annual summit in Cambodia next week. (WSJ, 1 November)

Finance

China's Finance Ministry cancels bond after earlier weak sales
China's Ministry of Finance has canceled an offering of 10-year bonds following the poor response to its most recent issue. For the second time in about a month last week, a ministry bond was undersubscribed when offered to the market. China's Ministry of Finance is on track to sell close to CNY 600 billion in bonds this year, split between the interbank and stock markets. (Dow Jones, 27 October)

China's bad-debt disposal speeds up
China's asset management companies said they will accelerate the pace of disposal of the CNY 1.4 trillion in non-performing loans transferred to them from State-owned banks. To dispose of the NPLs, the AMCs conducted a series of debt-to-equity swaps with 580 State-owned enterprises during 1999 and 2000. The swaps transformed CNY 40 billion of bad debt into equity held by the AMCs in these enterprises. (China Daily, 1 November)

Legal

Insurance law opens up
The Standing Committee of the NPC, decided to open up the insurance market by extending the legal possibilities for investment. So far insurers investment opportunities were restricted to deposits, mutual funds and treasury bonds. More freedom is also given in areas such as business-line extensions and new products, and property insurance firms are allowed under the new law to offer health care and casualty products, that were until now reserved for life insurers. (Chinabiz, 29 October)

Business

Honda plans joint venture company for export in China
Honda's three-way manufacturing base, with Guangzhou Automobile Group and Dongfeng Motor Corp, will begin small car production in 2004. But, all the vehicles manufactured at the base, also to be located in Guangzhou, will be for export. The new base will be the first Sino-foreign vehicle joint venture with a foreign company as the major shareholder. (China Daily, 28 October)

Telecom's fixed assets pick up
China's fixed assets investment in the telecom industry picked up in the third quarter and is expected to keep growing in the last quarter of this year. Telecom operators invested CNY 46.59 billion in fixed assets from July to September, 48.9% up on the second quarter. Mobile telecoms were the highlights of the industry in the third quarter. (China Daily, 29 October)

China invests heavily in environment equipment
More than CNY 4.7 billion has been invested since 1999 in the technical upgrading of Chinese producers of environmental protection equipment. It is estimated that the annual output value of China's environmental equipment industry will increase from the present over CNY 1 billion to more than 4 billion by 2005. (People's Daily, 30 October)

Sedan sales jump 47% in first 9 months
In the first nine months of the year, China's sedan output soared 44% and sales jumped 47% from the same period last year. A total of 2.34 million motor vehicles were made in the January-September period, up 33% over a year ago and close to the 2.34 million for the whole of 2001. (ChinaOnlien, 31 October)

Intel opens testing center in Shenzhen
Intel Corp. established a testing center in Shenzhen, the first of its kind in China and the third in Asia. The scale of the new lab will be small during the initial period, with only 15 employees. However, the number would be doubled by the end of this year and further increased next year. (ChinaOnlien, 31 October)

China Telecom forced to delay public offering
China Telecom was forced to halt Asia's biggest initial public offering of the year yesterday after international investors cold-shouldered the issue. Bankers involved in the sale said the offer, which had aimed to raise up to USD 28.4 billion, would be relaunched early next week. The failure of the deal to attract sufficient buyers - despite a string of sweeteners put forward in recent weeks - is a blow to China's programme of seeking overseas capital to help finance restructuring of its state-owned industries.(SCMP, 1 November)

Shanghai

China's largest dockyard under construction
The first phase of construction of China's largest dockyard, located in east Shanghai, has been completed. Construction of the dockyard, which covers an area of 2.1 million square meters, began in 1999 with an investment of CNY 3.2 billion in the first phase. The dockyard has the capacity to build an oil tanker with a capacity of 300'000 tons and a cargo ship of 230'000 tons. (People's Daily, 27 October)

Boom in Shanghai real estate industry
Shanghai has set new records for real estate investment, scale of housing construction and house sales. Shanghai poured CNY 56.5 billion into the real estate sector in the first nine months of this year and the figure is expected to exceed CNY 70 billion for the whole year. The city completed the construction of commercial buildings with a combined floor space of 11.94 million square meters in the January-September period of this year, a rise of 48% on a yearly basis. The total floor space of houses under construction was 59 million square meters in the same period, up 23%. In the first nine months of this year, houses with a total floor space of 14.04 million square meters were sold, a rise of 62% on a yearly basis. (People's Daily, 28 October) To burst or not to burst…

Pearl River

Website set up to protect interests of overseas investors
A website was opened in south China's Guangdong Province to improve the investment environment and protect the interests of foreign investors. www.gdccfi.gov.cn offers an opportunity for overseas investors to make complaints and requests electronically to the authority. Foreign investors may also use the website to widen communication with government departments as well as other foreign-funded enterprises. (People's Daily, 29 October)

Export deals hit record high at Guangzhou fair
Chinese companies signed a record USD 18.47 billion worth of export deals at the 92nd Session of the Chinese Export Commodities Fair. The figure represents an increase of 9.6% when compared with the previous event, held this past spring. Orders from the EU, the United States and the Middle East accounted for 29.7%, 17.7% and 10.4% of the fair's total, respectively. Light industrial products, machinery and electronics were the biggest foreign-exchange earners at the fair. A record 135'482 foreign business representatives had visited the fair, up 12.4% from the previous event. (China Daily, 31 October)

Various

China may drop plans to issue Chinese-script web addresses
Two years after threatening to split the online world by issuing its own set of Chinese-script Web addresses, China appears to have quietly dropped such plans. Chinese officials at a world Internet congress in Shanghai said the government has no plans to disrupt the integrity of the Web by challenging a core component -- its centrally administered addressing system. (AP, 30 October)