Happy New Year 2009 from Hong Kong

China now probes melamine tableware scare

China now probes melamine tableware scare
Reuters


China, fighting a health scandal over melamine found in milk and other food products, now says it is investigating melamine tableware, following reports it might be harmful to health when hot.

Quality inspectors told Xinhua news agency they were organising tests of melamine tableware "following reports that some products contained poisonous ingredients."

Melamine is an industrial compound used in making plastic chairs, countertops, tableware, flame retardants and even concrete. It was added by unscrupulous manufacturers to food to cheat nutrition tests due to its high nitrogen content.

Output at China's Huge Daqing Oilfield Slows in '08

Rigzone

Crude oil output in PetroChina's Daqing oilfield, China's largest, fell 3.6 percent from a year earlier to 40.2 million tonnes in 2008, or 804,000 barrels per day, Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

Natural gas output in the field, run by PetroChina , the listed arm of state oil giant CNPC, reached 2.76 billion cubic meters, according to the report on www.xinhuanet.com.cn.

Daqing accounts for more than a third of PetroChina's domestic oil production, which was 107.64 million tonnes in 2007. Its importance in the firm's gas output is much less, making up 5 percent of last year's 54.2 billion cubic meters.

The field alone is responsible for more than one fifth of China's total oil production, which CNPC expects to reach 189 million tonnes in 2008.

Huge dinosaur discovery in China

Huge dinosaur discovery in China: state media
AFP on Yahoo


BEIJING (AFP) – Paleontologists in east China have dug up what they believe is one of the world's largest group of dinosaur fossils including the remains of an enormous "platypus", state press said Tuesday.

Paleontologists have discovered 15 areas near Zhucheng city in Shandong province that contain thousands of dinosaur bones, the Beijing News reported.

"This group of fossilised dinosaurs is currently the largest ever discovered in the world... in terms of area," the paper cited paleontologist Zhao Xijin of the China Academy of Sciences as saying.

Chinese retail sales increase by 20.8 percent in November

China Nov. retail sales up 20.8 percent
International Business Times


By Deyu Zeng 11 December 2008 @ 11:13 pm EST Beijing - China's retail sales in November grew 20.8 percent from a year earlier, but eased from a 22 percent rise in October, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday.

The November growth rate is the lowest since March this year, the data revealed.

According to the data, throughout the first 11 months of the year, China's retail sales have increased 21.9 percent from a year earlier.

FT: Shanghai to Beijing by train in a day

Shanghai to Beijing by train in a day

By Rahul Jacob

Published: December 27 2008 01:11

The English poet Philip Larkin once said that he would visit China – if he could return in a day. I recently took a 10-hour train journey from Shanghai to Beijing on one of the country’s fast trains intending a variation on that absurd idea.

It was a chance to see, albeit only from a train window, more than just the epic skyscrapers of those two metropolises. Both cities have played the role of giant portals that have turned the heads of the world’s chief executives and led to the greatest emerging market gold rush ever. Coincidentally, the book I was reading on my journey, Yasheng Huang’s Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, argued that the government’s huge investments in all those skyscrapers and show-off airports had come at the cost of China’s rural areas.

FT article

FT: China’s state sector urged to boost economy

China’s state sector urged to boost economy

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Senior government officials have publicly called on China’s state-owned sector to increase its dominance in the economy in response to rapidly cooling growth and plummeting profits.

Analysts say while no one in the Communist-controlled government favours a return to traditional central planning, advocates of continued state dominance of the economy are clearly ascendant in Beijing.

FT article

FDA Warns Pet Owners To Avoid Chinese-Made Chicken Treats

FDA Warns Pet Owners To Avoid Chinese-Made Chicken Treats
Sun-Sentinel | By Diane C. Lade


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration again is cautioning pet owners about feeding their dogs chicken jerky treats manufactured in China, as the agency continues to receive reports of kidney-related disorders in animals that ate these products.

The FDA has received 151 complaints about dogs falling sick after eating chicken jerky products since September 2007, when the agency issued its warning. Twenty-six of those pets died

Toxic melamine is suspected in seafood from China

Toxic melamine is suspected in seafood from China
LA Times

Industry experts and businesspeople in China say that the industrial chemical has been routinely added to fish and animal feed to artificially boost protein readings.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Shanghai--Melamine in Chinese-produced milk powder has sickened hundreds of thousands of children and added to a growing list of made-in-China foods banned across the globe.Now, some scientists and consumer advocates are raising concerns that fish from China may also be contaminated with the industrial chemical.


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FYI... people have noticed boxes of frozen talapia bearing “Produce of China” being unloaded into Walmart seafood display cases.

China says NO to The New York Times

China blocks Internet access to New York Times

BEIJING (Reuters) – China, widely criticized for its censorship of the media, this week blocked access to The New York Times, the newspaper said on Saturday.

When computer users in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou tried to connect on Friday to nytimes.com, they received a message that the site was not available, the newspaper said.

There was no access to the site from Beijing late on Saturday without the protection of a virtual private network (VPN).

The State Information Office said it had no information on the case.

"I was physically disgusted when I saw it on the TV"

"Made in China" label battered by product scandals
Reuters | Ben Blanchard

By Ben Blanchard Mon Dec 8, 8:18 am ET

BEIJING (Reuters) – Milk, toothpaste, cough syrup, pet food, eels, blood thinner, car parts, pork, eggs, honey, chicken, dumplings, cooking oil and rice -- if you can fake it or taint it, you can almost guarantee it's happened in China.

A string of product safety scandals, including contaminated infant formula that is believed to have killed six babies and sickened thousands of others, have rocked the faith of shoppers, making them wary of buying products made in China despite the often cheaper price tag.

"I was physically disgusted when I saw it on the TV," said Sally Villegas, a mother of two in Australia, referring to the melamine-tainted infant formula scandal that came to light in September.

What should have stayed in Vegas didn't for Chinese officials

Chinese officials punished for lavish US tour
AP

The Chinese bureaucrats who spent taxpayers' money on a $700-a-night Las Vegas hotel and visits to Hawaiian beaches and a San Francisco sex show might have gotten away with it if someone hadn't lost a bag on the Shanghai subway.

The dozens of documents and receipts in the bag, with officials' names and enthusiastic comments attached, were swiftly posted on the Internet, spreading like wildfire across Chinese cyberspace over the past week. That brought swift punishment for some officials involved — and another disgusted shrug from Chinese citizens all-too-familiar with corruption.

China to US: make sure Beijing's investments are safe

China tells US to make sure Beijing's investments are safe
AFP on Yahoo


BEIJING (AFP) – China's top envoy to high-level economic talks with the United States urged Washington Thursday to make sure Chinese investments in the US economy were safe.

"We hope the US side will adopt every necessary measure to stabilise its economy and financial markets and ensure the safety of China's assets and investment in the United States," Vice Premier Wang Qishan said.

He made the remark in prepared comments at the start of two days of Sino-US economy talks in Beijing that he is co-chairing with US Treasury chief Henry Paulson.

Authorities discovered the soy meal contained an astonishing 50 times the maximum limit of Melamine

Want to know what organic chickens are fed? If it's soy meal from China -- a cheap source of protein -- it may also contain melamine.

That's what happened with 300 tons of soy meal being fed to organic chicken in western France. Authorities discovered the soy meal contained an astonishing 50 times the maximum limit of melamine: 116mg per kg of soy meal.

This cheap Chinese soy meal was delivered to 127 "organic" chicken farms in France. Nobody yet knows how many organic chicken farms in the U.S., Canada, U.K. or Australia might also be feeding their chickens toxic levels of melamine.

article: NaturalNews.com

China reports huge increase in children sickened by tainted milk

by Karl Malakunas

Mon Dec 1, 10:40 pm ET

BEIJING (AFP) – China has dramatically raised the tally of children sickened by dairy products laced with the industrial chemical melamine to 294,000, more than five times the original figure.

In a late-night statement on Monday, the health ministry also said six babies may have died from consuming poisoned milk, up from a previous confirmed death toll of three.