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