China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, better known as Sinopec, is finally making a profit from refining after years of losses. While analysts have credited the company’s cost-cutting efforts, its success is in part due to a change in fuel-pricing regulations.
Tony Abbott, the frontrunner in Australia’s looming general election on September 7, has proposed an unusual solution to the country’s problem with illegal asylum seekers making the trip from Indonesia by sea: buy their boats.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has proven he knows how to use leverage when he’s negotiating with the rest of the world, whether it’s nuclear weapons, an industrial park or food aid.
China’s bribery investigations of foreign pharmaceutical companies are becoming par for the course. On Thursday, a local media report (link in Chinese) said that US drug maker Eli Lilly has been using illegal payments to sell its products. Quoting a former manager at the company, the report said that bribery at Eli Lilly’s China operations was “just as bad as at GlaxoSmithKline.”
China’s highest-profile court case in 30 years, the Bo Xilai trial, isn’t lacking in coverage, despite authorities’ attempts to heavily manage it. Here’s a short list of sources for live news and analysis.
China’s economy may not be facing a hard landing, but its disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai is. Media coverage in the run-up to his trial, which starts Thursday, is being carefully orchestrated to send a message along with his inevitable jail sentence. China’s new leaders appear to want Bo to be remembered as a high-ranking party member brought down by its crackdown on corruption (despite the fact that this administration took office only after Bo was purged).
There was more bad news from Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant today: It’s still leaking. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, also known as Tepco, said that another 300 tons of highly contaminated water had leaked from one of its storage tanks.
Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, may well think he’s scored big this week in Beijing by securing $5 billion worth of Chinese investment for his country and thumbing his nose at the West for shunning him on human rights charges. But it may be China that gains the most.
Whether it’s British pornography or US national security, the Chinese technology and telecoms giant Huawei seems to have a knack for getting itself embroiled in politics. Last week the company managed to offend Pakistan with a PR reach-out wishing it happy independence.
North Korea is not typically known for its compassion to detractors or critics, and in the past has taken “substantial measures to physically remove” those it sees as traitors. But young leader Kim Jong-un is trying a a little tenderness—and perhaps sweetening the deal with up to 50 million won ($45,000) and TV fame for returning defectors.
It was big news this week when a Bangkok startup announced that Thailand had outlawed Bitcoin, making it the first country in the world to issue a blanket ban on the digital currency. But the reality turns out to be more complicated.
The new natural gas pipeline from Myanmar to China, which made its first delivery Monday, is finally paying off for China after years of planning and billions of dollars in investment. But ordinary Burmese aren’t likely to see much benefit.
When dealing with the hermit kingdom, sometimes you need a little cash to seal the deal. South Korea announced on Sunday that it would give $7.3 million in humanitarian aid to its northern neighbor. On the same day, Seoul proposed a final round of talks over the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a jointly operated factory zone inside North Korea that was shuttered when Pyongyang began its most recent bout of nationalistic defiance.
It’s been a tough year for Bo Guagua. The son of disgraced Chongqing politician Bo Xilai has seen his mother convicted of murder, his father charged with corruption, and to top things off he was at the Boston Marathon finish line when the bombs went off. But his family’s travails have apparently not shaken his belief in the rule of law, judging by his enrollment at Columbia University’s law school.
China’s National Audit Office announced on Sunday that it is conducting a comprehensive review of all local government debt, which has long been considered a potential time bomb that threatens for China’s economy. But how bad is the debt really?
The $4.7 billion takeover of the US pork producer Smithfield by China’s Shuanghui just can’t seem to shake controversy. The deal was first delayed on strategic pork supply concerns, and now US lawmakers have requested information from Smithfield because the merger “raises questions related to the safety and adequacy of the US heparin supply.”
South Korean electronics giant Samsung reported soaring profits on Friday, but despite the company’s attempts to manage expectations, the results undershot estimates and its stock dropped almost 1%. That’s on top of a 13% slump in June that wiped $26 billion off Samsung’s value—a bigger loss than Sony’s entire market capitalization.
The filtering system promoted by Britain’s prime minister to protect sensitive eyes from the horrors of internet pornography is run by the controversial Chinese technology company Huawei, according to the BBC, in partnership with the UK telecoms provider TalkTalk.
Chinese billionaires—they’re just like the rest of us! At least sort of—their private Facebook-esque social network called Zhenghe Island costs about $5,000 a year and requires that members be the founder, CEO, or president of a company with annual turnover of no less than 50 million yuan ($8.1 million), as well as “a contributor to society.” Also, there is no Farmville.
All Nippon Airways’s shipments of electronic gadgets from Panasonic and Sony have nosedived, so the airline has moved on to an entirely different luxury product: extraordinarily pricey Japanese fruit that is being devoured by wealthy individuals in Hong Kong.
China’s Communist Party took another swipe at excessive government spending late on Tuesday, with a five-year ban on the construction of state buildings. “We really must use our limited funds and resources for the development of the economy and the improvement of people’s lives,” said the State Council.
Users of China’s iTunes app store noticed a disquieting development in recent weeks: their accounts were showing they had purchased apps—mostly Chinese mobile games—that had never heard of before. According to Tech in Asia, the phantom downloads may have been “the work of an app-promotion company that somehow gained access to user accounts.”
When the state-run People’s Daily reported this week that geese were being used in the Xinjiang province’s war on crime, jokes about goose-stepping policeman were just too easy.
China’s rapid economic development has catapulted it into the world’s economic elite, but the surge in new drivers means that when it comes to road safety, it has a long way to go. Traffic-related injuries went from the 10th most common cause of premature death in 1990, by years of life lost, to the fourth most common in 2010, according to data from the Global Burden of Disease study published recently in the Lancet journal.
