china

E-commerce in China: The Alibaba phenomenon

"On its way to becoming the world’s biggest economy, China is passing another landmark. Its e-commerce market is overtaking America’s. And one giant firm dominates the market: Alibaba, by some measures already the world’s largest e-commerce company. Last year two of Alibaba’s portals together handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales, more than eBay and Amazon combined. Yet despite such extraordinary success, many people outside China have barely noticed the rise of this privately held behemoth. That is about to change. Soon, the firm is expected to announce details of its initial public offering (IPO)." Continue reading →

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Number of Chinese becoming US citizens declines

"The number of Chinese who became US citizens has declined annually over the last five years to 31,868 in 2012 from 40,017 in 2008, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. Tao Lin, a New York-based immigration law expert, said naturalization for Chinese appears to be changing. 'It's not like the old-fashioned way when Chinese immigrants would come to the US, gain their citizenship, stay and assimilate to US culture,' said Lin, managing attorney of T. Lin & Associates. 'You're seeing more Chinese people returning to China.'" Continue reading →

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US banker proud to become Chinese national

"The rise of China has not only transformed the global landscape of the financial industry, but it has also changed an American banker’s nationality. Some in Hong Kong’s financial community were surprised by an e-mail from one of the most veteran investment bankers in the city on Tuesday night. Marshall Nicholson, a managing director in charge of investment banking in Hong Kong for China International Capital Corporation (CICC) told his colleagues and friends that he had officially renounced his United States citizenship and would soon receive a HKSAR passport. Nicholson, whose wife is a Hongkonger, first came to the city about 11 years ago." Continue reading →

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China Builds Great Central Bankers?

"Around the world, Western-style monetary recipes are failing. But this article attempts to convince us that the Chinese have somehow managed to implement miraculous growth using ingredients that are notably dysfunctional elsewhere. How is that possible? We would submit it is not. What is going on is a kind of campaign to convince people that as capital and power flow east, such a reality is reasonable and inevitable. Seen from this standpoint, the profile of this Chinese central banking genius – and it drones on and on – is part and parcel of a larger attempt at explaining the inexplicable." Continue reading →

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China Takes Another Stab At The Dollar, Launches Currency Swap Line With France

"China has now launched yet another feeler to see what the apetite toward its currency is, this time in the heart of the Eurozone: Paris. According to China Daily, as reported by Reuters, 'France intends to set up a currency swap line with China to make Paris a major offshore yuan trading hub in Europe, competing against London.' As a reminder the BOE and the PBOC announced a currency swap line back in February, in effect linking up the CNY to the GBP. Now it is the EUR's turn." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingChina Takes Another Stab At The Dollar, Launches Currency Swap Line With France

BOE Supports Chinese Financial Domination

"Governor Zhou Xiaochuan met Governor Mervyn King today during Governor King's visit to Beijing. They agreed to facilitate discussions on the establishment of a reciprocal 3-year, renminbi (RMB)/sterling currency swap arrangement. The arrangement would be used to finance trade and direct investment between the two countries and to support domestic financial stability should market conditions warrant. They have agreed that the Bank of England and the People's Bank of China (PBoC) would work together to sign the final agreement shortly." Continue reading →

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Australia And China To Enable Direct Currency Convertibility

"The land down under is set to say goodbye to the world's 'reserve currency' in its trade dealings with the world's biggest marginal economic power, China, and will enable the direct convertibility of the Australian dollar into Chinese yuan, without US Dollar intermediation, in the process 'slashing costs for thousands of business' and also confirming speculation that China is fully intent on, little by little, chipping away at the dollar's reserve currency status until one day it no longer is. This latest development in global currency relations should come as no surprise." Continue reading →

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Is Japan’s Devaluation an Attack on China?

"In an article yesterday we suggested that the reason Japan was embarking on a massive attempt at Keynesian-style stimulation was to promote the efficacy of Keynesian economic 'cures.' But there is another possibility as well. Perhaps the idea is to start a currency war aimed at least in part at China. Japan is a longtime ally of the US, which defeated it in World War II. It is certainly possible that Japan has allied itself with the US to serve Anglo-American interests in this regard. It is indeed possible to hypothesize that Japan's current policy is intended to confront China and therefore is being used as a monetary 'weapon of war.'" Continue reading →

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Security audit finds developer outsourced his 9-5 job to China to goof off at work

"The analysis of his workstation found hundreds of PDF invoices from the Chinese contractors. The scheme worked very well for Bob. In his performance assessments by the firm's human resources department, he was the firm's top coder for many quarters and was considered expert in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python. Further investigation found that the enterprising Bob had actually taken jobs with other firms and had outsourced that work too, netting him hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit as well as lots of time to hang around on internet messaging boards and checking for a new Detective Mittens video." Continue reading →

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