Category: Finance

An upcoming lecture should be quite interesting for those with their eye on China and its economy. Penelope (Penny) Prime, the Director of the China Research Center and Professor of International Business at Georgia State University, will be part of a finance symposium on March 28 and 29^th at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center. The conference will address the changing shape of China’s economy. The conference is called Furniture/Today’s Money Matters 2.0: Outpacing Change Through Financial Excellence.

Topics that she will cover include China’s economy and business environment, China’s foreign trade and investment, China’s industrial and technological progress and applied business and economics cases on China and Asia.

Learn more about the conference and how to be involved.

Woolworths is turning to China and hoping that they will want to be part of Australia’s largest supermarket chain. They plan to build a Woolworths storefront on Alibaba’s Tmall business-to-consumer online marketplace, coordinated by China-based eCargo Holdings.

eCargo will be tasked with coordinating Woolworths’ inventory, packing and distribution requirements and they will advise on brand entry strategy and more.

Woolworths has a small presence in China already after buying the alcoholic drinks distributor Summergate last year for $25 million.

As eCargo Chairman John Lau said, “We believe the food and groceries segment will experience huge growth in the coming years between Australia and China, as cross-border trade restrictions ease and the China Australia FTA takes effect.”

Others have, similarly, had their eye on the e-commerce market in China. Amazon, Macy’s and Germany’s Metro have all entered the online market platforms run by Alibaba and JD.com to cater to the growing Chinese design for imported consumer good. The Chinese e-commerce market has been forecast to more than double over the next three years to $1.5 trillion, according to NY based research firm eMarketer. And certainly, everyone, including Woolworths, wants to be part of that opportunity.

 

 

China has recently agreed to help finance hydroelectric plants in Ecuador after meeting in Beijing with the two countries’ foreign ministers.

As Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patiño, said after meeting with China’s Wang Yi,

“We analyzed and made progress in the area of industrialization, development, science and technology and we strengthened our relationship beyond just the areas of finance and trade.”

Ecuador is hoping to generate 90% of its power from hydroelectricity by 2017 to reduce their contribution to climate change. China has agreed to help them in the completion of six new hydroelectric power station already under construction.

China has increased its investments in power plants and infrastructure projects throughout the Americas.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has expressed that he is confident that the showing Chinese economy is just a necessary transformation. He said that they are still driving global growth.

As he said at the beginning of his five day trip to China,

“China is going through a very necessary and challenging transformation which is essential so that China’s economy can go on creating good careers and good jobs and higher living standards for your 1.3 billion people.”

“I think the message I would say to China is, carry on with the reform, carry on with the change you’re making.”

He explained that he was visiting the Shanghai stock exchange on Tuesday. As he said, “Of course there have been ups and downs. We’ve seen that through the summer. In our estimation the spillover effects, the impact of that on other financial markets, has been relatively limited.”

He continued,

“And if you look at the broader picture in China, even if it’s not growing at double digits the way that it once did it is still creating an economy at least the size of the United Kingdom in the next five years. So it’s a massive source of global growth going forward.”

 

 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is making a plan to visit China and Vietnam to sign economic and financing deals. As he said during a televised broadcast, “I leave tomorrow for Vietnam and China to seal agreements for the economic and financial security of Venezuela, and to seek support in these difficult times.”

Venezuela has borrowed $50 billion from China through the oil-for-loans agreement. This has helped Chinese companies to expand into Venezuelan markets. The Chinese financing has been crucial for Caracas .

Learn more about Maduro’s plans and the trip he has ahead of him. This includes the controversy that Jesus Torrealba, the head of Venezuela’s opposition coalition, rose when he said, “Only he would think of going to China ‘to seek help’ the same week that China’s financial collapse causes a global crisis. Pure ‘Madurismo’!”

China is getting into the act in Hollywood. Wanda Pictures, controlled by the richest person in China, just financed the Hollywood movie “Southpaw” which opens today across the US. Wang Jianlin heads Dalian Wanda Group co, which owns the second largest US cinema chain. Last year, they bought land in Beverly Hills with the plans to erect a $1.2 billion complex.

And now they’ve invested in “Southpaw,” an R-rated Weinstein Co. drama about a boxer. “Southpaw” is generating media attention since studio co-chairman Harvey Weinstein showed a clip at the Cannes Film Festival.

The movie actually premiered at the Shanghai International Film Festival and cost more than $25 million to make.

Wang’s net worth according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index is approximately $41.8 billion. He recently told Bloomberg Markets magazine that buying Hollywood studios would allow him the content and distribution outlets to help him conquer the market.

Wang first started talking to the Weinstein studio about investing in “Southpaw” before Wanda’s 2012 purchase of the AMC Entertainment theater chain.

In  a bizarre move, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has accused China of stealing commercial secrets. During a campaign event in New Hampshire, she said that they are stealing a “huge amounts of government information” and that they are trying to “hack into everything that doesn’t move in America.”

She continued, “But we also have to be fully vigilant, China’s military is growing very quickly, they’re establishing military installations that again threaten countries we have treaties with, like the Philippines because they are building on contested property.”

Asked to comment on her remarks, the White House declined.

The Obama administration has accused China of being the top suspect in the hacking of a US government agency that included the personal records of more than 4.2 million current and foreign government workers.

 

 

Telemedicine has become an area of interest in China. There are a number of applications of use and investors are looking carefully at the possibilities. One of the main issues in the Chinese healthcare system is that rural patients commute to major cities like Beijing and Shanghai for treatment instead of going to local clinics.

Of course this means that urban hospitals have become completely overcrowded and hard to manage. With these ideas in mind, the Chinese medical profession is looking to telemedicine. The idea is that urban doctors would support their rural colleagues in treatment and diagnosis with email, phone and video conferencing. This could allow rural patients to enter the health care system earlier and to receive preventative care rather than only reactionary care.

They are also hoping to use telemedicine to education the population. 33% of the world’s smokers live in China and 300 million Chinese people have high blood pressure.

Read more about the potential benefits of telemedicine in China.

This weekend, Chinese and Japanese finance ministers reopened their talks to discuss economic cooperation. These talks were delayed over strained relations between the two. Finance Minister Lou Jiwei planned to sit down with the Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso in Beijing. This is the fifth round of dialogue between the two countries. The last time they met was in April 2012. This was before relations became tense with disputing claims to islands in the East China Sea.

Contacts are now slowly improving.

 

Juwai.com has created a partnership with jrj.com, a Chinese finance website, to boost traffic to Jawai. Jrj.com offers information on stocks, bonds and funds and it will now place Juwai.com’s property listings and editorial content on their overseas property channel.

As Andrew Taylor, the co-CEO of Juwai.com said, “Chinese individuals who invest in stocks and bonds also dedicate as much as 25 percent of their assets to property. And no one has a better or bigger audience of investors than jrj.com.”

Learn more about their plans.