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Shenzhen leads external trade

Shenzhen, an economic engine in south China’s Guangdong Province, realized 237.4 billion U.S. dollars in foreign trade last year, a growth of 29.8 percent over the year-earlier level.

Local customs sources said Monday that this is the first time the city ranked first among major Chinese cities in terms of external trade.

The total trade volume included 136.1 billion U.S. dollars in export value, up 34 percent, and 101.3 billion U.S. dollars in import value, up 24.6 percent.

The exports, making up 14 percent of China’s total, placed Shenzhen first among major cities for 14 consecutive years.

In 2006, Shenzhen sold abroad 69.62 billion U.S. dollars worth of new- and high-tech products, or 40 percent of the city’s total, and bought from overseas 59.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of such products, or 50 percent of the total.

The exports of new- and high-tech products were 32.3 percent higher than the year-earlier level, while the imports, up 27.5 percent, the customs sources added.

China to set up three Confucius institutes in C., W. Asia

URUMQI — China will set up three Confucius Institutes in central and west Asia this year to satisfy the growing demand for Mandarin, China’s official language.

Preparations for the three institutes in Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are well underway, said Wang Lili, director of the Foreign Affairs office of Education Department in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The Education Department, which was authorized to set up Confucius institutes in neighbouring countries, will cooperate with the education authorities of the three countries to complete the project, Wang said.

“Starting March 1, we will begin recruiting volunteer teachers in Xinjiang and train them in Chinese language teaching methods,” she said.

Wang attributed the surging demand for Mandarin learning in central and west Asia to the growing economic and trade exchanges between China and its neighbouring countries.

“Confucius institutes will not only meet the demand to learn Chinese but also help people better understand China,” she added.

Confucius institutes are non-profit schools specializing in Chinese language education and cultural communication. They have become an important means of expanding Chinese teaching abroad and stepping up understanding between China and rest of the world.

The world’s first Confucius Institute opened in Seoul in 2004.

The first group of 25 Confucius institutes around the world were officially acknowledged by the Chinese government in July 2005 and the number has now increased to 123 in 49 countries and regions.

According to plans of the Office of Chinese Language Council International (OCLCI), China will have 500 Confucius institutes by the end of 2010.

Confucius (551 BC-479 BC) is one of the most famous thinkers, educators and philosophers in Chinese and world history. He revolutionized education in China 2,500 years ago by making it accessible to commoners.

Lenovo sets its sights on buyers in US

CHINESE personal-computer giant Lenovo Group Ltd said it plans to enter the consumer market in the United States within the next two years.

“You’ll see us getting into consumer business,” William Amelio, Lenovo’s chief executive officer, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We’ve demonstrated success in China and India, and there’s no question we should have the same success in other developed markets.”

Amelio, speaking on Saturday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said acquisitions were “way down my priority list.”

Lenovo became the world’s third-biggest personal computer maker when it bought the PC unit of International Business Machines Corp in May 2005.

“In China we cover consumers up to large enterprises with a full line,” he said. “Abroad, what we bought is primarily large accounts and government. Now we can fill in that space.”

China’s economy posts biggest rise in a decade

THE Chinese economy grew 10.7 percent in 2006 – the biggest increase in 10 years, even as the nation’s financial leaders tried to rein in excessive growth.

Their efforts did appear to have some effect in the last quarter, however, as the blistering pace tailed off slightly with a decline in fixed-asset investment.

Gross domestic product mounted to 20.94 trillion yuan (US$2.7 trillion) in the world’s fourth-largest economy last year, driven by overseas sales, investment and booming domestic consumption, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

Yearly growth exceeded the 10.4 percent gain in 2005, the bureau said. But after GDP peaked at 11.5 percent in second-quarter 2006, the rate of increase tailed off to 10.4 percent in the last three months.

“A combination of policies to rein in lending and control land use helped prevent the economy from expanding faster,” Xie Fuzhan, chief of the National Bureau of Statistics, said in Beijing.

Among the economy’s major components, the manufacturing sector grew the most last year, surging 12.5 percent to 10.2 trillion yuan. It was followed by the service industry, which advanced 10.3 percent to 8.27 trillion yuan. Agriculture rose five percent to 2.47 trillion yuan.

The country’s macroeconomic controls finally began to gain traction. Fixed-asset spending rose 24 percent to 10.99 trillion yuan overall, slowing from the 29.8 percent in the first half and 25.7 percent in 2005. Investment in the nation’s urban fixed assets climbed to 9.35 trillion yuan, up 24.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 27.2 percent on year gain in 2005.

“Investment growth showed visible deceleration, which could be partially attributed to policy tightening in the second half of 2006,” said Liang Hong, an economist in the global investment research division of Goldman Sachs.

“The central bank will likely maintain a tightening bias during the first quarter this year to prevent a rush in bank loan approvals.”

The central bank has stepped up land controls to make project approvals harder to come by, hiked interest rates and raised banks’ reserve requirements to curb credit and cool off an investment boom that has left the country with too much production capacity and idle factories.

Among other economic barometers, inflation last year stood at 1.5 percent, buffeted by a sudden increase of 2.8 percent in December as grain costs surged.

Still, the growth rate in consumer prices was smaller than the 1.8 percent in 2005.

Retail sales jumped 13.7 percent in 2006 to 7.64 trillion yuan, up from the 12.9 percent gain a year earlier as the government cut taxes, raised minimum wages and increased spending to improve education, welfare and health care.

Disposable incomes among the nation’s city dwellers advanced 12.1 percent to 11,759 yuan while those in rural regions climbed 10.2 percent to 3,587 yuan.

Foreign trade jumped 23.8 percent to US$1.76 trillion, yielding a record surplus of US$177.5 billion, up from the US$102 billion in 2005.