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Shanghai Disney Resort emerges from underground

The building of the Shanghai Disney Resort saw a milestone Thursday with the installation of the first steel column, company officials said.

This marks the completion of the majority of the foundation work and the official beginning of the vertical construction, said Howard Brown, senior vice president and project development executive of Shanghai Disney Resort.

“The construction team has been working very hard at the build site since groundbreaking and we are excited to see the progress every day,” Brown said.

Construction of the resort began on April 8, 2011.

With the majority of foundation work complete, work has shifted to substructure construction to support the construction of buildings and infrastructure, the company said.

Over 23,000 concrete piles have been installed, and the amount of structural steel needed for the overall resort could reach 72,000 metrics tons, Disney said.

The resort will initially include Shanghai Disneyland, a Magic Kingdom-style park, two themed hotels, a large retail, dining and entertainment venue, recreational facilities, a lake and parking and transportation hubs, the company said.
“This is a really exciting moment for everyone working on this project, and for Shanghai,” said Mike Crawford, general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort.

The resort is scheduled to open at the end of 2015.

China regulates TCM ingredients

China’s drug watchdog has acted to regulate the 17 markets of traditional Chinese medicine ingredients(TCM) and banned the opening of new markets.

At Wednesday’s press conference, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, among eight central departments announced joint regulation on TCM ingredients.

Supervision of growing, processing and market management for medicinal herbs should be stepped up, said Li Guoqing, director of the CFDA’s department of drug and cosmetics sales supervision.

According to the CFDA, improper use of pesticides and fertilizers has caused harmful substances to remain in TCM ingredients. Dyeing and counterfeiting problems have seriously affected TCM quality and harmed public health.

According to a CFDA inspection in Anhui, Gansu, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces, 22 batches of TCM, including saffron, of nearly 400 batches examined have the dyeing problem.

The announcement prohibited planting in inappropriate areas and the use of certain pesticides, antibiotics and fertilizers, especially animal hormones, plant growth regulators and herbicides.

It also banned fumigating herbs with sulfur, adding the amount of sulfur dioxide residue should accord with national standards.

China rich club swells despite slowdown

China’s super rich only got richer despite the mixed news on the economic front with numbers up a record high, Forbes magazine said in Shanghai yesterday.

The magazine yesterday released the 2013 Forbes China Rich List, a ranking of the top 400 wealthiest Chinese.

Based on calculations as of September 26, the number of Chinese mainland residents with personal assets of more than US$1 billion rose to 168 — an increase of nearly 49 percent from last year’s 113.

The combined net worth of those on the list surged 35 percent to 3,475 billion yuan (US$570 million), or 8.7 billion yuan each on average.

For the top 100, the wealth growth was even faster, reaching a pace of 44 percent.

Though the rapid rise in the numbers of the wealthy individuals seems a little out of sync with the current slowing economy, it is a reflection of the earning power of some entrepreneurs, and the money-spinning power of some hot industries like the Internet, automobiles, entertainment and real estate, said Russell Flannery, Shanghai bureau chief of the magazine.

On top of the list is property tycoon Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, with 86 billion yuan.

Last year’s richest man, beverage king Zong Qinghou of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, was second with 68.3 billion yuan.

Robin Li, founder of Baidu, China’s biggest search engine provider, was third on the list with 67.7 billion yuan.

The IT industry was led by Pony Ma of Tencent with 62.2 billion yuan, and Jack Ma of Alibaba with 43.4 billion yuan — both ranking in the top 10.

There are 87 new faces on the list.

Among the newcomers, the biggest heavyweight is Li Hejun of Hanergy, one of the world’s biggest solar panel makers, with 66.5 billion yuan in personal assets.

“Despite the continued economic slowdown, China’s current urbanization level can still bolster the pace of development of consumer products and services, pharmaceutical and health care, culture and entertainment as well as mobile Internet, making these industries key players in China’s wealth creation movement,” Zhou Jiangong, editor-in-chief of the Forbes magazine’s Chinese version, said.

Aircraft leasing business booms at N China port

The aircraft leasing industry at China’s largest free trade port in northern Tianjin Municipality has witnessed booming trade with strong business volume and market share, authorities said Tuesday.

The Tianjin Dongjiang Free Trade Port Zone is the base for five headquarters from home and abroad, as well as 242 SPV (special purpose vehicle) companies in the aircraft leasing business, the zone’s management committee said.

The zone started operating in 2007 and is China’s largest free-trade harbor area.

Since then, aircraft leasing companies registered in the zone have contracted out 246 jets, about 90 percent of the domestic market share, with business worth 10.6 billion U.S. dollars.

The committee said the development of the sector was due to preferential policies in the zone. In August 2012, China announced a pilot scheme in the zone to offer tax rebates on exports of financial leasing companies.

College ordered to revise student internships at Foxconn factory

The education authority in Shaanxi province has ordered a college that sent student interns to Foxconn to revise its cooperation agreement with the company to better protect students.

Hui Chaoyang, director of the provincial education department, said the department has found problems with the management of the work experience activities of Xi’an Technological University’s North Institute of Information Engineering.

They alleged the college forced students to take internships in one of the Taiwan-based electronics giant’s factories in Yantai, Shandong province. Some interns were made to work overtime on the assembly line.

Hui said the college did not offer other work experience options for students.

Some of the work was not in line with the objectives of the students’ professional training, Hui said. For instance, students majoring in finance and accounting were also put to work on assembly lines.

The official added that some students were also required to work much harder than expected.

The college decided on Sunday to suspend its cooperation agreement with Foxconn and around 1,000 students working for the factory will return to school by Wednesday, said Zhang Jun’an, president of the college.

Zhang said the school started cooperating with Foxconn’s Yantai plant in 2010 and has sent students there every summer vacation.

Zhang acknowledged the school received 100 yuan ($16) per student from Foxconn as a management fee if the student worked in the factory for two months.

“The amount of the management fee in 2012 was some 70,000 to 80,000 yuan and in 2013 reached more than 100,000 yuan. Our school used the money for student activities such as teaching contests and sports games,” Zhang said.

Students also earned some wages for their work.

In the past three years of cooperation with Foxconn, the school also received financial support from the company to establish scholarships and teaching awards to encourage excellent students and teachers, and for the construction of a laboratory. The financial support totaled more than 300,000 yuan, Zhang said.

This summer vacation, more than 5,000 students from the institute were sent to Foxconn’s Yantai factory from late July to late September.

A student surnamed Li told China Daily she had to work more than 10 hours a day on the assembly line pasting labels on recording pens.

“The work was hard and boring, and we do not think such so-called work experience made any sense,” the student said.

Another student surnamed Wang said they were required to take part in the work experience activities as this gained them six academic credits toward their diplomas.

Foxconn admitted last week that its Yantai factory forced the students to work overtime and on night shift, which broke the company’s rules, and vowed to resolve the problem.

From 2009, cases of students from Chongqing and Jiangsu, Shanxi and Shaanxi forced to work in Foxconn have been reported regularly and people suspected the students are used to tackle the company’s labor shortage.

Shi Ying, deputy director of Shaanxi provincial academy of social sciences, said such work experience for students was justified and essential but arranging overtime for the students broke Chinese labor law.

China’s output growth eases in both manufacturing and service sectors: HSBC

The HSBC China Composite PMI data, which covers both manufacturing and service sectors in the country, signaled a further expansion of output in September, and the rate of expansion remained modest, with the index posting at 51.2 in September, easing from 51.8 in August, HSBC said in an emailed press release here on Tuesday.

Manufacturers reported a further increase in order book volumes last month, however, the rate of increase was unchanged from August’s marginal pace, the report said. Meanwhile, at service providers, new order growth slowed from August, but was nonetheless marked.

Employment levels at Chinese manufacturers declined for the sixth month in a row in September, and the rate of job shedding was moderate and broadly unchanged from August. In contrast, staffing levels increased at service providers, following a reduction one month previously.

The input costs faced by manufacturers increased at the fastest rate since February. Service providers also reported higher input costs, though the rate of inflation was modest and below-trend. Both manufacturers and service providers passed on higher input costs to clients by raising their output prices in September. The rates of increase were modest across both sectors.

Service sector firms operating in China expected activity levels to be higher in one year’s time. However, the degree of positive sentiment was the second-weakest in the series history.

Qu Hongbin, Chief Economist, China and Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC said China’s services activity growth appears to be stabilizing at a faster pace than in the second quarter and this led to a renewed expansion of employment from the contraction in August.

“Combined with the gradual improvement of the manufacturing PMI, the Chinese economy is still on the way to a modest recovery. But a more consolidated and sustainable recovery requires structural reforms,” he said.

116 medics involved in Dumex milk bribe scandal

SOME 116 medical staff from 85 institutes in north China’s Tianjin Municipality were involved in a bribery scandal with French infant formula producer Dumex, the city government said yesterday.

From 2011, staff collected personal details of newborn babies for the company, gave presentations, distributed publicity materials and offered free introductory cans of Dumex.

In return, they received kickbacks from Dumex, part of French food group Danone, an investigation found.

Staff involved every month received sums ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of yuan.

The cash has been recovered, the government announced on its official Weibo.com micorblog.

Thirteen people have either been sacked, had operation licences revoked or been transferred to other positions.

And another six people, who had supervisory duties, received administrative punishments, the statement said.

Tianjin government did not give details on the remaining 97 staff involved in the scandal.

It said three names published in earlier media reports — Li Yue, Wang Zi and Lu Xuezhi — were Dumex employees, rather than hospital workers.

Dumex China launched an internal investigation after media reports in September.

Over the weekend, it said the investigation has now been “substantially completed.”

Dumex blamed the scandal on shortcomings in a company-sponsored mother-and-child health education program.

These led to “practices that contradicted the purpose of the program, which violated companywide policies,” said Dumex.
In some cases, the program was not appropriately managed, said the company.

Dumex said the program has been suspended, new management would be appointed, and training carried out.

Last month, a China Central Television program claimed doctors and nurses in Tianjin were feeding babies with Dumex in return for cash payments.

Babies developed a taste for Dumex and rejected their mothers’ milk, it was claimed.

It also gave Dumex an advantage in the fiercely competition formula milk market, said the report.

Last week CCTV claimed that the bribery scandal extended to other cities, including Beijing.

In 2011, the former Ministry of Health ruled that producers were not allowed to promote formula to babies up to six months old, unless mothers suffered from serious conditions.

In 2008, the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that medical staff using their positions to make money would be considered to be taking bribes.

China to recruit 19,000 national-level civil servants

China’s national-level government agencies, their affiliated public institutions and local branches will recruit over 19,000 civil servants in 2014, a slight decrease from 2013.

The 2014 public service exam for national-level governments will open to applications on Wednesday, the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) announced on Monday.

In 2013’s exam, 20,839 positions were open to application.

According to authorities, the 2014 public service selection will continue favoring candidates who have worked in grassroots communities.

Most positions in government agencies above provincial level will require two years of grassroots working experience. About 10 percent of all vacancies will be set aside for college graduates-turned-village-heads.

A civil servant role remains the most sought-after jobs in China, despite the country’s efforts to cool public service “fever,” such as encouraging young people to start their own businesses or to work in grass-root communities.

Statistics show that qualified applicants in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 annual national-level public service exams totaled 1.3 million, 1.23 million and 1.38 million respectively. They stood a slim chance of securing a job in the public service.

Officials and scholars attributed popularity of the public service exam to people favoring a stable job, worship of officialdom and benefits civil servants enjoy.

Yin Weimin, MOHRSS minister, said employment pressure contributed to the exam’s popularity, besides the public service exam provides an open and fair channel for job hunters.

Also, civil servants usually enjoy a stable job, social respect and handsome welfare, Yin said.

Ma Qingyu, professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, said as many jobs become more competitive and less stable, a civil service job stands out for its stability and welfare benefits.

Chi Fulin, executive president of the China Institute for Reform and Development, believed Chinese people’s traditional worship for officialdom also plays a role behind the high popularity of civil service jobs.

The growth of the market economy has created considerable job opportunities, broadening the space for personal development, Chi said. However, if people still covet power and the benefits it brings along, it signals regression of society.

Ma said even today, many people regard climbing up the official ladder as the one sure path to success.

Zhang Yuan, a civil servant who was recruited by the Ministry of Finance two years ago, said, “To my farmer parents, being a civil servant is a glorious job. The day when I received recruitment notice, my father who never drinks gave me a toast.”

Additionally, scholars argued that extra benefits attached to a civil service job also makes it appealing, such as government-covered health care, subsidized housing, high pension rates, among other benefits.

Chu Jianguo, public management professor with Wuhan University, said only when the current health care and pension reforms for civil servants prevail and they enjoy the same welfare benefits as other social groups, will people’s career choices diversify.

Chi Fulin suggested stricter evaluation and exit mechanisms be established for civil servants so as to destroy the “iron rice bowl”, byword for stable jobs.

Work Or You Can’t Graduate: Chinese College Students Forced To Labor Illegally In Foxconn Factory To Make PlayStation 4 Console

Foxconn, the electronics contract manufacturing firm that supplies products to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and many other companies, is facing yet another controversy over its labor practices.

The Taiwan-based company has recently admitted to violating its own rules by employing student interns for overtime and night shifts at their factories.

Students from a university in Yantai, located in the northern coastal province of Shandong, have come forward to Chinese media claiming that more than a thousand of their classmates have been working illegal overtime hours at a nearby Foxconn factory helping in the production and packaging of the soon-to-be debuted Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 4 gaming console. Sony has confirmed that Foxconn is manufacturing the PlayStation 4, but did not confirm if they were made at the Yantai location.

“There have been a few instances where our polices pertaining to overtime and night shift work were not enforced,” Foxconn said in a statement. “Immediate actions have not been taken to bring that campus into full compliance with our code and policies.”

The students were essentially forced to work at the factory in order to fulfill their credit requirements to graduate. According to a report by Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily newspaper, the class of engineering students at the Xi’an Institute of Technology was told that participation in the internship at Foxconn was “necessary” if they wanted to receive six credits that would make them eligible to graduate on time. Foxconn said that the company has internship programs set up in various locations in China, but insisted that the experience is intended to give students an “opportunity to gain practical work experience and on-the-job training that will support their efforts to find employment following their graduation.” According to Quartz, the “internships” included performing such tasks as gluing parts together, applying stickers and boxing up accessories, earning students the same wage as entry-level employees.

Foxconn has a long and troubling history of labor woes. Just last year, the same factory that the university students have come forward about admitted to temporarily hiring under-age interns, some of whom were as young as 14 years old.

In 2010 Foxconn was under investigation after a string of factory-worker suicides (largely due to overwork and poor working conditions) drew attention from labor rights activists and the global media.

The latest allegations came just days after Foxconn CEO Terry Gou made a statement about the lack of young people interested in factory jobs. Talking to a delegation at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Bali, Indonesia, Gou lamented on how China’s young workers were no longer lining up to work on an assembly line and instead were more interested in finding jobs in the technology or service sectors.

Doubts over accuracy of data on pay rises

Newly released official data about pay rises in the 2007-2011 period has stirred online debate over the figures’ accuracy, with many believing the increases are not remarkable enough considering inflation and surging housing prices.

The Chinese Academy of Personnel Science on Thursday published a report on the development of human resources in China, showing that the average annual salary of urban employees increased from 24,721 yuan (US$4,022) in 2007 to 41,799 yuan in 2011, up 69.1 percent.

In 2012, the average yearly salary for urban employees in non-private sectors stood at 46,769 yuan, up 9 percent year on year after deducting price factors, according to the report.

The news triggered heated discussion soon after appearing on popular Chinese websites — most netizens questioned the figures in the context of their own lower salaries and deemed the data useless amid surging expenditure.

“I feel ashamed that my salary is again below the average level” was a common comment on Sina Weibo, one of China’s most popular Twitter-like services.

Microblogger “joys” said: “After carefully rechecking my paychecks, I am sure that I was ‘averaged’ with other rich workers.”

In fact, many indicated the high salaries only belong to civil servants and employees at state-owned enterprises and monopolies.

Meanwhile, the debate turned against the relatively larger growth in prices, especially in the real estate businesses.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, increased 2.6 percent year on year in August, a slight decline from 2.7 percent in July.

The CPI rose 2.6 percent year on year by the end of 2012, but it was a rise of 5.4 percent in 2011 from the previous year, well above the government’s full-year inflation control target of 4 percent.

On the other hand, driven by rapid urbanization and speculation, China’s property market has taken off in recent years, especially after the economic stimulus policies the government unveiled in 2009 to help the country weather the global financial crisis.

The China Index Academy, a leading property research institution, said the average new home price among 100 cities stood at 10,554 yuan per square meter in September, up 1.07 percent from August and an increase for a 16th consecutive month.