China Economy Forum

[Raphael]

China’s great deleveraging – You read it here first, folks | Asia Times

China’s great deleveraging – You read it here first, folks

Asia Unhedged reported last week that a shift to equity from debt financing would reduce corporate leverage in China and reduce the much-exaggerated debt problems of Chinese companies. Unlike the U.S., where rapid debt buildup was the cause of the 2008 crisis, China’s debt expansion was a response to the 2008 crisis, insulating China’s economy from the global Great Recession. Now that the stock market has restored reasonable valuations to Chinese equities, mainland companies will opt for lower-cost equity financing.

Bloomberg News belatedly got the joke today:

As authorities show a newfound tolerance for defaults and debt levels at Shanghai Composite Index members climb to all-time highs, Chinese companies are increasingly tapping the equity market for funds to pay down liabilities and invest in growth. They’ve announced $82 billion of secondary stock offerings in 2015, a figure UBS Group AG predicts will increase to a record $161 billion by December. That comes on top of $10 billion already raised through IPOs.

Investor appetite for new shares has rarely been stronger after a world-beating rally in the Shanghai Composite added $4.4 trillion to China’s market capitalization over the past year. While the gains came too late to stave off the first defaulton domestic debt by a state-run company last week, officials at both China’s securities regulator and the central bank have endorsed the flow of funds into equities as a way to support an economy growing at the slowest pace since 2009.

Of course, the Chinese authorities have been talking about promoting equity financing as a replacement for debt for the past year. Once equity market valuations reached a P/E of 16 on the Shanghai Composite, the floodgates opened, as the earnings yield on equity fell below the interest rate on debt.

 

[TaiShang]

China company to build $2bn refinery in Russia
Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:6AM

A file photo of an under-construction refinery in Russia

China plans to build an oil treatment facility in Russia as the two countries strengthen ties in face of the United States and Europe.

The planned refinery, with a capacity of 2 million tons, is to be constructed jointly by China's company Qin Hua An Tszyu and Russia's Tuymaada-Oil, Itar-Tass quoted Investment Promotion Agency of the Sakha Republic as saying.

“According to the agreement signed in Beijing, the refinery will be located in Aldan region of Yakutia. A joint venture is expected to be established for the project implementation. The project bid cost totals $2 billion," the agency said.

More detailed discussions on the project are to be held in May when the Chinese company would send a team of export to Yakutia in Far East Russia.

“The investment volume, the term, shares in the joint venture will be discussed in detail in Yakutsk,” the report said.

Qin Hua An Tszyu company is sponsored by the University of Tsinghua and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

China and Russia are improving economic relations, particularly in the energy sector.

Russia is building a pipeline to China to supply the Asian giant with gas.

On Saturday, China called on Russia to join its new Silk Road trade link initiative – an ambitious project meant to revive the ancient commercial route between Asia and Europe.

Cai Guiru, the president of the Association of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia, expressed hope that Russian companies would show their willingness to join the project.

"At the moment, $40 billion has been allocated for the Silk Road fund and development of capital projects. The first tranche of 10 billion is already on the fund's account," she said at a meeting with the Russian Federal Migration Service's chief.

"Russia should play a greater role in getting investments from this fund," Cai was quoted as saying by Sputnik news agency.

The Silk Road project linking China with Europe was introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

With the project, Beijing seeks to improve political ties, create a traffic network between the Pacific Ocean and the Baltic Sea, shorten the barriers to trade and investment, and broaden settlements in national currencies.

 

[bobsm]

Why Tesla is failing in China, but local brands are thriving.

________________________________________________

Why high-end E-cars are failing in Beijing

24 Apr 2015 City Will Philipps

As we sit behind the wheel of a gleaming Tesla Model S in a Parkview Green mall showroom, it’s fitting that, outside, a cloud of haze hangs low over Beijing. Electric cars, whether made by American manufacturer Tesla or by one of a handful of Chinese companies, are symbolic of the eternal fight against the city’s pollution problem.

US-owned Tesla, one of the world’s leading ‘pure’ electric car manufacturers, is worth an estimated USD25 billion and growing. Its vehicles are the first of their kind with enough clean power under the hood to be considered a viable substitute for petrol-powered cars. But Tesla’s Beijing showroom, one of 15 centers in China, sees a lone customer enter its doors during the hour we spend there. Across the Mainland, Tesla is stuttering, with a reported 120 cars sold each month – “unexpectedly weak” sales in the words of founder Elon Musk. Last month, the company fired much of its top-level management in China. So what went wrong?

China is considered a huge market for pure and hybrid electric vehicles, due to the huge demand for cars and an acute need for cleaner transport. The government and big business backs it – fleets of all-electric taxis were slated for some suburbs of Beijing last year, and this year tech giants like Tencent have expressed interest in developing driverless E-cars. So why the drop in sales? The failure has come as a surprise to many, but with Telsa’s standard model costing in the high six figures – and few to no major public incentives – even the cheapest Tesla remains a luxury product.

In the showroom, semi-enthusiastic salespeople talk us through various specs and the practicalities of electric car ownership. In China, the Model S has been on the market since April 2014 and retails for RMB648,000 (in the US it’s USD70,000, a little over RMB400,000, comparable to brands with well-established appeal, like Audi or Porsche).

Much like an ordinary smartphone, the Tesla is charged through a single power cable. According to the sales spiel, owners are able to use an adapter to plug the car directly into their garage mains or top up at one of 100 charging stations around Beijing (great, if you happen to own a garage or live near a charging station, not so good if you don’t).

China aimed to be home to 500,000 electric cars in 2011 but fell well short of the mark – only 6,000 eventually made it onto the road. The main deterrent was ‘range anxiety’ – fear of running out of power due to a scarcity of charging points. Since 2014, however, sales have begun to rise. The Beijing municipal government last year announced plans to build 10,000 public charging poles across the city, while newly purchased electric cars receive a 10 percent road tax break and bypass the license plate lottery required for new petrol-driven cars. Forbes reported that according to the China Automotive Technology Research Center, electric vehicle sales were 30 times higher in December 2014 than January 2014, surpassing even monthly sales figures in the US.

But while Tesla hasn’t been able to capitalize, China’s domestic electric car manufacturers have. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, output of electric passenger cars rose 300 percent in 2014 from the previous year. The beneficiaries? BYD and SAIC, whose cars retail for a fraction of the price of a standard Tesla. BYD’s Qin, China’s top-selling electric car in 2014, costs just RMB189,000.

Back in the Beijing showroom, which let’s not forget is located in one of Beijing’s most upmarket malls, the displays of Tesla-branded T-shirts and baseball caps give the impression of being in a sports car showroom with a racing pedigree (we don’t imagine BYD sell many logo-embossed polos). Maybe that’s the point, but even so, Musk’s hope for millions of Tesla cars on the road by 2020 looks hopeful, if not outright fanciful.

Why high-end E-cars are failing in Beijing

 

[TaiShang]

Why Tesla is failing in China, but local brands are thriving.

________________________________________________

Why high-end E-cars are failing in Beijing

24 Apr 2015 City Will Philipps

As we sit behind the wheel of a gleaming Tesla Model S in a Parkview Green mall showroom, it’s fitting that, outside, a cloud of haze hangs low over Beijing. Electric cars, whether made by American manufacturer Tesla or by one of a handful of Chinese companies, are symbolic of the eternal fight against the city’s pollution problem.

US-owned Tesla, one of the world’s leading ‘pure’ electric car manufacturers, is worth an estimated USD25 billion and growing. Its vehicles are the first of their kind with enough clean power under the hood to be considered a viable substitute for petrol-powered cars. But Tesla’s Beijing showroom, one of 15 centers in China, sees a lone customer enter its doors during the hour we spend there. Across the Mainland, Tesla is stuttering, with a reported 120 cars sold each month – “unexpectedly weak” sales in the words of founder Elon Musk. Last month, the company fired much of its top-level management in China. So what went wrong?

China is considered a huge market for pure and hybrid electric vehicles, due to the huge demand for cars and an acute need for cleaner transport. The government and big business backs it – fleets of all-electric taxis were slated for some suburbs of Beijing last year, and this year tech giants like Tencent have expressed interest in developing driverless E-cars. So why the drop in sales? The failure has come as a surprise to many, but with Telsa’s standard model costing in the high six figures – and few to no major public incentives – even the cheapest Tesla remains a luxury product.

In the showroom, semi-enthusiastic salespeople talk us through various specs and the practicalities of electric car ownership. In China, the Model S has been on the market since April 2014 and retails for RMB648,000 (in the US it’s USD70,000, a little over RMB400,000, comparable to brands with well-established appeal, like Audi or Porsche).

Much like an ordinary smartphone, the Tesla is charged through a single power cable. According to the sales spiel, owners are able to use an adapter to plug the car directly into their garage mains or top up at one of 100 charging stations around Beijing (great, if you happen to own a garage or live near a charging station, not so good if you don’t).

China aimed to be home to 500,000 electric cars in 2011 but fell well short of the mark – only 6,000 eventually made it onto the road. The main deterrent was ‘range anxiety’ – fear of running out of power due to a scarcity of charging points. Since 2014, however, sales have begun to rise. The Beijing municipal government last year announced plans to build 10,000 public charging poles across the city, while newly purchased electric cars receive a 10 percent road tax break and bypass the license plate lottery required for new petrol-driven cars. Forbes reported that according to the China Automotive Technology Research Center, electric vehicle sales were 30 times higher in December 2014 than January 2014, surpassing even monthly sales figures in the US.

But while Tesla hasn’t been able to capitalize, China’s domestic electric car manufacturers have. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, output of electric passenger cars rose 300 percent in 2014 from the previous year. The beneficiaries? BYD and SAIC, whose cars retail for a fraction of the price of a standard Tesla. BYD’s Qin, China’s top-selling electric car in 2014, costs just RMB189,000.

Back in the Beijing showroom, which let’s not forget is located in one of Beijing’s most upmarket malls, the displays of Tesla-branded T-shirts and baseball caps give the impression of being in a sports car showroom with a racing pedigree (we don’t imagine BYD sell many logo-embossed polos). Maybe that’s the point, but even so, Musk’s hope for millions of Tesla cars on the road by 2020 looks hopeful, if not outright fanciful.

Why high-end E-cars are failing in Beijing

Good that Tesla fails in China while domestic competitors thrive.

McDonald's Beijing supplier gets record pollution fine
China.org.cn, April 30, 2015

A Beijing company that supplies fries to McDonald's has been fined a record 3.9 million yuan (655,000 U.S. dollars) for water pollution, the city's environmental watchdog said on Wednesday.

The photo shows Beijing Simplot Food Processing Co., Ltd. [Photo/synjnc.com]

The penalty imposed on Beijing Simplot Food Processing Co. Ltd. -- a joint venture between U.S. agribusiness giant J.R. Simplot Company, McDonald's and the Beijing Agricultural, Industrial and Commerce General Company -- is the largest fine ever meted out by Beijing for pollution.

In November, official inspectors found the chemical oxygen demand (COD) in waste water discharged by the company was 563 mg per liter, exceeding the limit of 500 mg/liter.

Law enforcement officials immediately blocked the company's sewage pipes and ordered it to treat its waste water at a processing plant.

The pollution occurred as Beijing Simplot was upgrading its sewage treatment facilities. The polluted water flowed into urban pipe networks, according to the Fengtai District Environmental Protection Bureau.

The bureau decided on the fine after a hearing in March.

China is strengthening environmental protection with tougher laws and regulations. In January, the amended Environmental Protection Law came into effect, bringing with it tougher measures against polluters and lifted the caps on pollution fines.

Last year, Beijing also sharply increased fees levied on the discharge of major air and water pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen.

Zhong Chonglei, an official with Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, said heavy polluters in Beijing would see both their pollution fees and fines multiplied by as much as 15 times.

"The discharge costs for polluting companies are catching up with the cleaning costs," Zhong said. "It will exert greater economic leverage in the city's industrial restructuring."

Beijing Simplot, established in 1992 in Beijing's Fengtai District, primarily produces French fries and hash browns for McDonald's and other East Asian customers.

 

[TaiShang]

New Balance loses China trademark case
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-4-30 10:57:34

A Chinese court has ordered an affiliate of US sneaker maker New Balance to compensate a Chinese citizen 98 million yuan ($16 mln) for infringing his trademark rights.

The Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court in south China's Guangdong Province also ordered New Balance Trading (China) Co., Ltd. to stop using "Xin Bai Lun" to promote its products in China, the court told Xinhua on Wednesday.

The verdict, issued on April 24, said the New Balance affiliate sold its products in the Chinese market under the name "Xin Bai Lun," similar to the trademark "Bai Lun" registered by a man surnamed Zhou in 1996.

Zhou also registered "Xin Bai Lun" in 2011. New Balance failed to block the registration after raising an objection with the Chinese trademark authority.

The court defied the "necessity" argued by the US company to use "Xin Bai Lun" instead of its registered trademark "New Balance" in China, as "Xin Bai Lun" is neither the translation or transliteration of "New Balance."

According to the court, the compensation amounted to half of the profits the defendant made during the period the infringement took place.

New Balance has not appealed the case so far.

***

Sputnik News

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Sorry for the intrusion. But before it goes blank again, I have been having a lot of problems accessing this forum. It shows Error 403.

 

[TaiShang]

Large real estate project by Chinese developer starts to construct in London
Xinhua, May 1, 2015

A 600-million-pound (922 million U.S. dollars) real estate project developed by Chinese Greenland Group in Wandsworth, London laid foundation stone on Thursday.

The Ram Quarter project, the Chinese leading developer's first scheme in Britain, covers an area of 30,000 square meters, with a total planned floor area of 90,000 square meters. Greenland aimed to develop it into a large scale residential complex, integrating apartments, affordable housing and commercial facilities.

"London, as an international financial center, provides an excellent environment for investment, giving us great confidence in future developments and investment," said Xu Jing, Greenland Group's Executive Vice President.

Xu said that the group's accumulative investment in London was expected to reach 1.3 billion pounds in the next few years.

Edward Lister, deputy mayor of the Greater London, said that the Ram Quarter Project will transform the area into "a very vibrant and exciting quarter."

"We are trying to build 50,000 homes a year in this city, we need partners like Greenland," he added.

 

[bobsm]

Fish detection system for toxins wins Chinese company invention award
Apr 18, 2015

A method for detecting toxins through the reactions of fish embryos has won Chinese company Vitargent International a top prize for inventions, organisers said Friday.

The Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva went to Vitargent, from Hong Kong, for the natural method of finding toxins.

"The company uses embryos of zebra fish whose reactions make it possible to study more than a thousand toxins at the same time," organisers said in a statement.

"This method can be used in many areas such as food, medicine, plastic products, cosmetics or any other substance which can enter into contact with people, like water, for example."

The fish embryos would react in between 48 and 72 hours after being exposed to a product being tested for toxicity.

A thousand inventions were under review and a total of 55 were given awards.


Fish detection system for toxins wins Chinese company invention award

 

[خره مينه لګته وي]

China to invest 4.2 trillion yuan for Beijing regional integration

China’s years of planning for the city-cluster known as Jing-Jin-Ji, or the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration, have now entered the next stage. China is to invest 4.2 trillion yuan (700 billion USD) over the next 6 years to coordinate the integration development between the three regions.

According to specific guidelines released Thursday, the essence of the plan is to relieve Beijing of non-core functions and to restructure the regional economy while exploring new ways for growth.

According to this blueprint, many functions will be gradually transferred from Beijing to Tianjin and Hebei, such as industrial development, education, medical treatment, research institutions and social organizations. It stipulates that by 2017, Beijing’s non-core functions will be transferred, and by 2020, Beijing residents’ population should be controlled to within 23 million. The plan also states that a regional transportation network needs to be built, in order to facilitate coordinated development and reduce disparities between the three regions. Finally, the schedule stipulates that the Jing-Jin-Ji cluster should be complete by 2030.

So far, it has been one year since the development plan for the three locations was raised by the country's leadership. Analysts say the initiative will eventually bring in massive investment in the real estate, construction, and environmental sectors.

However, integration will be difficult, as there are stark differences between the three regions. Disparities can be found in terms of income, education, density of population, public services and industrial structure.

Thus in the transfer process, the first is to integrate the traffic among the three areas, which will include a 9000 km highway network, city-to-city highways, and an improved railway network. Second is to coordinate local markets and break long-standing barriers within those markets. The third is to integrate public services, especially in Hebei Province, the weakest area among the three.

 

[bobsm]

WHO approves China's Ebola test

English.news.cn 2015-05-01 01:04:36

SHANGHAI, April 30 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved an Ebola test reagent developed by a Shanghai firm, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The real-time diagnostic kit, manufactured by Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech Co., Ltd. has been listed as eligible for WHO procurement and recommended to be used to diagnose Ebola virus disease worldwide, said the statement.

It said three kits were approved by the WHO so far. The other two are manufactured by developers in the U.S. and Germany.

Last November, the China Food and Drug Administration has approved the test reagent.

Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise which focuses on developing, manufacturing and selling gene diagnostic reagents. Their products have been sold in more than 70 countries and regions worldwide.

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese auto firms turn to big data to help build new vehicles

• 2015-05-03

A concept vehicle by Chang'an Automobile at the Chongqing international auto show, June 2013. (File photo/Xinhua)

China's Chang'an Automobile recently formed a partnership with auto news website Autohome to use analysis of big data in the development of new vehicle models, reports the Beijing-based Economic Observer.

Chang'an and Autohome announced the partnership before the Auto Shanghai fair that opened April 22, saying they plan to allow consumers to participate in the process of developing automobile models.

The two companies said they will work together on building a new platform and developing and improving products.

"Consumer demand is changing at an increasingly fast rate," said Li Xiang, Autohome founder and president. "The customary approach of introducing a new generation of products every six to seven years cannot keep pace with these changes. Even the practice of unveiling new models every year with minor variations seems to be out of step with current trends."

The fate of auto companies in the market over the next decade will depend on whether they can develop a business model that is in line with consumer demand, Li said.

The recent partnership with Chang'an highlighted the efforts of Autohome to restructure its business and become a big data service provider for car companies, after its competitor Yiche turned to e-commerce, said the report.

Sources said that each time Chang'an is about to develop a new vehicle model, Autohome will conduct a survey on its online forum and will compile data for analysis, which would reflect consumer preference better than traditional surveys.

Li said Autohome's surveys will be more precise and effective, since they will be carefully geared toward people of certain backgrounds.

Several Chinese auto makers have teamed up with internet companies to develop products based on big data analysis, the newspaper said, citing the example of SAIC Motor and e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Employees of domestic Chinese auto brands said that over the next five to 10 years, the use of big data in product development may help their companies become more competitive against foreign brands in China that are operating through joint ventures.

 

[cirr]

The Chinese consortium acquires OmniVision Technologies for $1.9 billion

OFweek | Posted: 04 May 2015, 11:27

American chip manufacturer OmniVision Technologies has agreed to be acquired by the Chiense consortium at a price of US$ 1.9 billion approximately in cash, according to the reports.

The Chinese consortium consists of three Chinese companies, namely, Hua Capital, CITIC Capital and Goldstone Investment. They will pay the deal at a price of US 29.75 dollars per share, which is at a premium of 12% in accordance with the closing price of OmniVision Technologies at NASDAQ last Wednesday.

The price of OmniVision Technologies' shares rose 36% or so in the past year.

The customer of OmniVision Technologies includes Apple, and its rivals include Sony, Samsung and Himax.

OmniVision Technologies has its own design center and test center in China, and nearly 80% business revenues come from China.

The deal is expected to be completed in the third or fourth quarter of fiscal 2016. OmniVision Technologies CEO Shaw Hong will reportedly still take office in the company after the deal ended.

 

[TaiShang]

Siemens probed over allegations of bribing hospitals
ecns.cn, May 4, 2015

Siemens' medical branch is being investigated by China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce over allegations of bribing Chinese hospitals to gain favor for expensive medical products, Beijing Business Today reported on Monday.

The paper quoted anonymous sources as saying that the administration has accused Siemens and its distributors of providing more than 1,000 hospitals with free medical appliances in return for the exclusive use of chemical reagents developed by Siemens on those appliances. In doing so, Siemens violated Chinese laws against unfair competition.

A variety of medical appliances, including blood testing devices, are involved.

Siemens has not been available for comment, and phone calls by the newspaper to the company's Chinese executives have gone unanswered.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce began to investigate Siemens over the bribing allegations last year.

Siemens, together with General Electric and Philips, accounts for 70 percent of China's high-end medical equipment market. The company's medical branch in China mainly covers lab diagnosis, hearing aids and diagnostic imaging and treatment.


Beijing's April second-hand home sales hit 25-month high
May 4, 2015

The transaction volume of second-hand homes in Beijing reached 17,191 in April, the highest in nearly 25 months, according to new data from property agent Centaline.

Zhang Dawei, chief analyst with Centaline, attributed the rise to easing policies on buying and selling the second-hand homes.

In late March, China's central bank cut the minimum down payment requirement for second home buyers to 40 percent.

Minimum down payments for first and second home purchases using the housing provident fund, which offers urban residents lower rates than those of commercial banks, were also lowered.

Business tax will be exempted on sales of homes purchased more than two years ago, in stead of the previous requirement of five years, announced by the Ministry of Finance.

The property market will be better this year, Zhang said, citing continuous policy stimulus. The demand for improved housing will increase and add energy to the brisk market.

China's property market took a downturn in 2014 due to weak demand and an excess of unsold homes. The cooling has continued into 2015, with both sales and prices falling and investment slowing.

Since November 2014, the central bank has cut interest rates twice. Banks' reserve requirement ratio (RRR) was also cut twice.

 

[bobsm]

Wireless power transfer enhanced by metamaterials
Apr 30, 2015 by Lisa Zyga feature

(Phys.org)—Over the past decade, research on wireless power transfer has led to the development of several commercial applications, such as wireless charging of mobile devices and electric toothbrushes, as well as wireless powering of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. However, these applications are restricted by limitations on the distance and efficiency of current wireless power transfer technology.

In a new study published in EPL, scientists at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, have experimentally demonstrated a way to improve the efficiency of wireless power transfer by using magnetic metamaterials. The new method improves the efficiency of the design from a few percent to nearly 20% at a distance of 4 cm, which could pave the way toward new applications, including wireless charging of implanted pacemakers and electric vehicles.

The concept of wireless power transfer dates back to the 1890s, when Nikola Tesla began experimenting with wireless electricity with limited success. Now more than a century later, the idea has again attracted attention. In 2007, for example, MIT researchers demonstrated wireless power transfer and have been developing products under the start-up "Witricity."

Coincidentally, metamaterials have had a somewhat similar history. Around the turn of the 20th century, scientists began exploring the idea of artificial materials that could manipulate light in unusual ways, but not until the early 2000s were true metamaterials first fabricated.

In the new paper, the Tongji researchers have embedded magnetic metamaterials into the coils used in non-radiative wireless power transfer, which is the method used by most of today's wireless power transfer applications. In the researchers' design, one coil creates a magnetic field, which is captured by the second coil as voltage.

Like all metamaterials, the ones used here contain subwavelength microstructures that can manipulate electromagnetic waves in ways not possible with other materials. Here, the metamaterials are assembled with "meta-atoms," which are 2.6-cm etchings on the spiral copper coils.
This particular size of 2.6 cm is important because it allows for strong coupling between the deep subwavelength resonant modes of the meta-atoms, and this coupling is responsible for increasing the transfer efficiency.

"By embedding metamaterials into non-resonant coils, the overall efficiency of the wireless power transfer system is found to be greatly enhanced, due to the coupling between metamaterials," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Although the efficiency decays quickly as distance increases—from 32% at 3 cm to 15% at 5 cm—the 20% efficiency near 4 cm marks a sweet spot for certain applications, such as wireless charging of pacemakers and other medical devices.

In the future, the researchers hope to build on this metamaterial-enhanced wireless power transfer method to develop many other applications. The scientists expect that, due to the metamaterials' homogenous magnetic behavior, the metamaterials can be assembled like ordinary materials, and so can avoid the technical fabrication challenges that many metamaterials face.

"Since the wireless power transfer system based on metamaterials has many benefits, we believe it can be widely used in medical research, electric vehicle charging, the civilian industry, and so on," the researchers wrote.

Wireless power transfer enhanced by metamaterials

 

[TaiShang]

IMF close to declaring yuan fairly valued: report
By Dai Tian (



(Photo source: Xinhua)

The International Monetary Fund is close to declaring renminbi fairly valued for the first time in more than a decade, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The fund is expected to make its result official in reports due out in the coming months,said the Journal on Sunday.

A special drawing right (SDR) review is also underway, where the IMF will decide whether to include renminbi into the SDR currency basket, said Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the Washington-based organization, earlier in April.

According to the IMF, selections of currencies for the SDR basket are based on two criteria– the size of the country's exports and whether its currency is freely useable.

The SDR, an international reserve asset, currently comprises US dollar, Japanese yen,British pound and euro.

Renminbi has gained popularity across the world, and the currency is expected to account for 10 percent world reserves by 2025, reported Bloomberg citing a survey of central banks carried out in March. Asian monetary authorities are likely to show the most support.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak pledged support to renminbi at the launch ceremony of Renminbi Clearing Bank in Malaysia in April, adding that the currency willplay a key role in facilitating trade and investment in Southeast Asia.

According to the IMF, the selections of currencies for the SDR basket are based on two criteria -- the size of the country's exports and whether its currency is freely useable. Thelatter requires a certain degree of capital account convertibility.

During IMF's last review in 2010, the yuan met the export criterion, but not the freelyuseable criterion.

According to Zhu, the review this year will make full assessment on the use of yuan incommercial banks' liabilities, its share in global foreign exchange and derivativestransactions, its ranking in international reserves, and its proportion in the global bondmarket.

In addition to the technical statistics, the IMF will also review China's efforts to increaseyuan capital account convertibility, said Zhu.

On Saturday, China's Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in a statement at theSpring Meetings in Washington that this year China plans to launch a series of reformsthat target currently inconvertible items under the capital account, with the aim of furtherpromoting capital account liberalization and making the yuan a more freely usablecurrency.

The IMF will fully evaluate China's capital account reforms in the SDR review, Zhu said.

As to when the yuan will be included in the SDR, Zhu said theoretically the SDR reviewwill be concluded this year, but considering the complexity and the importance of theyuan, the IMF will remain flexible in terms of the timetable for the review.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, said on Thursday that the Chineseauthorities knew quite well what is desirable, what needs to be changed and improved inthe monetary policy and in the financial sector in China.

"I believe what the Chinese authorities have actually indicated. ..will naturally beconducive to an assessment of whether or not the yuan is freely usable, which is as youknow one of the key criteria," she said at a press briefing on the sidelines of the SpringMeetings.

The inclusion of yuan in the SDR has already received support from some advancedeconomies. During the Spring Meetings, British Finance Minister George Osborne said aspart of the internationalization of yuan, it's sensible to see the yuan come into the basket.