China Economy Forum

[Götterdämmerung]

They are deliberately withholding their numbers because it will show that their GDP in US dollar terms has gone down since the rupee collapsed in the past half year.

Just went to the Indian statistic office's website. To get the information, they want a remittance (WTF is that? Why not just say money?). It's the first time I was asked to send money to get national statistical data that are otherwise available for free in all other countries.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

BBC News - Newsnight - China's appetite for work and wealth

China's appetite for work and wealth


PAXMAN IN CHINA

Jeremy Paxman reports from China for the BBC's Newsnight programme
Watch at 22:30GMT on BBC Two on Mon 23, Tue 24 and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer
China's huge population and booming economy is turning into a new world power, but what is creating that success, how secure is it, and what does it mean for the UK and other Western economies, asks Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman.
There was a minor riot in Beijing last week. The Apple store was attacked.
Its offence? Not being willing to sell sufficient numbers of the iPhone 4S.
Buyers had queued all night and things turned ugly when it became clear that many of those in line had not the faintest idea what an iPhone was.
They belonged to teams hired by middlemen who knew that every handset bought was immediately resalable for an additional hundred pounds.
The teams of the tech-unsavvy were identifiable to each other by home-made armbands, and when the store realised what was happening it suspended sales. That was when the eggs started flying.
In London they riot to steal things. In Beijing, they riot because they cannot buy them.
China proclaims itself a secular country. But that is not what it looks like. For a first-time visitor to China, the most astonishing aspect of the country is the worship of wealth.

The whole economy floats on a sea of migrant workers willing to go anywhere for a day's pay
The mayor of London may like to be seen riding around on a bicycle. The mayor of Beijing - once the greatest concentration of cyclists in the world - wouldn't be seen dead on one.
Even China Daily, a sort of hymn-sheet to the Communist Party, reads like the FT much of the time.
Flaunting wealth
It reported last Monday (16 January) that there were more Rolls Royces bought in China last year than anywhere else on earth.
Audi now sells more of its brand here than in Germany. The company confidently expects to exceed its target of one million sales between 2011 and 2013, "as long as we can grow annually at 8 percent", as a senior executive asserted blithely. The target was set less than a year and a half ago.

Chinese cities are matching Western rivals for conspicuous consumerism
It is all surface froth, of course. There will still be one billion, two hundred and ninety-nine million Chinese who do not buy an Audi. But it is the flaunting of wealth that is so shocking, because the whole economy floats on a sea of migrant workers willing to go anywhere for a day's pay.
You can hear them hammering on the construction sites and see them clambering across the half-built highway towers from dawn until long after dusk.
Victorian Britain was perhaps rather similar, and the smog of Charles Dickens' London finds its counterpart in the murk which envelopes Beijing on windless days and tears at your throat like sandpaper.
Work ethic
Beijing itself - once, apparently, a charming ancient city - has been torn down and replaced with a traffic-jammed assortment of functional concrete blocks interspersed with the occasional quite stunning pieces of modern architecture.

China is the great emerging force in the world, and the sense of apprehension everywhere else must be good
The old men of the politburo must look out on it all from the backs of their limousines and smile. Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution sent intellectuals to live as peasants. Embracing capitalism has created a class of urban plutocrats.
China is the great emerging force in the world, and the sense of apprehension everywhere else must be good.
It is customary to attribute China's new wealth solely to its abundance of cheap labour. But it would have been impossible if the country's potential entrepreneurs had not possessed the sort of work ethic which drove the captains of Victorian industry.
People seriously want to get rich. It may not be especially attractive. But it is more than enough to see off soft, Western welfare states which have sold their future for the sake of cheaper televisions and trainers.

China is moving into hi-tech industries such as animation
Dozy Western governments seem to believe that it does not matter much, because somehow their comfortable democracies will coast along on the fruits of intellectual invention.
These governments bask in the belief that we can outsource metal-bashing and shirt-stitching because the brains which devise the products nestle inside Western heads.
How much longer can this complacent illusion last? In the 1960s there was a common belief among the English middle class that things made in Japan were "Japanese junk". The Sony Walkman and infinitely more reliable televisions than any manufactured in the country that invented the damn things soon ended that complacency.
The main television station in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, has a spanking new news studio infinitely superior to any the BBC can boast.
Chinese airlines (many of which know a great deal more about service than their western counterparts) fly Airbus and Boeing, but soon, the country will be making its own passenger aircraft.
What reason is there to assume that banking or any of the creative industries are beyond their ability?
Predicting the future is a job for clairvoyants, not journalists. But I cannot see any easy way for the current imbalance of trade to be equalised. Rather the reverse.
Untouchable elite
There is, though, one worry the so-called communists in the Chinese government might want to trouble themselves with.

The overseas bank accounts of the mega-rich are an open secret. Stories of corruption... are legion
One night, while eating in a smart Beijing restaurant I teased my host by asking whether the other diners were party officials. His instant - and serious - reply caught me out.
"Oh no," he said, "they always eat in the private rooms at places like this."
All the best restaurants have these private rooms, so the rich and powerful do not have their meal spoiled by the offensive sight of their fellow citizens.
Many of these private rooms serve delicacies the Chinese people can only dream of. Come to think of it, they probably do dream of them. I'm talking abalone, sea slug and puffer fish.
I certainly don't know enough about China to assert that this sort of behaviour cannot last. But I do know that it would not be tolerated in western Europe. Revolutions have been sparked by less.
The vast majority of the Chinese people do not yet seem even to have their noses pressed to the window-panes. They are too busy hoping to get rich, or just trying to make ends meet.
But the one-child policy is openly flouted by the rich, who simply pay the fine or arrange for the birth to take place in Hong Kong. If a poor person's child falls ill and the parents cannot afford health insurance, they will not get hospital care.
The overseas bank accounts of the mega-rich are an open secret. Stories of corruption, even of car accidents in which young people run someone over and expect to get away with it because their parents are senior in the party, are legion.
Having said which, everyone we met was charming, friendly and helpful. Not a single young person talked, even in their cups, of revolution
Right now, there are too many people doing too well for such thoughts. But it does not take a clairvoyant to ask how long it can last.
Watch Jeremy Paxman's reports from China on Newsnight at 10.30pm on BBC Two starting Monday 23 January 2012. IS THIS TRUE please don't ban me

My friends in college ate in private rooms all the time. It doesn't cost too much extra. You're actually required to go to private rooms if you have a large party otherwise it will disturb the other guests. That was just a ridiculous jab at Chinese.

The part about Apple is shameful and anyone that lines up to buy anything should be sent to mandatory drug rehab.

 

[marshall]

*** China Vows to Increase Wages and Improve Employment ***
China Vows to Increase Wages and Improve Employment | China Briefing News

Posted on February 10, 2012 by China Briefing
Op/Ed Commentary: Vivian Ni

Feb. 10 – In its latest 12th Five-Year Plan on Employment Improvement (“Plan&#8221, China says it will continue working on increasing wage levels and controlling unemployment rates. Under these new targets, enterprises operating in China may face the challenge of increasing operational costs.

Minimum wage and social welfare
According to the new Plan, the average annual growth rate of China’s minimum wage levels will be over 13 percent between 2011 and 2015. The minimum wage standards in most areas will not be lower than 40 percent of the local average wage level.

For a long time now, China has garnered a global reputation as a country boasting cheap, plentiful labor and low overheads. In recent years, however, this perception is beginning to lose its veracity as employment costs continue to rise at a rapid pace year-in and year-out. Between 2005 and 2010, the minimum wage standards in the country increased by an average of 12.5 percent every year and now currently range from RMB1,500 in the southern trade base of Shenzhen to RMB870 in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.

In addition to pledging higher wages, the Plan also stresses the complete coverage of social insurance. China enacted the new “Social Insurance Law” in July last year, which for the first time included foreign employees into its national social welfare program. Local governments are now taking measures to gradually enforce employers to make mandatory social insurance payments for their foreign employees.

Furthermore, the protection of labor rights is set to be strengthened, which will likely force employers to offer greater benefits to their workers. Labor contract signing rates will reach 90 percent between 2011 and 2015, compared to the rate of 65 percent between 2005 and 2010. Also, regulations on working hours, annual leave and sick leave, national holidays, and protection of female employees will be further toughened. For instance, China is considering a plan to extend the existing 90-day maternity leave to 14 weeks, and offer female workers better work conditions.

Improvement in the job market
In general, the Plan admits that there is a labor supply surplus in the job market, but makes no mention of the waves of labor shortages many manufacturing companies in coastal areas have suffered in recent years.

The government aims to control the unemployment rate to under 5 percent between 2011 and 2015. The jobless rate between 2005 and 2010 was 4.1 percent.

However, the reliability of the official jobless statistics is somewhat controversial. In March 2010, when attending the State Council-hosted China Development Forum, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the unemployed population in China had achieved 200 million. The figure cited by Wen represented over 10 percent of the total Chinese population.

Opinion: A glance at companies’ increasing burdens
Companies in China are under the pressure of both increasing labor costs and growing tax burdens.

The minimum wage level is often used as an example of China’s shrinking cost advantage. However, for a rapidly-developing country like China, increases in labor compensation are almost inevitable.

While the Plan says there is a significant surplus of labor force in both urban and rural areas, many manufacturing plants – especially those in China’s eastern and southern coastal areas – have been complaining about labor shortages for years. What this means is that many migrant workers prefer to settle somewhere else rather than receive a salary in metropolitan areas that would not be enough to survive on.

If companies don’t have enough workers working for them to satisfy their orders, profits will shrink anyway. There have also been examples of labor unrest in South China where workers went on strikes due to low salaries, bringing considerable losses to their employers. Therefore, although China’s minimum wage policy does seem to be imposing higher burdens on businesses, an offer of financial incentives to employees is often a price companies cannot avoid paying.

What should Chinese policymakers do to not scare away investors with high operational costs while at the same time maintaining social stability? Lou Zhongping, president of Zhejiang-based straw manufacturing company Soton, believes it is time for the government to reduce tax burdens on private companies.

Lou, the founder of a typical Chinese labor-intensive manufacturing company, said he has contributed one-third of the company’s profits to a 12 percent employee salary increase this year, which he believes is critical for the company’s development.

The tax burdens imposed by the government – on the other hand – have grown much faster than both employee salaries and the profits of small and medium-sized enterprises, Lou said in his micro-blog.

China’s total tax burden ranked second on the 2009 Tax Misery Report by Forbes. The high tax contributions made by companies have significantly eaten away at profits, but has not necessarily brought back the quality public services they need. It is essential now that China considers a change in its taxation policy that would allow businesses to get into a more robust development mode that would finally benefit both the economy and the job market.

 

[sweetgrape]

EmberClear Signs Chinese Energy Technology License Agreement
EmberClear Signs Chinese Energy Technology License Agreement – Venture Capital, Private Equity, M&A, IPO News
EmberClear Corp. (TSX-V: EMB), an advanced energy development company, has signed a “historic” energy agreement with China’s Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute (HCERI) on Monday.

The agreement, a technology license, enables EmberClear to develop a new low-emissions plant producing gasoline or diesel fuel from coal in the United States. The project could create approximately 1,000 jobs in the U.S. and obtaining a technology license achieves a required milestone for such a facility to be built.

The plant is intended to generate gasoline or diesel transportation fuel for sale in the United States. The use of this new advanced thermal-chemistry technology allows the production of such fuels with lower emissions than traditional refineries using crude oil.

 

[sweetgrape]

Chinese power plant contractors take half of Indian market share
Chinese power plant contractors take half of Indian market share | Industries | chinadaily.com.cn
MUMBAI— China's power plant builders have played a major role in lifting Indian power generation and hastening its transformation of infrastructure in the past years, showed statistics.

SEPCO III, the largest Chinese contractor of power plant in India on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), has been awarded $9 billion worth of contracts since 2005 with total power generation capacity of 9.57 GW, said Lu Yanxia, director of SEPCO III's Mumbai Office on Tuesday.

SEPCO III alone takes more than 20 percent of Indian power plant building market, though all Chinese power plant contractors occupy less than 50 percent of market share in the third largest Asian economy, Lu said.

Partnering with Adani Power, Vedanda Resources and Hong Kong- based CLP Group, SEPCO III now has five projects under construction and has finished one with 23 power generating units.

Peng Gang, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, told Xinhua onSept 7 that Chinese power plant builders and power generation equipment suppliers have made positive and effective contribution in recent years to the growth of Indian power generation capacity and the improvement of infrastructure at large.

Chinese players also increased local employment and enhanced capacity building in this regard, said Peng.

India needs to adopt a more aggressive path to generate additional power, said C Rangarajan, chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the prime minister.

Rangarajan said shortage of physical infrastructure, especially electricity, would be a main bottleneck for the country's economy to grow at 9 percent.

Now, around 56 percent of Indian rural households have no access to electricity and the country faces 12 percent to 14 percent of power shortage in peak hours.

Though Indian central government planned to add 78 GW of power generation capacity during 2006-2011, only around 50 GW could be realized.

On the other hand, Chinese power plant builders intend to implement the projects in a faster way, and are willing to employ and train local workers.

Still, the implementation will take 12 percent to 15 percent more time in India due to low productivity of local workers, bad weather as well as difficulties to obtain visa for Chinese workers and engineers, according to Lu.

India now faces challenges from weak infrastructure like power and road, high inflation and lack of qualified and skillful labor force, said Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist with Indian credit rating and research body CRISIL Limited.

SEPCO III now employs around 7,000 Indian workers directly with more than 50,000 local people engaged with its subcontractors.

SEPCO III has trained many welders for high-grade alloy steel and other skilled workers in India, said Lu.

Lu added that the power plant builder would go ahead with localization by recruiting a large number of local people, with Indian employees having accounted for 50 percent of the management personnel.

Furthermore, SEPCO III announced to donate 3 million rupees ( around $65,000) to two Mumbai-based NGOs to help build a children's hospital and improve the sanitation of the slum area in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, the Indian government has applied stringent conditions for Chinese contractors to employ foreign staff since 2009, which hampers the smooth operation of Chinese companies.

If Chinese skilled workers and engineers were not pinned at specific project under project visa, and were transferred directly to another project after completion of existing one, it would be a great relief to us, Lu added.

Despite of those disadvantages, Chinese power transmission and transformation companies like State Grid Corporation of China and Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Co Ltd have entered India recently eyeing the great potential here.

 

[Shaurya]

China’s Stocks Fall for Third Day on Concern Over Global Economic Slowdown

China’s stocks fell for a third day, the longest losing streak in almost two months, on concern a global slowdown will hurt earnings.
Jiangxi Copper Co. paced losses by raw materials producers after commodity prices slid the most this year. China Life Insurance Co. (601628) slipped to a two-month low after the nation’s biggest insurer said profit may have fallen as much as 50 percent in 2011. China Eastern Airlines Corp., the nation’s second-largest carrier, sank 0.7 percent after Chairman Liu Shaoyong said he expects a “big” drop in travel-demand growth.
Enlarge image
The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 10.44 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,400 as of 9:43 a.m. local time. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Play Video
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc, talks about the outlook for China's economy, and the nation's monetary and fiscal policies. Neumann speaks with Sara Eisen and Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)
Enlarge image
A vendor sits at a copper rod retail shop in Shanghai, China. Jiangxi Copper, China’s biggest producer of the metal, dropped 2 percent to 25.89 yuan. Photographer: Kevin Lee/Bloomberg News
“Corporate earnings aren’t looking very promising and expectations about first-quarter profits may be pessimistic amid the slowdown,” said Wei Wei, an analyst at West China Securities Co. in Shanghai.
The Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP) sank 15.65 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,394.79 at the close. The three-day, 2.7 percent drop is the longest string of declines since a four-day period ended Jan. 16. The CSI 300 Index (SHSZ300) lost 0.7 percent to 2,603. The Bloomberg China-US 55 Index (CH55BN), the measure of the most-traded U.S.-listed Chinese companies, retreated 2.3 percent yesterday in New York.
China cut its 2012 economic growth target to 7.5 percent on March 5, down from 8 percent over the past seven years, as the European debt crisis and sluggish U.S. recovery crimp demand for goods from the world’s largest exporter.
Stock Valuations
The Shanghai Composite has gained 8.9 percent in 2012 following two years of losses on speculation the central bank will add to a Feb. 18 cut in reserve requirements to halt a slowdown in economic growth. Stocks in the index trade at 9.9 times estimated profit, compared with a record low of 8.9 times on Jan. 6, weekly data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Commerce Minister Chen Deming said exports rose about 7 percent over the first two months of the year, suggesting that February’s number will be less than economists had forecast. The economy of Europe, China’s biggest trading partner, shrank 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter, data released yesterday showed. Europe accounts for about 18 percent of China’s exports, according to Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co.
Jiangxi Copper, China’s biggest producer of the metal, dropped 3.1 percent to 25.61 yuan. Zijin Mining Group Co., the nation’s largest gold producer, lost 1.6 percent to 4.46 yuan. Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., the listed unit of the biggest maker of the lightweight metal, slid 1.4 percent to 7.23 yuan.
Outbound Shipments
The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 commodities sank 1.5 percent yesterday in New York, the biggest loss since Dec. 14. Copper slid 3.2 percent in New York and gold retreated 1.9 percent.
China’s outbound shipments gained about 7 percent over January and February combined, while imports rose more than that, Chen said today during a briefing in Beijing at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey compiled before he spoke was for a 32 percent gain in February from a year earlier.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, expanded 8.9 percent in the last three months of 2011, the least in 10 quarters. Consumer prices rose 4.5 percent in January and 5.4 percent in 2011, while the government maintained a goal of 4 percent for this year. The government is scheduled to report inflation data for February on March 9.
‘Volatile Trading’
“There’s no big risk of a sharp slowdown in the economy but there’s no big catalyst either that’ll convince everyone that the economy will pick up strongly soon,” said Wang Zheng, Shanghai-based chief investment officer at Jingxi Investment Management Co., which manages about $120 million. “We’ll face volatile trading going forward.”
China Life slipped 1.1 percent to 17.50 yuan, its lowest close since Jan. 9 and extending yesterday’s 3.5 percent decline. Net income for 2011 may have dropped by 40 percent to 50 percent from a year earlier based on Chinese accounting standards, the company said in a statement yesterday. The decrease was due to “the decline in investment yield and the increase in impairment losses caused by the fluctuation in the capital market,” according to the statement.
American depository receipts of China Life slid 8.5 percent yesterday in New York, boosting to 5.9 percent the discount to the insurer’s Hong Kong-listed shares. The discount is the biggest in seven months.
Profit of China Life fell 46 percent in the third quarter, while Ping An Insurance Group Co. and China Pacific Insurance Group Co., the nation’s second- and third-biggest insurers, also reported net income drops for the three months to Sept. 30.
Travel Demand
China Eastern dropped 0.7 percent to 4.22 yuan. Chairman Liu said demand for international passenger and cargo flights is “clearly falling,” predominately because European consumers are cutting spending, Liu told reporters in Beijing yesterday. There will also be a “big difference” in full-year travel growth in 2012 from the previous year, he said.
The China Banking Regulatory Commission will study stock investment by bank wealth management product funds, the Shanghai Securities News reported today, citing Assistant Chairman Yan Qingmin. The regulator may limit the proportion of stock investment by the funds to control risk, it said.
Legg Mason Global Asset Management is expecting an earnings “surprise” in China in the second half of this year as the economy improves, according to Crystal Chan, the firm’s head of Hong Kong and China investments.
Suning Surges
Chinese equities offer “attractive” value and there is “upside” for stocks in the second half, Chan said at a briefing in Hong Kong today. Legg Mason is favoring shares of financial-services companies amid expectations the government will loosen its monetary policies, she said.
Suning Appliance Co., China’s biggest electronics retailer by market value, jumped 8.6 percent to 10.10 yuan. The retailer plans to expand both online and to add physical stores and has started selling books, daily necessities and other products in addition to electronics, Chairman Zhang Jindong was cited as saying by Sina.com.
FAW Car Co., which makes passenger cars in China with Volkswagen AG, rose 2.8 percent to 11.60 yuan. Sales at Volkswagen Group China, FAW Car’s German partner, increased 9.5 percent in the first two months of the year, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

China



---------- Post added at 09:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:21 PM ----------

Slowdown in China lends hand to global economic rebalancing

LONDON -- China's acceptance of a slower rate of growth rattled markets on Monday, but it also shows that the gradual rebalancing of the global economy long sought by world leaders is on track.
Oil, copper and equities all fell after Premier Wen Jiabao, in his annual state-of-the nation report to China's parliament, penciled in growth for 2012 of 7.5 percent. That would be the slowest pace of expansion since 1990 and well down on last year's 9.2-percent growth rate.

But ditching the 8-percent reference rate for growth set in the previous eight years is more about managing expectations than reflecting a serious lack of confidence in the economy's prospects, said Steve Zhang, director of the China Policy Institute at Britain's Nottingham University.

“The Chinese government and economists outside China have been saying the economy needs rebalancing. It's blatantly obvious. Well, if you're serious about rebalancing you'd expect growth to slow down a bit,” he said.

Zhang and others said the 7.5-percent figure should be viewed as a point of reference rather than a forecast. After all, the ruling Communist Party, which manages to hit most of its goals, has consistently overshot its annual growth “target” in recent years.

Nor should the signaling function in Wen's speech have come as a surprise.

The lower target envisaged is consistent with the expected slowing of potential growth based on higher labor costs and falling investment returns, according to Li-Gang Liu and Hao Zhou, economists at ANZ in Hong Kong.

Indeed, the party's five-year plan for 2011-2015, released a year ago, was based on an even lower growth rate of 7 percent, shifting down from the annual pace of almost 10 percent enjoyed in the first 30 years of China's embrace of a semi-market economy.

However, because of that breakneck expansion, growth is now measured from a much higher starting point.

“Considering the base effects, 7.5- to 8-percent growth would still be extraordinarily strong,” said Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital in London.

Slowdown in China lends hand to global economic rebalancing - The China Post

 

[manofwar]

^^^^ They are still doing better than us.
This scamster congress govt. is ruining the country...

 

[pakje]

So what do you guys think about this article:

Why China will have an economic crisis

I personally think that China is somewhat decent equipped to survive a crisis with 3T in foreign reserve. Also I'm pretty sure the government is aware of this

 

[Aramsogo]

China offers other Brics renminbi loans
By Henny Sender in Hong Kong and Joe Leahy in São Paulo
©Getty
China intends to extend renminbi loans to other Brics nations, in another step towards the internationalisation of its currency.
The China Development Bank will sign a memorandum of understanding in New Delhi with its Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts on March 29, say people familiar with their talks. Under the agreement CDB, which lends mainly in dollars overseas, will make renminbi loans available, while the other Brics nations’ development banks will also extend loans denominated in their respective currencies.

 

[sweetgrape]

Announcing the First Results from Daya Bay: Discovery of a New Kind of Neutrino Transformation
Announcing the First Results from Daya Bay: Discovery of a New Kind of Neutrino Transformation

Multinational Collaboration Includes Faculty and Students at Illinois Institute of Technology

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration operating in the south of China, today reported the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a longstanding puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer opens a gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why there is far more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe today.

Traveling at close to the speed of light, the three basic neutrino “flavors” – electron, muon, and tau neutrinos, as well as their corresponding antineutrinos – mix together and oscillate (transform), but this activity is extremely difficult to detect. From Dec. 24, 2011, until Feb. 17, 2012, scientists in the Daya Bay collaboration observed tens of thousands of interactions of electron antineutrinos, caught by six massive detectors buried in the mountains adjacent to the powerful nuclear reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. These reactors, at Daya Bay and nearby Ling Ao, produce millions of quadrillions of elusive electron antineutrinos every second.

The data revealed a so‑called “mixing angle” named theta one-three (written θ13), which the researchers measured with unmatched precision. Theta one-three, the last mixing angle to be precisely measured, expresses how electron neutrinos and their antineutrino counterparts mix and change into the other flavors. The Daya Bay collaboration’s first result indicates that theta one-three, expressed as sin2 2 θ13, is equal to 0.092 plus or minus 0.017.

“This is a new type of neutrino oscillation, and it is surprisingly large,” says Yifang Wang of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), co-spokesperson and Chinese project manager of the Daya Bay experiment. “Our precise measurement will complete the understanding of the neutrino oscillation and pave the way for the future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.”

Neutrinos, the wispy particles that flooded the universe in the earliest moments after the big bang, are continually produced in the hearts of stars and other nuclear reactions. Untouched by electromagnetism, they respond only to the weak nuclear force and even weaker gravity, passing mostly unhindered through everything from planets to people. The challenge of capturing these elusive particles inspired the Daya Bay collaboration in the design and precise placement of its detectors. The Daya Bay experiment counts the number of electron antineutrinos detected in the halls nearest the Daya Bay and Ling Ao reactors and calculates how many would reach the detectors in the Far Hall if there were no oscillation. The number that vanish along the way (oscillating into other flavors, in fact) gives the value of theta one-three.

“What we didn’t expect was the sizable disappearance, equal to about six percent. Although disappearance has been observed in another reactor experiment over large distances, this is a new kind of disappearance for the reactor electron antineutrino.” says Kam-Biu Luk of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. Luk is co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Experiment and heads U.S. participation. The first Daya Bay results show that theta one-three, once feared to be near zero, instead is “comparatively huge,” Kam-Biu Luk remarks, adding that “Nature was good to us.” In coming months and years the initial results will be honed by collecting far more data and reducing statistical and systematic errors.

Refined results will open the door to further investigations and influence the design of future neutrino experiments – including how to determine which neutrino flavors are the most massive, whether there is a difference between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, and, eventually, why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

“It’s incredibly rewarding after so many years of hard work,” says Christopher White, chair of the physics department and professor of physics at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), who serves as a U.S. project manager for electronic readout and data acquisition at Daya Bay. “The quality of the data has exceeded all our expectations. The detectors are working beautifully and we look forward to the possibility of more discoveries yet to come.”

IIT is a collaborating institution of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. Faculty and students from the university participated in installation and commissioning activities onsite at the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station in Shenzhen China, as well as contributing to core software and data analysis. Christopher White sits on the technical board and publication committees and chairs the Daya Bay Institutional Board. “Working with our Chinese colleagues has been a wonderful learning experience for us all,” says White. “These initial results open the door to our understanding of why the universe is dominated by matter instead of antimatter.”

“Exemplary teamwork among the partners has led to this outstanding performance,” says James Siegrist, associate director for high-energy physics at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “These notable first results are just the beginning for the world’s foremost reactor neutrino experiment.”

The collaborating institutions of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment are Beijing Normal University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Charles University in Prague, Chengdu University of Technology, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, China Institute of Atomic Energy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dongguan University of Technology, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, University of Hong Kong, Institute of High Energy Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nanjing University, Nankai University, National Chiao-Tung University, National Taiwan University, National United University, North China Electric Power University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Shandong University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shenzhen University, Siena College, Tsinghua University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Cincinnati, University of Houston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Science and Technology of China, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of William and Mary, and Sun Yat-Sen (Zhongshan) University.
Multinational Collaboration Includes Faculty and Students at Illinois Institute of Technology The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration operating in the south of China, today reported the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a longstanding puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer opens a gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why there is far more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe today. Traveling at close to the speed of light, the three basic neutrino “flavors” – electron, muon, and tau neutrinos, as well as their corresponding antineutrinos – mix together and oscillate (transform), but this activity is extremely difficult to detect. From Dec. 24, 2011, until Feb. 17, 2012, scientists in the Daya Bay collaboration observed tens of thousands of interactions of electron antineutrinos, caught by six massive detectors buried in the mountains adjacent to the powerful nuclear reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. These reactors, at Daya Bay and nearby Ling Ao, produce millions of quadrillions of elusive electron antineutrinos every second. The data revealed a so‑called “mixing angle” named theta one-three (written θ13), which the researchers measured with unmatched precision. Theta one-three, the last mixing angle to be precisely measured, expresses how electron neutrinos and their antineutrino counterparts mix and change into the other flavors. The Daya Bay collaboration’s first result indicates that theta one-three, expressed as sin2 2 θ13, is equal to 0.092 plus or minus 0.017. “This is a new type of neutrino oscillation, and it is surprisingly large,” says Yifang Wang of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), co-spokesperson and Chinese project manager of the Daya Bay experiment. “Our precise measurement will complete the understanding of the neutrino oscillation and pave the way for the future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.” Neutrinos, the wispy particles that flooded the universe in the earliest moments after the big bang, are continually produced in the hearts of stars and other nuclear reactions. Untouched by electromagnetism, they respond only to the weak nuclear force and even weaker gravity, passing mostly unhindered through everything from planets to people. The challenge of capturing these elusive particles inspired the Daya Bay collaboration in the design and precise placement of its detectors. The Daya Bay experiment counts the number of electron antineutrinos detected in the halls nearest the Daya Bay and Ling Ao reactors and calculates how many would reach the detectors in the Far Hall if there were no oscillation. The number that vanish along the way (oscillating into other flavors, in fact) gives the value of theta one-three. “What we didn’t expect was the sizable disappearance, equal to about six percent. Although disappearance has been observed in another reactor experiment over large distances, this is a new kind of disappearance for the reactor electron antineutrino.” says Kam-Biu Luk of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. Luk is co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Experiment and heads U.S. participation. The first Daya Bay results show that theta one-three, once feared to be near zero, instead is “comparatively huge,” Kam-Biu Luk remarks, adding that “Nature was good to us.” In coming months and years the initial results will be honed by collecting far more data and reducing statistical and systematic errors. Refined results will open the door to further investigations and influence the design of future neutrino experiments – including how to determine which neutrino flavors are the most massive, whether there is a difference between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, and, eventually, why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. “It’s incredibly rewarding after so many years of hard work,” says Christopher White, chair of the physics department and professor of physics at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), who serves as a U.S. project manager for electronic readout and data acquisition at Daya Bay. “The quality of the data has exceeded all our expectations. The detectors are working beautifully and we look forward to the possibility of more discoveries yet to come.” IIT is a collaborating institution of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. Faculty and students from the university participated in installation and commissioning activities onsite at the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station in Shenzhen China, as well as contributing to core software and data analysis. Christopher White sits on the technical board and publication committees and chairs the Daya Bay Institutional Board. “Working with our Chinese colleagues has been a wonderful learning experience for us all,” says White. “These initial results open the door to our understanding of why the universe is dominated by matter instead of antimatter.” “Exemplary teamwork among the partners has led to this outstanding performance,” says James Siegrist, associate director for high-energy physics at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “These notable first results are just the beginning for the world’s foremost reactor neutrino experiment.” The collaborating institutions of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment are Beijing Normal University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Charles University in Prague, Chengdu University of Technology, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, China Institute of Atomic Energy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dongguan University of Technology, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, University of Hong Kong, Institute of High Energy Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nanjing University, Nankai University, National Chiao-Tung University, National Taiwan University, National United University, North China Electric Power University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Shandong University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shenzhen University, Siena College, Tsinghua University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Cincinnati, University of Houston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Science and Technology of China, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of William and Mary, and Sun Yat-Sen (Zhongshan) University.
[IMG]http://www.chinaequip.gov.cn/2012-03/09/131456447_71n.jpg

 

[sweetgrape]

Malaysia launches Chinese-made train sets
Malaysia launches Chinese-made train sets|chinadaily.com.cn
KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 8 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia's main rail operator, Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad or KTMB on Thursday launched four new six-car trains - the first of 38 new train sets it bought from Chinese electric train maker Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd. as it is gradually replacing the old fleet.

Prime minister Najib Razak said the new service would ease commuter distress with a shorter travel time and that it came as part of a government development blueprint to improve urban public transport.

The four trains are among 38 six-car-set (SCS) trains that the state-run KTMB bought from Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive for 1.89 billion ringgit (626.65 million U.S. dollars).

The remaining 34 electric trains would be rolled out in stages by July, Najib said.

The SCS train has a hauling capacity of 1,100 passengers, almost triple the ones currently in operation.

It is equipped with three closed-circuit television in each coach, more ergonomic seating and standing space, three lines of hand rail for standing passengers and special seatings for pregnant women, senior citizens and the disabled.

The train has a maximum speed of 120 km per hour the fastest ever operated in Malaysia.

The new fleet, the rail company said, would gradually replace 25 Bombardier three-car trains which have been in operation since 1995.

The rail company expects to expand its fleet of electric trains for the new interstate double-track rail network across the northern Perlis-Perak states and in southern Johor state that would be completed by 2018.

Zhuzhou electric locomotive is a subsidiary of China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation Limited, the world's largest electric train maker.

 

[ahfatzia]

Let me put it this way. Giving the outlook this year on world economy, no big economy in immune for trouble. And if China is in trouble, the whole world will be in trouble economy wise.

 

[sweetgrape]

Application of Chinese petrochemical patented technology to build the world's largest DCC devices put into operation 』 [2012-3-7]
Application of Chinese petrochemical patented technology to build the world's largest DCC devices put into operation - ECF Your Window On China Energy Market
The application of the China Petrochemical patented technology to build the world's largest DCC device was put into operation in Saudi Arabia

International online news (reporter Wang Kunpeng: reporter learned from China's Sinopec, Sinopec deep catalytic cracking (DCC - Deep Catalytic Cracking patented technology built 4.6 million tons / year, the Petro Rabigh, Saudi Arabia, catalytic cracking (DCC device has successfully passed the acceptance formally put into operation, indicates that China Petrochemical DCC technology in the field of Producing Lighter Olefin remain the world's leading-edge technology.

This DCC technology independently developed by China Petrochemical Research Institute of Petroleum, is the heavy oil as raw materials to produce light olefins catalytic cracking process, breaking the bottleneck of the traditional process using light naphtha to produce olefins, the first international use of heavy oil directly The production of propylene, according to market demand for flexible operation of the production of propylene, the isomerization of olefins and high octane gasoline, with a prominent economic, won widespread praise in the international.

Saudi Arabia the Petro Rabigh is a joint venture of Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical Company, a refining capacity of 20 million tons / year, and the installation of 4.6 million tons / year of its core catalytic cracker is the world's largest productive low-carbon smooth operation of olefin plant. the device has been put into operation in May 2009, all targets were met or exceeded the design specifications, including propylene annual production of 950,000 tons by the user as 'propylene generator'.

According to reports, the current domestic and international Sinopec DCC technology licensing device a total of 16 sets, six sets abroad, including Thailand and India, the two sets, one set in Saudi Arabia and Russia Saudi DCC project success and acceptance of Chinese petrochemical refinery technology played a good role model to explore the international market. the first set of DCC device in 1990 in China's Sinopec Jinan refinery smooth start, first set overseas DCC installations put into operation in Thailand, TPI 1997, Saudi Arabia 4.6 million tons / year DCC The device is the world's largest DCC device.

 

[nitetrogen70]

so what will be the expected GDP for china in 2012 ?

 

[ahfatzia]

so what will be the expected GDP for china in 2012 ?

Some estimated around 7.5 trillion US dollars for the fiscal year 2012.