ECONOMY

Living Outside The Mountain

Suo Qian, a migrant from a village in the mountainous areas of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to Jinling Village in Lingwu City, works for a textile company in the village and earns over 1,000 yuan($160.52) a month.

Since the end of 2010, the region has begun to see the migration of mountainous residents from the central and southern parts of Ningxia. To date, over 121,000 have moved out to start a new life.

Largest Foreign Takeover

China National Offshore Oil Corp.(CNOOC) announced on February 26 that it has closed the deal to acquire Canada’s Nexen lnc.

CNOOC, China’s largest offshore oil and gas producer, said the company paid about $15.1 billion for Nexen’s common and preferred shares.

Wang Yilin, Chairman of CNOOC, said the company is delighted to have acquired a leading international platform through the acquisition of Nexen.

Kevin Reinhart will continue to serve as CEO of Nexen, which will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of CNOOC.

Li Fanrong, CEO of CNOOC Ltd.,a listed subsidiary of the group will chair the new Nexen board.

The deal was first announced in July 2012. lt is the largest overseas acquisition ever made by a Chinese company.

China-ASEAN Link

A railway linking southwest China’s Yunnan Province with the ASEAN countries came into operation on February 23 after seven years of construction.

The railway between Yuxi and Mengzi, both in Yunnan, is part of the eastern line of the planned Pan-Asia Railway network, an international railway project that will bring China closer with Southeast Asia.

The 141-km railway has a designed maximum speed of 120 km per hour. lt passes through 35 tunnels and crosses 61 bridges, which together account for 54.95 percent of the eastern line’s total length.

The eastern line also consists of the Kunming-Yuxi Railway, already in operation, and the Mengzi-Hekou Railway that is under construction and scheduled to be operational at the end of next year.

LOWER PRICES

Consumers select vegetables at a food market in Shijiazhuang, north China’s Hebei Province.According to the Ministry of Commerce, food prices in 36 monitored cities fell after the Spring Festival

Petrochemical Cooperation

Sinopec Sichuan Vinylon Works Group and South Korea’s SK Chemicals Co. Ltd. signed a joint venture contract on February 25 in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality to build a butanediol(BDO) facility with an annual production volume of 200,000 tons.

The project, which includes production facilities for acetylene,formaldehyde and BDO, as well as other support projects, will cost 3.8 billion yuan ($605 million).

Located in the Changshou Economic-Technological Development Area, the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.

Upon completion, the project is expected to realize an annual sales volume of 4 billion yuan ($642.4 million) and pay 1.4 billion yuan($224.8 million) in taxes each year.

The BDO project is a milestone for Chongqing in becoming a global natural gas industrial base, said Huang Qifan, Mayor of Chongqing.The petrochemical industry,especially the natural gas chemical industry, is one of the six pillar industries in Chongqing.

FASTER CONNECTION

The electrification system of the high-speed railway connecting Hangzhou to Ningbo, both in east China’s Zhejiang Province, fulfills one-time success in transmitting electricity and will be put into use in June, cutting travel time to 36 minutes

Sinopec is China’s top oil re finer.SK is the third largest conglomerate in South Korea, with energy and communications as its two major businesses.

ICBC’s Move

lndustrial and Commercial Bank of China (lCBC), the country’s biggest lender, said on February 24 that its Middle Eastern unit in 2012 saw pre-tax pro fits of $54 million, up 69 percent year on year, while its total assets increased 29 percent to $3.96 billion.

Tian Zhiping, regional CEO of Dubai-based lCBC Middle East, said that 2012 was another year of strong growth because the company continued to benefit from its regional franchise and unique position as a bridge for trade and investment between the Middle East and China.

lCBC said its branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi of United Arab Emirates and in Doha of Qatar contributed to the strategic expansion of the bank’s Middle Eastern business.

More EU Investment

Europe has attracted twice as much investment as the United States from Chinese investors in the past two years, U.S. consulting firm Rhodium Group said in a report on February 25.

Annual flows of Chinese direct investment to the EU increased from less than $1 billion before 2008 to an average of $3 billion in 2009 and 2010, before tripling to more than$10 billion in the past two years, according to the report.

ln the United States, China’s direct investment surged from less than $1 billion in 2008 to $5 billion in 2010, before dropping to $4.7 billion in 2011 and reaching a record high of $6.5 billion in 2012, which remained below the levels seen in the EU in the past two years.

This was mostly driven by commercial opportunities resulting from the fiscal and economic crisis in the eurozone, according to Thilo Hanemann, Research Director of the Rhodium Group and the author of the report.

“Chinese investors seized opportunities to buy into cash-strapped European industrials and assets promising stable long-term returns such as utilities and other infrastructure,” he noted.

Hi-Tech Solution

A researcher with the Chongqing lnstitute of Green and lntelligent Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrates the special features of single-layer graphene.

The institute signed a cooperative agreement with the Shanghai Nanjiang (Group)Co. Ltd. to develop the commercial use of single-layer graphene in digital products to make them cheaper, lighter and less energyconsuming.

Numbers

13,227

Number of Jimny vehicles that Japanese carmaker Suzuki Motor Corp. will recall in China to fix flaws that may pose safety risks

87.2 bln yuan

Main business revenues that China’s telecom sector registered in January 2013, up 6.8 percent from a year earlier

403.1 tons

China’s gold output in 2012, up 11.66 percent

1.4%

GDP growth of Hong Kong in 2012, much lower than the

previous year’s 4.9 percent