Report: China likely to reject Hummer acquisition due to energy, business concerns

Report: China likely to reject Hummer acquisition
Report: China likely to reject Hummer acquisition due to energy, business concerns

BEIJING (AP) -- China's planning agency is likely to reject a Chinese company's bid to acquire General Motors Corp.'s Hummer unit, in part because its gas-guzzling vehicles conflict with Beijing's conservation goals, state radio reported.

The National Development and Reform Commission also is likely to say Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp., a maker of construction machinery, lacks expertise to run Hummer, China National Radio said late Thursday. It cited no source.
Employees who answered the phone at the NDRC referred questions to its foreign affairs office, where calls were not answered. Tengzhong spokespeople did not immediately respond to phone messages.

Hummers, which roar along on oversize tires and can weigh up to five tons, are based on U.S. military vehicles that gained fame during the 1991 Gulf War. But its sales have been battered by soaring fuel prices.
Tengzhong, based in the southwestern city of Chengdu, emerged as Hummer's surprise buyer this month after GM sought court protection from its creditors. The companies said the sale still required regulatory approval and refused to disclose the price.
Auto industry analysts questioned how Tengzhong, which makes construction vehicles such as cement mixers and tow trucks, could succeed with Hummer, known as "Han Ma," or Bold Horse, in China.
GM said the planned sale would save some 3,000 jobs in the United States. Tengzhong said it planned to invest in research to create more fuel-efficient Hummers. The company said it would keep Hummer's headquarters and manufacturing in the United States.
The Chinese government is trying to promote conservation and use of more fuel-efficient vehicles. It has cut sales taxes on cars with smaller engines and is encouraging automakers to develop electric and other alternative-energy vehicles.

China accuses Google of spreading pornography

China accuses Google of spreading pornography
China accuses Google of spreading pornography following outage in Chinese access

BEIJING (AP) -- China's government accused Google Inc. on Thursday of spreading pornography after Chinese Internet users were temporarily unable to gain access to the U.S. search giant's main Web site or China-based service.

"We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang. He said authorities "summoned representatives of Google.com in China and urged them to remove the content immediately."

Qin, speaking at a regular briefing, did not respond to questions about whether China's government was blocking Web users from seeing Google's site. However, he said he hoped the problem can be "resolved immediately."
Google said Thursday it was investigating the reason for the outage, which began late Wednesday. Chinese users were blocked from seeing Google's U.S. site, its China-based site google.cn and its Gmail e-mail service.
A Chinese watchdog agency accused Google last week of providing links to vulgar and obscene sites. Google, based in Mountainview, Calif., said it would do more to stop users in China from accessing pornography.
"I would like to stress that Google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by all Chinese laws," Qin said. "All the punitive measures adopted by the relevant authorities are conducted strictly according to law."
The Chinese agency that oversees the Internet, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
China has the world's largest population of Internet users at more than 298 million. The communist government has the world's most extensive Web monitoring and filtering system, and it regularly blocks access to foreign Web sites.

Authorities launched a crackdown this year that led to the closing of more than 1,900 porn-related Web sites.
Google has struggled to expand in China, where it says it has about 30 percent of the search market. The company launched Google.cn with a Chinese partner after seeing its market share erode as government filters slowed access to its U.S. service.

World's 65 and older population to triple by 2050

World's 65 and older population to triple by 2050
USCensus: World's older population will triple by 2050, adding stress to government programs

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The world's 65-and-older population will triple by mid-century to 1 in 6 people, leaving the U.S. and other nations struggling to support the elderly.

The number of senior citizens has already jumped 23 percent since 2000 to 516 million, according to U.S. census estimates released on Tuesday. That is more than double the growth rate for the general population.

The world's population has been graying for many years due to declining births and medical advances that have extended life spans. As the fastest-growing age group, seniors now comprise just under 8 percent of the world's 6.8 billion people. But demographers warn the biggest shift is yet to come. They cite a coming wave of retirements from baby boomers and China's Red Guard generation that will shrink pensions and add to rising health care costs.

Germany, Italy, Japan and Monaco have the most senior citizens, with 20 percent or more of their people 65 and older.

In the U.S., residents who are 65 and older currently make up 13 percent of the population, but that will double to 88.5 million by mid-century. In two years, the oldest of the baby boomers will start turning 65. The baby boomer bulge will continue padding the senior population year after year, growing to 1 in 5 U.S. residents by 2030.

"The 2020s for most of the developed world will be an era of fiscal crisis, with a real long-term stagnation in economic growth and ugly political battles over old-age benefits cuts," said Richard Jackson, director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"In emerging countries like China, they will face the real prospect of a humanitarian aging crisis," he said.

China's current ratio of 16 elderly people per 100 workers is set to double by 2025, then double again to 61 by 2050, due partly to family planning policies that limit most families to a single child, Jackson said. Without a universal pension system to cover all elderly, millions of older Chinese could fall into poverty, creating social and political unrest and shock waves that could ripple through the global economy given the country's economic heft.

The Census Bureau's international estimates also show:

--Only 5 percent of Africa's population is projected to be 65 and older in 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa, with high fertility and AIDS cases roiling parts of the region, is home to the youngest people. Leading the way is Uganda where the median age is just 15.

--About 1.53 billion, or 16 percent, of the world's estimated 9.3 billion people in 2050 will be 65 and older.

--Europe will continue to be the grayest region, with 29 percent of its population projected to be 65 and older by 2050. It aging population has prompted governments, including Austria, France and Russia, in recent years to provide incentives such as bonus payouts, tax benefits and free school books to couples who have children.

--In Latin America, known for its high fertility, youths ages 19 and younger outpace the 65-and-older group by more than 5 to 1. But by 2050, led by a dropoff in births in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, senior citizens will jump to 18 percent of the population compared to 25 percent for youths. Faced with its aging population, Cuba recently raised its retirement age by 5 years, delaying payment of pensions.

Ageing in the rich world
The end of retirement

Jun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Demography means virtually all of us will have to work longer. That need not be a bad thing.

WHEN Otto von Bismarck introduced the first pension for workers over 70 in 1889, the life expectancy of a Prussian was 45. In 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls.

Now retirement is for everyone, and often as long as whole lives once were. In some European countries the average retirement lasts more than a quarter of a century. In America the official pension age is 66, but the average American retires at 64 and can then expect to live for another 16 years. Average spending on public pensions across the OECD is now the equivalent of more than 7% of GDP (they cost America just 0.2% back in 1935). In some countries the current figure could double by 2050, to say nothing of the cost of private pensions and extra spending on health and long-term care.
Grey and proud of it

Although the idea that “we are all getting older” is a truism, few governments, employers or individuals have yet come to terms with where longer retirement is heading: the end of the whole concept (see special report). Whether we like it or not, we are going back to the pre-Bismarckian world, where work had no formal stopping point. That reversion will not happen overnight, but preparations should start now—to ensure that when the inevitable happens it is a change for the better.

It should be for the better because it is being partly driven by a wonderful thing: people are living ever longer. Life expectancy has been rising by two or three years for every ten that pass, despite repeated forecasts that it was about to reach its limit. Centenarians used to be rarer than hens’ teeth; now America alone has 100,000 of them. By the end of this century the age of 100 may have become the new three score and ten.

This imminent greying of society is compounded by two other demographic shifts. First, in most rich countries women no longer have enough babies to keep up the numbers (a prospect that may please a lot of greens but not many governments); and the huge baby-boom generation, born after the second world war, has begun to retire. In 1950 the OECD countries had seven people aged 20-64 for every one of 65 and over. Now it is four to one—and on course to be two to one by 2050. That will ruin the pay-as-you-go state pension schemes that provide the bulk of retirement income in rich countries. Read on...
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13900145&source=hptextfeature

Twitter Empowers the People, But Iran's Mullahs Using Technology Too

Twitter Empowers the People, But Iran's Mullahs Using Technology Too

Twitter, Facebook and other sites show the power of technology to express the voice of the people and tear down walls between closed and open societies.
On the other hand, technology is also enabling oppressive regimes like Iran to exert greater control over what citizens can and can't do online. "Deep-packet" technologies provided by Siemens and Nokia have given Iran "one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet,"
Meanwhile, all PCs sold in China starting July 1 must have government-approved software called Green Dam Youth Escort. The software is ostensibly designed to block pornography but could potentially be used to censor political opposition and religious sites.

Call for Chinese web boycott against Green Dam 'censorship' filter

(Source Times Online)Chinese internet users have called for a one-day boycott of cyberspace in protest at a government plan to fit computers with a filter to censor sensitive information.
In a posting on Twitter today, the artist Ai Weiwei —an adviser on the design of the Bird’s Nest stadium built for the Beijing Olympics — appealed for a boycott on July . He wrote: "Stop any online activities, including working, reading, chatting, blogging, gaming and mailing. Don't explain your behaviour."
He hoped that the date, the anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, could become a permanent memorial for lack of freedom on the internet in China.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6554801.ece

Wind power makes strides in China

Wind power makes strides in China
(02:31) Report Reuters video

Jun 12 - China's wind power generation has doubled in the last year as the country looks for greener ways to wean itself off cheap, but dirty, coal.
Kitty Bu reports.

Remembering Tiananmen

Remembering Tiananmen
(02:01) Report Reuters Video

Jun. 2 - Wang Dan, a former student activist in China, recalls the crackdown on Tiananmen Square some 20 years ago.

SOUNDBITE: Wang DanDeborah Lutterbeck reports.




Twenty years after Tiananmen
Silence on the square

Outside the Communist Party, memories of the 1989 massacre get hazy

(Source Economist.com) AMONG journalists at a Chinese newspaper, there has been some surprising talk of publishing a story to mark the 20th anniversary on June 3rd and 4th of the massacre of hundreds of Beijing citizens by Chinese soldiers. One journalist even told his colleagues he would be ready to go to jail for doing so. But such bravado, especially if it proves more than rhetoric, is likely to be rare. For many in China the nationwide pro-democracy protests of 1989 and their bloody end have become a muddled and half-forgotten tale.
This does not stop the Communist Party worrying about the issue. It fears that the efforts of even a small number of people to keep memories alive could be destabilising. The most senior official to serve jail time for his role in the Tiananmen Square unrest, Bao Tong, has been escorted by security officials from his Beijing home to a scenic spot in central China (far from muttering journalists) where he will spend the anniversary period. Mr Bao agreed to go, says a family member. But in China an invitation from the police can be awkward to refuse. Several other dissidents report heightened police surveillance.

This year’s anniversary has spurred a hardy few to pronounce on the massacre. A Beijing academic, Cui Weiping, told a gathering of intellectuals called to commemorate it that the party’s campaign to deter public discussion of Tiananmen, and public acquiescence to it, had damaged China’s “spirit and morality”. She posted her remarks on her blog.
Read Article...
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13754101&source=hptextfeature

Aigo (China-made digital camera ) T60 jumped to the first place

Aigo (China-made digital camera ) T60 jumped to the first place
The latest survey in January, 2009 showed that the sales of Aigo digital camera T60 jumped to the first place. The survery is from Gome, China's largest home appliance retail chain store. This is the first time China-made digital camera sales surpass Japanese brands.
T60 is the flagship point & shoot digital camera of aigo’s with new generation dual core image processor, announced in summer 2008. It is featured with a size of 1/2.5 inch 8.0 Mega Pixel sharp CCD image sensor, a 3X optical zoom and 3.0 inch 230,000-pixel PURE-COLOR LTPS TFT LCD which are the mainstream of the current standard. Otherwise, it also featured with functions of face detection, the smiling face shutter, panoramic image stitching and manual exposure which make it a more competitive digital compact camera. For ordinary users, aigo T60 is quite a good choice. Read more...

http://china-business-daily.blogspot.com/2009/02/aigo-camera-first-time-surpass-japanese.html

Beijing to build offices, fun park at "Water Cube"

Beijing to build offices, fun park at "Water Cube"

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Beijing's Olympic swimming venue, the National Aquatic Center or "Water Cube," will mix white-collar workers with thrill-seekers as part of plans to erect an office building next to a water-themed fun park.
The distinctive bubble-wrapped building has been left largely intact since hosting the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events at August's Beijing Games, but developers are due to start major renovations within the next few months, the Beijing News said on Friday
"Work (on the office building) is forecast to take 10 months, and be finished by the end of the year at the earliest," the paper paraphrased Wang Chun, a senior official in the Olympic Green Management Committee, as saying.
Developers would build "Beijing's largest water amusement park" on the south side of the $143 million venue, complete with a fake beach and a wave machine. A "high-class" members-only swimming club would round out the north and west sides, Wang said.

China launches crackdown on pornography, targeting Google, other portals, search engines

China targets Google in crackdown on pornography
China launches crackdown on pornography, targeting Google, other portals, search engines

(From Yahoo Business News) BEIJING (AP) -- China launched a major crackdown on Internet pornography Monday targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google.
Seven government agencies will work together on the campaign to "purify the Internet's cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors," according to an announcement on the government's official Chinese-language Web site, china.com.cn.
Pornography is banned in China, though the government's Internet police struggle to block Web sites based abroad.
The government announcement said Google and Baidu, China's two most heavily used search engines, had failed to take "efficient" measures after receiving notices from the country's Internet watchdog that they were providing links to pornographic material.
The statement also named popular Web portals Sina and Sohu, as well as a number of video sharing sites and online bulletin boards, that it said contain problematic photos, blogs and postings.
It said violators will be severely punished, but did not give details or say how long the campaign will last.
A Google spokeswoman in China, Cui Jin, defended the site's operations, saying it does not contain any pornographic content.

China has the world's largest population of Internet users with more than 250 million. The central government has blocked access to many Web sites it considers subversive or too political, including The New York Times' Web site on Dec. 19. It was unblocked a couple days later and remained open Monday.