China Tech News

MARTIN Sorrell, who last month resigned as head of British advertising giant WPP after allegations of personal misconduct, announced yesterday plans to launch a communications company.

WPP was formed in similar fashion, when in 1986 Sorrell turned Wire and Plastic Products, which made wire baskets, into a marketing services group.

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THE US economy grew at a slightly slower pace in the first quarter as a drop in home buying offset an increase in business investment, the Commerce Department said yesterday.

More complete data on the economy show gross domestic product increased by 2.2 percent in the first quarter, a tenth of a percent lower than in the preliminary report last month.

That was still significantly slower than the 2.9 percent growth seen at the end of 2017, and farther from the White House goal of three percent expansion, despite the massive tax cut approved in December that was expected to juice the economy.

That slowdown was attributed to a decline in exports, household spending and government spending at all levels, the report said.

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INFLATION in the eurozone leaped to the ECB’s target in May, data showed yesterday, fueled by a huge increase in oil prices as the US decided to pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran.

The European Union's statistics authority, Eurostat, said inflation in the eurozone jumped to 1.9 percent in May, a sharp rise from 1.2 percent in April.

That puts inflation right at the European Central Bank’s target of close to, but just below 2 percent.
Analysts believe higher inflation will heap pressure on the ECB to end its massive stimulus program that has helped keep government borrowing prices in Europe at super low levels.

This would be especially sensitive in heavily-indebted Italy, which is hit by a political crisis and closely benefits from the ECB bond-buying program.

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CHINESE and US teams, led by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, held economic and trade consultations in Beijing on Saturday and yesterday, according to a statement issued by the Chinese side yesterday.

To meet the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and the requirements of high-quality economic development, China is willing to increase imports from other countries, including the United States, which will benefit people of both countries and the rest of the world, it noted.

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THE world's major industrial countries spend at least US$100 billion each year to prop up oil, gas and coal consumption, despite vows to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, a report released ahead of the G7 summit in Canada suggested.
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - known as the Group of Seven — pledged in 2016 to phase out their support for fossil fuels by 2025.

But a study led by Britain's Overseas Development Institute found they spent at least US$100 billion a year to support fossil fuels at home and abroad in 2015 and 2016.

Researchers scrutinized and scored each country against indicators such as transparency, pledges and commitments, as well as their progress toward ending the use, support and production of fossil fuels.
France was ranked the highest overall, scoring 63 out of 100 points, followed by Germany (62), Canada (54) and the UK (47), the report said.
The US scored lowest with 42 out of 100 points due to its support for fossil fuel production and its withdrawal from a 2015 global pact to fight climate change.

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With consumer price growth continuing to be mild and factory prices of industrial products slightly edging up in May, China's inflation remains benign.

The National Bureau of Statistics data on Saturday showed that China’s Consumer Price Index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 1.8 percent year on year in May.

The bureau's statistician Sheng Guoqing mainly attributed the rise to carry-over effects, with new price-rising factors contributing only 0.4 percentage points.

Food prices edged up by 0.1 percent, resulting in a growth of 0.01 percentage points in the price index. Non-food prices rose by 2.2 percent, generating a rise of 1.74 percentage points.

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SHANGHAI'S new housing market again saw zero supply while weekly transactions managed to stay above the 100,000-square-meter threshold despite a double-digit retreat.

The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 26.8 percent to 110,200 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released yesterday.

Nanhui in Pudong New Area, where weekly sales tumbled 30.6 percent from a week earlier to 16,800 square meters, topped for the second week. Jiading District was the second most popular area after transacting 15,000 square meters, a week-on-week gain of 28.4 percent.

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During the first five months, total power generation in China went up more than 10 percent from the same period in 2017. The rising output of power plants signals a steady economy. Apart from the robust economic indicators, structural reforms were pushed forward in a faster pace.

Moody's said that resource allocation in the economy is shifting in favor of industries with high added value, such as automaking.

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CHINA'S economy enjoyed steady growth in May, largely due to solid industrial output and investment in the manufacturing sector.

The industrial output rose 6.8 percent year on year last month, 0.3 percentage points faster than the growth a year ago but 0.2 percentage points slower than a month earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed yesterday.

For the January-May period, industrial output grew 6.9 percent, flat from that in the first four months of the year.
The fundamentals of industrial production continued to improve and emerging industries were developing rapidly, said Jiang Yuan, industrial statistician at the bureau.

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COMPANIES and trade groups in the US have expressed concern over how the escalating trade spat between the world's two biggest economies could affect operations.
Beijing retaliated immediately to tariffs on tens of billions in Chinese imports imposed by US President Donald Trump on Friday. US trade groups stepped up their criticism, while some large companies such as Boeing said they were beginning to evaluate the tariffs' possible effects. Boeing garnered about 12.8 percent of its 2017 revenues from China and is frequently seen as among the more vulnerable US multinationals to a full-on trade war.

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