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(XINHUA) |
Xu Jiayin, Board Chairman of Evergrande Real Estate Group, ranked first on the 2012 China Charity List in the Chinese version of Forbes magazine. Xu donated 387.9 million yuan ($61.56 million) in 2011.
In May 2011, Xu donated 245 million yuan ($38.88 million) to mountainous areas in the northern part of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. In June 2011, Xu donated 18 million yuan ($2.86 million) to improve people's livelihood in the city of Qingyuan in Guangdong Province.
Xu, 54, founded Evergrande in 1997 and turned it into China's leading property developer. In 2011, it sold a total of 12.2 million square meters of homes nationwide, the highest in China and a 54.7 percent year-on-year increase. The total sales revenue of Evergrande stood at 80.3 billion yuan ($12.74 billion).
The World Bank's latest China Quarterly Update released on April 12 predicts that China's GDP growth will stand at 8.2 percent in 2012 and 8.6 percent in 2013.
"China's gradual slowdown is expected to continue to 2012, as consumption growth slows, investment growth decelerates more pronouncedly and external demand remains weak," said Ardo Hansson, World Bank's lead economist for China. "The risks of overheating are moderating, increasing the prospects to achieve a soft landing," he said.
The report notes that key risks confronting China include the weak and uncertain growth prospects of high-income economies and the evolution of the ongoing correction in China's property markets.
The update points out China's long-term outlook will depend on structural adjustment.
As the traditional drivers of growth weakened over time, sustaining strong per-capita income growth requires productivity improvement and redefining China's competitive advantage from low cost to higher-value products based on technological innovation.
Looking forward, China will focus on the quality of development rather than just the speed, said the report.
China's auto sales totaled 4.79 million units in the first three months of 2012, down 3.4 percent year on year, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
Auto output in the first quarter hit 4.78 million units, down 1.83 percent from last year.
The once-booming auto market is losing momentum as domestic demands weaken, and the government rolls back some policy incentives. Meanwhile, retail fuel prices are increasing, pouring cold water on buyers' enthusiasm.
The CAAM expected sales to grow 8 percent this year. "It's too early to revise the estimate, and the market is still likely to see modest growth in 2012," said Dong Yang, Secretary General of the CAAM.
The online news portal of government-backed People's Daily plans to raise 527 million yuan ($83.7 million) in its initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai.
People.com.cn will sell 69.1 million shares, of which 19.97 percent will be reserved for offline subscription for institutional investors, according to its filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The proceeds will be used to upgrade technology, deliver news on mobile platforms and strengthen its editorial team.
People's Daily is people.com.cn's controlling shareholder, with a 79.54-percent stake. Its other stakeholders include other state-owned giants like China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and Sinopec.
Chinese companies were involved in a total of 204 merger and acquisition (M&A) cases in the first quarter of 2012, down 22.4 percent from a year ago, said the Beijing-based research firm Zero2IPO, in a recent report.
Of this total, there were 165 domestic M&A cases, 28 cases of Chinese enterprises buying overseas businesses and 11 cases of foreign companies taking over Chinese ones.
The transaction value of the 28 overseas M&As by Chinese companies totaled $11.6 billion in the first quarter, up 78 percent from the same period last year, Zero2IPO data showed.
Most of the completed M&As are in the sectors of energy and mining, industrial raw materials and processing as well as construction and engineering.
"The Chinese economy has achieved stable growth, which encouraged the need of Chinese companies for overseas energy," said the report.
Samsung Electronics Co., Asia's largest consumer electronics maker, announced on April 10 that it will build a memory chip factory valued at $7 billion in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. This would be its largest ever overseas investment.
The move signals Samsung's expansion in the Chinese market, and the project is the largest foreign investment by value in west China.
The factory is expected to become operational at the end of 2013, with a monthly output of 100,000 units of chips. It will also be the company's second largest memory chip production base worldwide.
China is now Samsung's largest overseas market. So far, the South Korean electronics maker has 23 companies in China.
The Walt Disney Co. recently inked an agreement with the China Animation Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to jointly build an animation creative research and development platform in the country.
"The initiative is focused on nurturing local talent and recognizes the importance of developing original local animation content," said Andy Bird, Chairman of Walt Disney International.
"Disney's involvement builds on our expertise and long-term commitment to nurturing the local original animation industry," he added.
Tencent will provide online marketing support. "Tencent's massive user coverage in China could be a great platform for Disney to promote its brand and animated characters in the country," said Zhao Xufeng, an analyst at iResearch Consulting Group based in Shanghai. | 
