GREEN POWER: The Kaidi Biological Energy Power Plant in Poyang County, Jiangxi Province comes into commercial use on January 31, 2010. It is the province's first biological power plant, which generates electricity using rice husks, straws and wood chips (ZHUO ZHONGWEI)

Healthy Growth

A number of Chinese provinces are scaling down their economic growth targets for 2010 as the nation seeks healthier and more balanced growth, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Guangdong Province, for example, set a growth target of 9 percent, lower than its 9.5-percent growth in 2009, and Jiangsu Province has set a growth goal of 10 percent for 2010, down from the 12.4-percent growth rate of 2009.

Analysts believe that local governments are putting more focus on quality instead of quantity of economic growth. This should bring long-term benefits to the economy after decades of turbo-charged growth, they said.

Auto R&D

German auto giant BMW on February 2 announced to build a global research and development (R&D) center in China to enable its vehicles to cater to local buyers.

The R&D center in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, will be one of the group's key R&D facilities globally.

"We will have a bigger production base here in China, so we will modify more vehicles to meet customer demands," said Christoph Stark, CEO of BMW Group Region China.

Trade Fairness

The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on January 31 announced to extend anti-dumping measures by five years on imports of phenol from Japan, South Korea, the United States and China's Taiwan.

MOFCOM said in a statement posted on its website that it decided to review the measures a year ago in response to applications from domestic phenol companies.

According to MOFCOM, if anti-dumping measures were discontinued, dumping of phenol might continue and would hurt the domestic industry again.

Phenol is a chemical compound used in the production of some medicines, plastics, pesticides and synthetic resins.

Venturing in China

Bank of Communications Co. Ltd. (BoComm), the nation's fifth largest lender, recently launched an insurance joint venture with Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Shanghai.

The newly established BoCommLife Insurance Co. is the first bank-controlled insurer in China. The China Banking Regulatory Commission issued a regulation last November allowing banks to take stakes in insurance companies.

BoComm has a 51-percent stake and Commonwealth Bank has a 49-percent stake.

Baidu JV

Baidu Inc., China's largest search engine, recently announced it would invest jointly to launch a B2C company with a Japanese e-commerce website to tap China's robust online spending.

Baidu and Rakuten Inc., the largest e-commerce website in Japan, will inject $50 million into the joint venture over the next three years. The portal is expected to start operations in the second half of this year, said Baidu.

"An increasing number of businesses and consumers are engaging in e-commerce and we hope to provide users with a diversified and satisfying shopping experience with the launch of the new platform," said Ren Xuyang, Vice President of Baidu.