REVAMPING AN AIRPORT: The steel framework of a hangar at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport is built up. The framework weighs 2,200 tons and took workers three days to put it into place (XINHUA)

Selling Bonds

China began selling 19.5 billion yuan ($2.87 billion) in three-year local government bonds on August 24, the sixth sale of these bonds this year.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) is issuing the bonds on behalf of Hebei, Shaanxi and Guizhou provinces, as well as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The bonds pay a fixed annual interest rate of 2.37 percent, the MOF said. China has sold 133.5 billion yuan ($19.63 billion) of local government debt so far this year.

The bonds were sold on the national inter-bank bond market. They became tradable on August 30.

Auto Output

The value of the gross output of China's auto industry surged 49 percent year on year to 2.09 trillion yuan ($308 billion) in the first half of 2010, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on August 23.

From January to July, China's auto output and sales both exceeded 10 million units. In July, China's auto output stood at 1.29 million units, up 16 percent year on year, while sales stood at 1.24 million units, up 15 percent year on year, the MIIT said.

Drilling Vessel

Construction of the world's largest deepwater oil drilling vessel has kicked off in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

COSCO Dalian Shipyard Co. Ltd. will build the Dalian Pioneer in Dalian, Liaoning, under a contract signed with Deutsche Verkehrs-Bank.

Construction is expected to be completed in 2012, said Wang Xingru, General Manager of COSCO Dalian. The vessel will cost more than $500 million.

With a hull size of 290 meters by 50 meters, the vessel is designed to hold up to one million barrels of crude oil and will be the first deep-water drilling vessel built by China. It will be able to work in waters of up to 10,000 feet in depth and can drill to depths of over 30,000 feet.

Macao Tourism

Visitor arrivals to Macao in July 2010 were up by 23.2 percent to 2.16 million, compared with the same period in 2009, say figures released on August 23 by the Statistics and Census Service of Macao Special Administrative Region.

Most of the tourists—about 52.8 percent— came from the Chinese mainland. In the first seven months of 2010, visitor arrivals reached 14.39 million, rising by 18.7 percent over 2009.

Insurer Profit Surge

Ping An Insurance, the second largest insurer in China listed in the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges, reported that its net profit rose 27.9 percent year on year in the first half of 2010.

The insurer's net profit hit 9.87 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) in the first half, and the same period revenue reached 93.8 billion yuan ($13.73 billion), up 28 percent from a year earlier.

Strong growth in the first half was partly attributable to the sharp increase in written premiums of the insurance business, and partly due to the strong growth in profit generated by banking, securities and trust businesses, said Ping An in its report.