Investment Fair

The 14th China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT) opened on September 8 in coastal Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province.

About 50,000 businesspeople from across the world took part in the four-day annual event, one of China's most influential platforms for the promotion of trade and investment.

In addition to investment and trade exhibitions and investment project matchmaking symposiums, this year's fair also included a special exhibition on different sections of energy saving.

The CIFIT, sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce, has been held from September 8-11 every year in Xiamen since 1997.

The Second World Investment Forum, sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, was also held in Xiamen on September 7.

Industrial Relocation

The State Council unveiled a guideline to encourage relocations of low-end industries from the country's coastal areas to inland provinces to beef up industrial restructuring and economic growth model transformation.

Such relocations would not only accelerate industrialization and urbanization in the underdeveloped central and western regions, but also help coastal areas shift their focus to high-end industries and allow optimized distributions of industries nationwide, said a statement from the State Council.

China's central and western regions have rich natural resources, a less expensive labor force and vast markets. Industrial relocations would bring these comparative advantages into full play, said the statement.

The country has seen a rise in industrial relocations in recent years due to rising labor costs and mounting environmental pressures in coastal regions.

Hanvon's Move

The biggest e-reader maker on the Chinese mainland, Hanvon Technologies Co. Ltd., is set to open a branch in Taiwan to manufacture and sell its products there in October 2010.

The branch office will market e-readers and look to cooperate with the island's content providers, said Chen Shaoqiang, Manager of Hanvon's Resources Operation Department.

The company will also open e-book stores in Taiwan ahead of its e-reader launch. All e-readers for sale on the island will be manufactured there, including several new stylish models.

Hanvon is partnering with Taiwan-based E Ink Holdings Inc., and will unveil a color e-reader in Japan at the end of October.

Bankcard Service

China UnionPay Co. Ltd., a Chinese bankcard services provider, announced on September 8 it had signed a memorandum with Singapore Tourism Board to promote its bankcard services in the Southeast Asian country.

Both sides agreed to jointly promote the use of China UnionPay bankcards in Singapore and expand their cooperation to other countries and regions.

China UnionPay will issue new bankcards for this partnership and provide better and more efficient payment services to Chinese holders of such bankcards traveling to Singapore, said the memorandum.

China UnionPay bankcards have been accepted in Singapore since 2005 and are now accepted by almost all automated teller machines and 20,000 merchants across the country.