| Philanthropist Honored
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(FILE) |
Wing-Kun Tam, International President of Lions Clubs International (LCI), was given the You Bring Charm to the World award at Peking University on March 31. The award was established to recognize Chinese people's accomplishments around the world. The event has been hosted for five years.
Tam was appointed international president of LCI, the largest charity organization in the world, in July 2011. He is the first Chinese person to hold the position in the 95-year history of LCI. He is now leading 1.4 million members of the organization, scattered in 206 countries and districts around the globe, to help people in need with their social services.
Tam was born in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, and educated in Hong Kong, where he founded his international cargo company and raised his family. In 1981, he started his own business. Today, Tam's transportation company has 200 employees in 20 offices worldwide.
China, the world's second largest importer, will cut import duties on some energy products, raw materials, consumer goods closely related to people's daily lives, and key spare parts that China does not produce, said the State Council on March 30.
It is the first time the State Council has devoted a regular meeting to the issue of boosting imports, which is usually the responsibility of the Ministry of Commerce.
The decision, coming after China posted its largest monthly trade deficit in at least a decade in February, underlines the country will buy more from its trade partners to boost domestic consumption.
"As we maintain steady growth in export, we should focus more on import and appropriately expand its amount," said the State Council.
China will also encourage importers to buy more from countries that have free trade agreements with China, such as Pakistan, New Zealand and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Experts said the new move is expected to reduce China's trade surplus by increasing imports, which may help reduce trade frictions with other countries.
China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced on April 3 that it has expanded its Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) pilot program by increasing the investment quota by 50 billion yuan ($7.94 billion) from the previous 20 billion yuan ($3.18 billion).
The RQFII mechanism, which was launched in December 2011 to widen investment channels for overseas yuan funds on the Chinese mainland, allows qualified investors to invest yuan-denominated funds raised in Hong Kong in the mainland securities market within a permitted quota.
The CSRC will allow institutions under the RQFII program to issue exchange-traded funds made up of A shares and consider further expanding the scale of the pilot scheme, the range of institutions and investment proportion.
The State Administration of Foreign Exchange kicked off the RQFII trial scheme in December 2011 with an initial quota of 20 billion yuan, aiming to facilitate the back flow of the yuan and promote the internationalization of the currency.
The CSRC has also expanded the investment quota of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) by $50 billion.
Launched in 2002, the QFII program has so far allowed overseas investors to make investments in China's stock markets under a preset investment quota of $30 billion. To date, China has granted 158 QFIIs from 23 countries and regions, according to the CSRC.
Shanghai, China's economic hub, is the most open city in the country for its deep involvement in developing an export-oriented economy, according to a report released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in Boao, Hainan Province, on March 31.
This is the first time China released an openness index for its 31 administrative regions on the Chinese mainland. Beijing and south China's Guangdong Province ranked second and third, respectively, in terms of their degree of openness, which was measured using three primary indices for economic, technological and social development.
The move will help identify regional economic differences and serve as a reference for the country's policy choices, said Wei Jianguo, Secretary General of the China Center for International Economic Exchange and former deputy minister of commerce.
Southwest China's Guizhou Province ranked the lowest after northwestern Qinghai Province and Tibet Autonomous Region.
Cao Wenlian, Deputy Director of the NDRC's Fiscal and Financial Department, said the ranking will help the country's less-open regions to recognize their developmental advantages and encourage them to make more efforts to match their openness ratings with their own economic development levels.
China's long-awaited rare earth industry association is due to be established in April and will have more than 100 members, covering the majority of companies in the industry chain, according to a China Daily report.
There has been widespread market speculation for years that the government would set up an official organization to strengthen ties among the industry's players.
The association will be supervised by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, according to a report from National Business Daily citing anonymous sources.
The major functions of the association will include providing production guidelines, market research and channels of communication between companies and the government, said the report, adding that the association will play a role in influencing rare earth import and export quotas.
China, with its output of the strategically important minerals accounting for about 97 percent of the global total, faces pressure from the EU, the United States and Japan, which filed a joint case to the WTO against China over its alleged unfair controls on rare earth exports.
Facing possible trade disputes between China and Western countries, the association has noted one of its pressing tasks is to proactively deal with the disputes and guarantee the interests of the Chinese rare earth industry, said Yuan Zhibin, an analyst at the Shenzhen-based industry research company CIConsulting.
Other responsibilities will include strengthening communications among companies and encouraging mergers and acquisitions in the industry, he added.
The world's top soft drink producer Coca-Cola will expand production in China over the next 10 years.
David G. Brooks, president of Coca-Cola's Greater China and Korean branches, made the announcement at the opening ceremony of the company's new bottling plant in northeast China's Liaoning Province on April 4.
The company expects to build two to three bottling plants every year in the following 10 years, while the number of its employees will double within five years, Brooks said.
Coca-Cola will invest a total of $4 billion in the Chinese market from 2012 to 2014.
As the Chinese Government is striving to develop the rural areas, Coca-Cola will explore the country's potential rural market in the future, Brooks said. | 
