| Devoted Writer
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(XINHUA) |
Chinese contemporary writer Bai Xianyong, 74, recently published a new book to commemorate his father Bai Chongxi, a famous Chinese Kuomintang general. In the book, Bai published 500 pictures of his father, recording important moments in history.
Bai was born in 1937 in Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. He has published a number of books, including Lonely Seventeen, Taipei People, and The New Yorker.
Bai has volunteered in promoting the kunqu opera, China's oldest opera with a history of more than 600 years, for more than two decades. He adapted Peony Pavilion, a classic of kunqu, and it received great success. His version is called the youth edition of the play because the performers are younger and it is targeted at young audiences. First staged in Taiwan, the youth edition has toured China's mainland and Hong Kong, the United States, Britain, Greece and Singapore. He also delivers courses on ancient art in universities.
China's first-quarter tax revenues grew at the slowest pace in three years, as a result of the country's cooling economy.
Tax revenues totaled 2.59 trillion yuan ($410.4 billion) in the first quarter, up 10.3 percent year on year, or 22.1 percentage points from the same period last year, said the Ministry of Finance.
The eased pace came as China's industrial value-added output and profits, key measures of industrial performances, both saw slower growth in the first two months.
China's GDP expanded 8.1 percent year on year in the first quarter, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of slowing growth, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Meanwhile, property-related tax income retreated significantly in the first quarter, which is largely the outcome of sagging sales due to the government's persistent control efforts.
The ministry also attributed the slower growth to the country's easing inflation and tax-reduction policies.
As China progressively introduces policies favoring a market-based currency exchange rate, it is also moving to accelerate the liberalization of interest rates, probably starting with lending rates.
In an interview with Caijing magazine, Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People's Bank of China, said the government needs to relax controls on lending rates first.
Zhou said the government should then liberalize deposit rates gradually by encouraging the development of alternative liability products and widening the fluctuation band for deposit rates.
He said officials are trying to reach a consensus on reforms and are waiting for an appropriate time to act.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) said on April 23 it would work on boosting offshore trading of China's currency, the yuan, in Europe.
Xu Jinlei, General Manager of ICBC London, said the branch would work to develop itself into a European center of off-shore yuan trading, syndicated loans, trade finance, and capital and precious metal trading, to provide high-quality financial service for clients worldwide.
He made the comments during the inauguration ceremony of ICBC's new headquarters in London.
The ICBC, the biggest lender in China, now has 244 overseas branches in 34 countries and regions and has expanded its presence in Africa after purchasing 20 percent of South Africa's Standard Bank Group.
Auto giant Volkswagen on April 23 sealed a deal to build a new factory in China, where it plans to invest 14 billion euros ($18 billion) in five years, as visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the signing ceremony at the corporation's headquarters in Wolfsburg.
The Volkswagen deal involves opening a plant in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that will be capable of producing up to 50,000 vehicles a year starting in 2015.
With 27 percent of its cars sold in China in the first quarter of last year, Volkswagen sold a record 633,000 vehicles in China in the first quarter of 2012.
A Chinese train maker announced on April 23 it has exported two electric trains to Belarus, marking the first time China-made freight trains have been exported to Europe.
It also represented the first export of Chinese high-power electric trains overseas, said Datong Electric Locomotive Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China North Locomotive and Rolling Corp. Ltd.
In 2010, Datong Electric Locomotive won a bid to provide 12 electric trains to Belarus. They are set to be delivered this year. Designed to reach a speed of 120 km per hour, the trains will be used for freight transportation.
Camera makers, such as Canon and Sony, have seen dramatic growth in China's high-end camera market and plan to expand operations in smaller cities this year, industry executives told China Daily.
According to a report released by China Electronics Chamber of Commerce, by the end of 2011, in large and medium-sized cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, about 75 percent of the population already had cameras, so there is little room for low-end camera growth in those cities.
Although professional cameras are more expensive in China, it has a faster growth rate compared with developed economies such as the United States and Japan.
"China has already become the largest market for selling our latest high-end camera 5D Mark III, which started to sell last month and has almost sold out now," said Howard Ozawa, President and CEO of Canon China.
Ozawa said sales revenue in China is expected to reach $10 billion by the end of 2016.
High-end digital single lens reflex cameras account for about 50 percent of the total sales of all Canon cameras in China, which is much bigger than other countries, said Ozawa.
Sony plans to penetrate lower-tier cities this year by holding customer experience events in small cities and accelerating the development of online stores, said Chen Ning, General Manager of Sony China's Digital Imaging Products Division. | 
