Still growing fast

A recent Blue Paper issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences predicted China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate will reach 10.9 percent in 2007.

The figure is slightly higher than last year's GDP growth rate of 10.7 percent and much higher than the targeted annual rate of 7.5 percent set for China's 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-10).

The paper predicted that the growth rate of added value for primary, secondary and tertiary sectors will be around 5 percent, 12.9 percent and 10.1 percent respectively this year.

China's GDP totaled 5.03 trillion yuan in the first quarter of this year, up 11.1 percent over the same period last year, according to latest figures provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Mobile expansion

China Mobile is to invest $400 million to extend its network in Pakistan, said the company's CEO Wang Jianzhou recently.

Wang said the company will step up improving sales channels and building new brands in Pakistan next year, adding that a wireless data transmission system will be built in the country.

Pakistan boasts a population of 160 million with young people making up a large proportion and its telecommunications market is one of the fastest growing in the world.

China Mobile announced in January it had reached an agreement with Millicom International Cellular to buy the Luxembourg-based company's 88.86 percent share of Paktel Ltd., Pakistan's fifth largest mobile phone operator.

That was the first time that China Mobile had acquired a foreign telecommunications company of "strategic significance."

Pay before singing

Ten Karaoke bars in Beijing agreed to start paying royalty fees to the China Audio and Video Association (CAVA), according to the liaison office of CAVA in Beijing. They will be charged 12 yuan for each private room per day.

Twelve Karaoke bars in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, began paying the royalties in this February, a month after the National Copyright Administration issued its order. It's the first time royalties have been collected on behalf of artists, producers and copyright holders.

China's 100,000 Karaoke bars have revenues of 10 billion yuan a year and have been using vast libraries of music videos free of charge for years. It's estimated the royalties will generate 8 million yuan.

U.S. VC fund

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a U.S. venture capital (VC) firm which invested in Google and Amazon.com, opened a fund in China to tap fast-growing industries in the world's fourth-largest economy.

The $360 million fund, its first outside the United States, will invest in companies in the technology, Internet, media and wireless communications, consumer products and healthcare sectors, the company said in a statement.

On a global scale, the pace of innovation is increasing and China is helping lead the way, said a company official.

Founded in 1972, the U.S.-based VC has backed 475 firms including Netscape and Sun Microsystems, with more than 150 of them going public. The firm in 1999 jointly invested $25 million with Sequoia Capital in Google and parlayed the investment into holdings valuing billions of dollars after the popular search engine got listed in 2004.

China's blistering economic growth and sizzling stock market has attracted overseas funds to hot sectors such as IT and real estate.