Superjumbo Hangar

Construction of an A380 aircraft maintenance hangar, claimed to be the largest in Asia, was completed in Beijing on March 18.

The hangar, the first of its kind in the city, will be able to accommodate all Boeing and Airbus series aircraft, including the A380 "superjumbo" aircraft after it is put into operation in April, according to the Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Corp.

Located to the north of the new third terminal in Beijing Capital International Airport, the hangar is expected to carry out maintenance services for 11,500 planes every year, according to the joint venture between Air China Ltd. and Lufthansa.

Construction of the giant hangar, consisting of a maintenance hall and an attached building, was launched in September 2006, involving 700 million yuan ($98.6 million) in investment.

E-commerce Backfires

Online games and their related services topped the complaint list of Chinese consumers last year, followed by telecom services and mobile phones respectively, the China Electronic Chamber of Commerce (CECC) announced.

The website www.315ts.net, which falls under the CECC, received 55,817 complaints in 2007, up 23.2 percent year on year. In total, 24,634 cases were related to cyber activities, including online sales fraud, website ID information theft and online game complaints.

The chamber said complaints about refrigerators surged 114.37 percent year on year to 761 cases, the highest annual growth rate among grievances of all electronic product items.

Confident CEOs

Most chief executive officers (CEOs) in China have mild or strong confidence in the global economy, according to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The survey found that 73 percent of Chinese CEOs had an optimistic view of the global economy. Confidence rates in some other emerging markets such as India, Russia and Mexico were also strong: 90 percent, 73 percent and 77 percent of the CEOs, respectively, were "very confident" about the prospects for growth in the next 12 months.

Talent shortages remained a key concern among CEOs worldwide, which is particularly the case in China. According to the survey, four out of every five CEOs in China are worried about shortages of people with global experience, leadership, creativity and innovation abilities.

Era of Renewable Energy

China's annual consumption of renewable energy will reach the equivalent of 300 million tons of standard coal by 2010, accounting for 10 percent of its total annual energy consumption, under the renewable energy development plan for 2006-10.

The plan released by the National Development and Reform Commission says 2010 renewable energy consumption will nearly double the 2005 level that was equivalent to 166 million tons of standard coal.

The plan says the nation will have hydropower projects with a combined installed capacity of 190 million kw, wind power projects with installed capacity of 10 million kw, that the installed capacity of bio-energy projects will reach 5.5 million kw and that solar energy projects will reach a capacity of 300,000 kw by 2010.

Robust Retail Sales

China's retail sales grew the most in 11 years to 20.2 percent in the January-February period year on year, on strong consumer spending and rising inflation.

The reading, which matched the December figure, is 5.5 percentage points higher than the same period last year, indicating sustained strong growth due to the government's domestic-demand-centered economic policy, analysts said.

Goldman Sachs said, "We believe strong retail sales growth is being driven by robust income growth. We expect the trend to continue going forward."