China Mobile Reshuffle

Wang Jianzhou (GUO DAYUE)	Li Yue (FILE)

Wang Jianzhou was appointed as chairman of the newly established board of directors of the China Mobile Communications Corp. (CMCC) on May 31. Li Yue, a former deputy of Wang, has taken over as the company's president. CMCC is the state-owned parent of China Mobile Ltd., the world's largest mobile operator with 539 million subscribers at the end of March.

Wang, 61, began to serve as president of the CMCC in November 2004. He is also chairman and chief executive officer of China Mobile Ltd. Last month, he was awarded this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Award by the International Telecommunication Union for contributions to the digital revolution.

Li, 51, has been engaged in the telecommunications industry for 34 years. He is also executive director and vice president of China Mobile Ltd., overseeing legal, marketing and data matters.

Since Wang has reached the mandatory retirement age of 60 for senior executives of state-owned enterprises, Li is expected to succeed Wang as chairman and chief executive officer of China Mobile Ltd. The New York- and Hong Kong-listed company, however, has declined to comment on whether changes were planned.

Table Tennis Veteran Honored

(ZHANG GUOJUN)

Former Chinese table tennis world champion Xu Yinsheng was appointed honorary president of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) on May 26.

The nomination, proposed by the ITTF Executive Committee, was approved by the ITTF Congress on the sidelines of the World Table Tennis Championships in Moscow.

This was the first time the ITTF has awarded a former head the honorary title. Xu, 72, served as fifth president of the ITTF from 1995 to1999.

Xu was a major contributor to the Chinese team that won men's team titles at the 26th, 27th and 28th World Table Tennis Championships in 1961, 1963 and 1965. He also secured the men's doubles championship with Zhuang Zedong in 1965.

During Xu's tenure as the ITTF president, he proposed balls of 40-mm diameter replace the former 38-mm ones with the aim of increasing the game's popularity by significantly slowing down its pace. The reform took effect worldwide in 2003.

Outgoing Ace Banker

(CNSPHOTO)

Frank Newman, the first foreign head of a Chinese bank, has resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of the Shenzhen Development Bank, after Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. of China Ltd., the country's second largest insurer, bought a controlling stake in the Shenzhen lender. Newman will remain as a senior adviser until the end of this year, the bank said.

Newman, a former U.S. treasury deputy secretary, was hired to head the Shenzhen bank by Newbridge Capital, a unit of U.S. private equity investment firm TPG Inc. that bought the badly performing lender in May 2004. His reform measures have revitalized the bank, with its capital adequacy ratio rising from 2.3 percent to 8.7 percent and bad loan ratio falling from 11.4 percent to 0.63 percent in just over five years.

The bank will appoint Richard Jackson, previously president of Ping An Bank of the Ping An Group, as its president, replacing incumbent Xiao Suining, who is to become the bank's chairman.

"The Chinese Government responded to the effects of the global economic recession by introducing expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to offset the sharp decline in external demand, putting more emphasis on domestic demand to drive gross domestic product growth."

The World Trade Organization, acknowledging in its biennial review of China's trade policy that China had "resisted a protectionist response to the effects of the global economic recession"

"The United States is running a trade deficit not just against China. It is running a trade deficit against almost 100 other countries. China is not unique in how it is exporting more to the United States than it's importing."

Danny Quah, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science

"Because we are living in a very complicated world, we need to bring into full play not just the efforts of governments but also those of NGOs."

He Yafei, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Office in Geneva, suggesting the G20, which has more members than the G8, become the premier economic forum for global governance at the Global Redesign Summit of the World Economic Forum on May 31

"It would be folly for any country to grandstand and proclaim that it is immune to terror attacks... [but] there is no threat to South Africa as we speak now."

Nathi Mthethwa, South African Police Minister, playing down the threat of terrorism at the World Cup, which begins on June 11

"These extremists are not tolerating any other community, including Ahmadis, and it seems the government has failed to control them."

I. A. Rehman, Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, after attacks on two mosques belonging to the Ahmadi sect killed dozens of people in Lahore on May 28