April 3 - After years of delays and unsatisfactory results, China finally rolled out its home-grown 3G or third generation mobile phone network on Tuesday.

Technically tagged TD-SCDMA (Time-Division-Synchronous Division Multiple Access), the network was released in eight major cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, Tianjin, and Xiamen by State-owned China Mobile to a few select customers.

Third generation mobile phone networks are said to be to the telecom industry what broadband was to the internet; revolutionary. They will offer faster download speeds, instant e-mail, web browsing and real time gaming. (more…)

SHANGHAI, Feb. 26 - The National Development and Reform Commission approved a plan to build a high-speed rail passenger rail link between Shanghai and Nanjing.

The US$5.52 billion line will take four years to complete and shorten travel time on the 300 kilometer route from two hours to 72 minutes Xinhua reported. Once completed, trains will run 24 hours a day at intervals of three minutes during peak hours. (more…)

In-flight gambling proposed for Venetian Las Vegas – Venetian Macao-linked route

Feb. 13 - Plans have been announced in the Las Vegas Review Journal to launch VIP flights between Hong Kong and Las Vegas to capture some of the high roller market operating in Macau and its American counterpart. Las Vegas Sands Corp, the U.S./Macau casino operator controlled by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, has recently acquired, and is currently refitting two Lockheed Martin L-1011 Tristar widebody aircraft to accommodate about 200 passengers, featuring on board baccarat tables and lounge style interiors. Lawyers from Sands are reputed to have stated to Nevada’s regulators that they plan to offer the facility to and from the Venetian in Las Vegas to Hong Kong, to provide “an opportunity to access gaming table, cash only play with surveillance while the aircraft is in international airspace over international waters.” From Hong Kong a short, direct ferry or helicopter connection can whisk the same passengers directly to the Venetian in Macau. (more…)

China’s meteorological bureau guarantees good weather for Olympics

BEIJING, Feb. 1 - Beijing’s Meteorological Bureau announced yesterday at a Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee meeting that they are fully prepared to take control of the most unpredictable element in sports – the weather. China is a world leader along with the Russians in what is known as “weather modification science;” however this has usually been deployed to create rain, rather than eliminate it.

Cloud seeding for example has long been used by the Chinese since the 1950s to bring on downpours, particularly in the North, where desertification has eaten away at precious arable land resources, and trying to induce rain to fall in the drier provinces. There has been success – deserts are slowly waning in China and more land is being reclaimed. The Russians, too, have long been experts in this field – sophisticated rain seeding carried out over Chernobyl prevented much contaminated rain from reaching further than it did in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe. However, the reverse procedure – ensuring no rain falls – is little used. (more…)

 China Mobile suspend talks with Apple over selling iPhone in China

China Mobile has announced they have just broken off talks with Apple over the sales of the iPhone into the Mainland China market. The deal’s bone of contention essentially is over the industry practice of mobile operators giving equipment suppliers a cut of the traffic generated from use of their phones, and Apple see the iPhone as a premium product. In Europe, T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and 02 in the UK, pay Apple a 10 percent cut of the revenue collected. That includes calls and data transmission made from use of the iPhone, and is not an uncommon phenomena in the world of international telecommunications, where global service providers often take a cut of revenues to assist with the R&D costs of getting the product to market – and enhancing the network usage. iPhone, somewhat uniquely, is also poised to enter the Japanese market – a rare occurrence for foreign handset manufacturers – and make arrangements with DoCoMo to market and sell the iPhone in Japan. Again, the same deal – 10 percent of the network revenues, that go via our phones, please.

China, however, sees things differently. With Apple’s global sales targets of the iPhone this year being 10 million handsets, China Mobile are looking at the strength of their subscriber base – 363 million of a total of 522 million mobile phone subscribers in the PRC. That’s a strong position to hold when negotiating with handset suppliers, and Apple’s request for 10 percent of revenues has just led to China Mobile suspending the talks – possibly opening the door for China Unicom – China Mobile’s smaller competitor - to steal a march over its larger rival by offering exclusivity over iPhone in China. But in this respect, it would have to give up revenues. (more…)

By Andy Scott 

SHANGHAI, Nov. 15 - The new catalogue for foreign investment, released on November 7, aims to address some of what Beijing perceives as structural problems in China’s economic development. Chief among these is limiting the inflow of foreign direct investment into industries that do little to tackle some of Beijing’s major problem areas – real estate, mining and non-renewable mineral resources, and conventional manufacturing.

Real estate
Foreign investment in the real estate industry has been declared dead. From China Law Blog to Stan Abrams of China Hearsay, everyone is agreeing that the new restrictions will not only significantly limit FDI in the sector, but kill it. As Steve Dickinson writes, “the effect of these provisions, when combined with the prior regulations, is to effectively eliminate most areas of foreign investment in real estate.”

That sentiment however is not universal and many analysts and investors remain puzzled over the likely impact of the new catalogue.

“I do not see any impact on the physical market or on our funds investing in China,” Richard van den Berg, managing director of ING Real Estate Investment Management told the South China Morning Post. (more…)

By Andy Scott and Lucy Brady 

Nov. 2 - The Methane to Markets Partnership Expo that concluded yesterday in Beijing was a chance for China, fast becoming the world’s largest polluter, to grab some favorable press and promote alternative energy resources in a city where the air-quality is still a thorny issue for the upcoming Olympics.

The three day expo, co-hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), was the largest Methane to Market Expo to date and attracted more than 700 participants from 34 countries meeting to discuss alternative ways to decrease methane output while harnessing the gas as an alternative energy source.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and accounts for 16 percent of current greenhouse gas emissions. However, because methane only stays in the environment for roughly 12 years, action taken now would have drastic, visible results in pollution reduction in the coming years. The expo was a chance to showcase the latest technologies and educate countries about the capture and use of methane. It was also a chance for potential investors to meet vendors and developers. (more…)

SHANGHAI, Oct. 10 - The central government has given the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway the green light according to a notice posted on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website Tuesday.

With a speed of up to 350 kilometers per hour, the high-speed train would shorten rail travel times between Beijing and Shanghai from the current 10 hours to less than five.

The project, which has been on the drawing board for more than a decade with work expected to begin last year, was to be operational by 2010 before construction was postponed. The cost of the project, with initial estimates ranging from RMB130 billion to RMB170 billion, could exceed RMB200 billion due to rising real estate prices and the cost of resettling people who live along the proposed path.

The 1,318 kilometer rail project has attracted the attention of France’s Alstom, Canada’s Bombardier, Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Germany’s Siemens, all vying to provide technology. It’s expected that high-speed wheel technology, like that used in Europe, Korea and Japan, will be employed over more the costly magnetic levitation that currently is only used on a tester extension in Shanghai. (more…)

By Adam Livermore 

DALIAN, Oct. 8 - Standing on a windswept hill overlooking the coastline of southern Dalian and looking towards the distant port town of Lushun, it is hard to visualize how the rolling rural landscape will look after it is swamped by the planned “silicon peninsula,” at least until you turn around and look northwards instead. An area of 27.54 square kilometers that was rural land until the turn of the century is now an extension of Dalian city. Over the coming decade this area, the High-Tech Industrial Zone of Dalian, will spread down the peninsula and become increasingly more important to the city from which it gets its name.

Over the past decade the High-Tech Industrial Zone in Dalian has developed into a community of BPOs, IT outsourcing companies and call centers, primarily for the Japanese and Korean markets. However in the past few years more and more western companies have arrived in the zone and they are involved in a wider variety of operations. Phase I of the project is currently being extended, and Phase II of the project was officially launched in September. This article introduces the current state of the high-tech zone, the plans for its expansion and the rationale behind the ambitions project.

The zone has a few special characteristics that make life here rather different from other areas of Dalian. First of all, the average age of the population living and working in the zone is much younger – the residents are software engineers, IT professionals, web designers or and technicians, many of them bilingual or trilingual. (more…)

The Tianjin municipal government has signed and agreement with the Ministry of Information Industry to construct a wireless broadband network in the Binhai New District of Tianjin.

The Binhai district will be a trial location for China’s comprehensive reform of its computer networks according to ChinaTechNews.com. Tianjin’s push to create a wireless city zone has made it one of the most powerful cities in the national wireless sector, attracting the attention of more and more international wireless service provider giants.

According to local media, advanced wireless enterprises including Google are conducting research in Tianjin on laying out wireless networks.