26 Feb 09 trade key register flow

第一步: NO 1

第二步:NO2

第三步:NO3

第四步:NO4

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27 Apr 09 about Chinese clothing

22 Apr 09 Why in this way successful is Ma Yun

Let me tell you Why in this way successful is Ma Yun?

Translator: This article was the cover story of September, 2006 issue of IT Time, a prestigious tech/business magazine in China. The same article had been widely published and republished on almost all major Chinese news and technology portals, including Sina, DoNews, 163, and qq, just to name a few of the biggest. I guess it is an interesting phenomenon itself to westerners that the major media firms are not restricted and are indeed interested to publish the exact same article. And hopefully after reading this article, more intreguing insights about China Internet will be revealed for the audience.

This is one of the first few English translations Yeeyan’s translators will produce. Being a translator whose first language is not English. I appologize for imperfect and sometimes incorrect use of the language. Any comments and suggestions that will help improve this translation are highly appreciated. And we welcome bi-linguals whose first language is English to join us - I bet there is good stuff on the web outside English!

Yahoo founder Jerry Yang had never imagined, only half a month before his arrival to China, all that painful history of Yahoo China was completely revealed in a bitter public dispute between Yahoo China’s ex-CEO and current-CEO.

This was the most influential “spit war” in China Internet history; therefore the entire industry paid attention. However, Yang could only watch helplessly.

“Go ahead and ask Tian Jian whether he took that 2.5 million RMB bonus! (Translator: RMB is the unit of Chinese currency, CNY. 1USD=7.7RMB)”

This was the morning of August 15. On the second floor of Beijing Huitong Time Plaza, Building D-1, in Qihoo.com’s grand conference room, Qihoo’s CEO and ex-CEO of Yahoo China, Zhou Hongyi was furious. (Translator: Qihoo is a Chinese portal and community search site founded in Sep 2005 by Zhou, a global top 500 site according to Alexa.com.) In front of national media, he asked the reporters to question Tian in public, via hand-free conference call. The reason why Zhou’s anger was out of control was that Tian, his subordinate in the old days and the current executive general manager of Yahoo China, criticized him of being unethical and unprofessional.

Tian’s accusation did not come out of nowhere. Right after Microsoft and China Telecom cancelled partnership with Yahoo China, Zhou’s Security Guard 360 (Translator: A spyware removal software developed by Zhou’s new company.) was about to kill Tian’s most lucrative milk cow - Yahoo Toolbar. Indeed, Yahoo Toolbar was an enhanced release of 3721 plugin, which was a core product of 3721 Corporation. And 3721 was founded and led by Zhou. (Translator: 3721 was a Chinese Internet keyword, or real-name, service. The company was know for its 3721 plugin, which was regarded as malicious software by many professionals. As you will read later, 3721 was acquired by Yahoo.) Therefore, Tian released an article, “For the First Time, Ex-colleague Revealed Hongyi Zhou’s Crimes”, to several influential media. This article revealed stories behind the “black curtain” when Zhou served as Yahoo China’s president.
 
Tian’s article said that when Yahoo acquired 3721, part of the money should belong to employee of the new entity combined by Yahoo China and 3721. However Zhou treated this money as his own. Tian also revealed that in 2005, when Yahoo China did not meet performance expectations, Zhou leveraged Yahoo’s resources to found Qihoo. And before leaving Yahoo, Zhou dug out key employees from Yahoo China, including arranging YiSou’s general manager and other 9 people leaving Yahoo for Qihoo. (Translator: YiSou is Yahoo China’s search engine brand.)

Zhou reacted strongly to this accusation: “Bonus for employee was a gift from 3721’s share holders. As the largest share holder, I have the absolute power to control how to distribute this money. And the question to Tian above was to refute this accusation.

When Tian and Zhou’s anger was totally out of control, they accidentally opened up some internal affairs of Yahoo China. However, the industry was more interested to understand why Yahoo failed in China so badly than judging the dispute among Tian and Zhou.

A good reference for understanding Yahoo China’s failure is that when talking about stealing employees, Zhou said: Others can dig out one or two of your people, even a dozen. However if hundreds of employee jump the boat, don’t complain others, it is your own fault!

When invited by Ma Yun (Translator: Yahoo China’s current CEO) to attend China Internet Business Festival in Hangzhou on September 9th, Jerry Yang said in response to Zhou: “It appears he (Zhou Hongyi) is getting personal now, which is not appropriate.” And the criticism from Ma was even more direct - in his words Zhou had excavated Yahoo China nearly empty. “When I took over, Yahoo China was in critical condition, it was almost empty, and could collapse any time.” Ma said.

What a bomber! How could the Internet giant that was respected worldwide get excavated empty in China? What did Zhou do when he was Yahoo China’s CEO? In addition, since the merger between Ma’s Alibaba.com and Yahoo China, Yahoo China has still been experiencing management shakeout and strategy changes. (Translator: Alibaba.com is a top e-commerce site in China.) And people are getting interested to know whether Ma will be able to revert Yahoo China’s downhill run.

mayun

Turner says nothing even remotely like this exists in China. However, that said, he expects India to lose this edge in the coming decade. With the emergence of companies such as Alibaba.com, which was founded by entrepreneur Jack Ma in 1999 – and in which Yahoo! took a 40 per cent stake for one billion usd in 2005 – China is already to starting produce its own iconic role models. It will then be just a short step to creating entrepreneurship support organisations, possibly financed by successful entrepreneurs of the new generation. Consequently both phenomena are likely to speed up entrepreneurship development in China and erase the advantage India currently enjoys.

Tags: mayun

17 Apr 09 free trade

what is free trade:

Free trade is the ideal trade, which implies the fact that countries benefit from the international trade. If countries choose to trade more, they gain more. The economists believe that it is needed to trade free of any obstacle: free trade is considered to be a better solution (the first good solution) than any policy elaborated by governments (the second good solution). At present there is no country with free trade and every country has a commercial policy oriented towards liberalization or protectionism. The commercial policy is an important part of the general economic policy of a country and it refers to the external economic relations country has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade:

Free trade is a type of trade policy that allows traders to act and transact without interference from government. Thus, the policy permits trading partners mutual gains from trade^{[citation needed]}, with goods and services produced according to the law of comparative advantage. Under a free trade policy, prices are a reflection of true supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. Free trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services amongst trading countries are determined by artificial prices that do not reflect the true nature of supply and demand. These artificial prices are the result of protectionist trade policies, whereby governments intervene in the market through price adjustments and supply restrictions. Such government interventions generally increase the cost of goods and services to both consumers and producers. Interventions include subsidies, taxes and tariffs, non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory legislation and quotas, and even inter-government managed trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) (contrary to their formal titles.)–any governmental market intervention resulting in artificial prices that do not reflect the principles of supply and demand. Most states conduct trade polices that are to a lesser or greater degree protectionist.^[1] One ubiquitous protectionist policy employed by states comes in the form agricultural subsidies whereby countries attempt to protect their agricultural industries from outside competition by creating artificial low prices for their agricultural goods.^[2]

The value of free trade was first observed and documented by Adam Smith in his masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations in 1776.^[3] In his book, Smith made his case for free trade by arguing that specialization through division of labor would yield greater gains in trade than otherwise permitted. The classical economist David Ricardo firmly established the case for free trade when he developed an economic proof featuring a single factor of production with constant productivity of labor in two goods, but with relative productivity between the goods different across two countries.^[3] Ricardo’s model demonstrated the benefits of trading via specialization–states could acquire more than their labor alone would permit them to produce. This basic model ultimately led to the formation of one of Economic’s fundamental laws: The Law of Comparative Advantage. The Law of Comparative Advantage states that each member in a group of trading partners should specialize in and produce the goods in which they possess lowest opportunity costs relative to other trading partners. This specialization permits trading partners to then exchange their goods produced as a function of specialization. Under a policy of free trade, trade via specialization maximizes labor, wealth and quantity of goods produce, exceeding what an equal number of autarkic states could produce.

Opposition to free trade. There are two types of opponents to free trade, the protectionists, and those who believe free trade is immoral. The protectionists have many faces, they can be individual companies, trade unions, politicians, and governments. Trade unions or companies who are experiencing competition from international firms, and therefore petition governments to institute protective barriers (isolationism) as import controls and limit competition. The protectionist can cry “unfair trade” and attempt by virtue of trade restrictions to balance burdens (intrusionism) to change the domestic policies of a state. Then there are those who believe that free trade is immoral or the source of some kind of social injustice. Such as, but not limited to, environmental degradation, race to the bottom, wage slavery,accentuating poverty in poor countries,child labor,loss of jobs in advanced countries.

11 Apr 09 The U.S. – China Trade Deficit: Reason for Worry?

The U.S. – China Trade Deficit: Reason for Worry?

Despite consumer concerns about “tainted” products from China, calls from media pundits to put tighter controls on Chinese imports, and presidential candidates from both parties stumping on related issues, Americans continue buying imports from China at record rates. Retail outlets continue to provide vast quantities of Chinese-manufactured goods; buyers spent more than $266 billion on those goods between January and October 2007. (According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Statistics report, that figure is already on its way to outstripping last year’s record of $233 billion.) The point of contention, however, is that, during the same period in 2007, the United States exported $52 billion worth of goods to China–which continues to draw the attention and ire of politicians and pundits.

WASHINGTON, USA - The US trade deficit contracted more than expected in February to a nine-year low on a big recession-driven fall in imports in the world’s largest economy and an unexpected rebound in exports.

The deficit dropped for the seventh consecutive month — by a steep 28.3 percent to 26 billion dollars from a revised 36.2 billion dollars in January, the department said in its monthly trade report.

It was the biggest drop in more than 12 years, with the deficit at its lowest level since November 1999, surprising most analysts who had expected the gap to shrink just to 36.5 billion dollars.

“The trade deficit is disappearing faster than a speeding bullet and that bodes well for growth,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist with Naroff Economic Advisors.

He expected the narrowing deficit to have eased the economic contraction in the first quarter of 2009 after the negative 6.3 percent growth posted in the last quarter of 2008.

Reeling from a recession since December 2007, the United States has reduced its trade deficit by more than half since July last year, the latest data showed.

A surprise increase in exports coupled with a sharp decline in imports caused the outflow to narrow sharply in February

Exports sprang back in February after six months of decline, increasing by 1.6 percent to 126.8 billion dollars and comprising mostly consumer goods, automotive vehicles, foods, feeds and beverages.

Imports on the other hand continued to fall — for the seventh consecutive month — by 5.1 percent to 152.7 billion dollars.

While the export improvement was good news for Americans, analysts cautioned against any indications of an export-led recovery from prolonged recession.

The data “indicates that the steepest export declines are behind us but given the weak state of overseas economies, it is too early to be thinking about a sustained export rebound,” said IHS Global Insight chief US economist Nigel Gault. “The US recovery will not be export-led.”

Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the US Business and Industry Council, agreed.

“A recession-driven drop in the trade deficit unfortunately can’t restore the US economy’s long-term health,” he said.

Washington, he added, should change America’s “failed trade policies to start curing the nation’s structural addiction to under-producing, over-importing, and over-borrowing.”

Elsa Dargent of Natixis also cast doubt on the prospect of a persistent drop in the trade deficit.

“The narrowing of the trade deficit is very surprising and is very unlikely to last,” she said.

Furthermore, with oil prices unlikely to plunge, shrinkage of the deficit will be more difficult, said Aaron Smith, senior economist for Moody’s Economy.com

A narrowing petroleum deficit has accounted for about three-fifths of the almost 36-billion-dollar drop in the trade deficit over the last year, Smith said.

The smaller import volumes in the trade data also reflected lower spending by US businesses on capital equipment, a major inventory adjustment by US purchasers and lower consumer spending.

“The import decline shows how the US is passing on its demand weakness to the rest of the world,” Gault said, citing the sharp fall in US trade deficits with major exporters like China, Germany, and Japan over the past 12 months amid weakening US import demand.

The politically sensitive deficit with China fell to its lowest level since February 2006 — to 14.2 billion dollars from 20.6 billion dollars in January.

Exports to China increased to 4.7 billion dollars while imports decreased to 18.9 billion dollars.

The deficit with Canada, the top US trading partner, fell to a decade low — to 1.8 billion dollars from 2.5 billion dollars in January, the department said.

The deficit with Japan fell to a 25-year low at 2.2 billion dollars.

The US global merchandise trade and current account deficits hit annual rates of $900 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005, which amounted to 7 percent of US GDP, twice the previous record of the mid-1980s (as a result of which the dollar declined by 50 percent over the three-year period 1985–87). The deficits could reach annual rates of $1 trillion within the next year or so.

China’s global current account surplus soared to about $150 billion in 2005, about 7 percent of its GDP. China has become the second largest surplus country in the world, slightly behind Japan and far ahead of all others. Its foreign exchange reserves have recently passed Japan’s to become the largest in the world and will probably reach $1 trillion by the end of 2006 (compared with $38 billion for the United States).

China’s role in the global imbalances is even greater than these numbers might suggest. A substantial increase in the value of the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is essential to reduce the imbalances, but China has blocked any significant renminbi rise by intervening massively in the foreign exchange markets, buying $15 billion to $20 billion per month for several years to keep market pressures from pushing its currency up. China apparently sees its currency undervaluation policy as an off-budget export and job subsidy that, at least to date, has avoided effective international sanction.

By keeping its own currency undervalued, China has also deterred most other Asian countries, from Japan to India, from letting their currencies rise against the dollar for fear of losing competitive position against China. Hence China’s currency policy has taken virtually all of Asia out of the international adjustment process. This is critical because Asia accounts for about half the global surpluses that are the counterparts of the US current account deficit, has accumulated the great bulk of the increase in global reserves in recent years, enjoys the world’s fastest rates of economic growth so can “afford” trade adjustment better than other regions, and is essential to the needed correction of the exchange rate of the dollar because it makes up about 40 percent of the dollar’s trade-weighted index.

These global imbalances are unsustainable for both international financial and US domestic political reasons. On the international side, the United States must now attract almost $7 billion of capital from the rest of the world every working day to finance its current account deficit and its own foreign investment outflows. Even a modest reduction of this inflow, let alone its cessation or a selloff from the $12 trillion of dollar claims on the United States now held around the world, would initiate a precipitous decline in the dollar. Especially under the present circumstances of nearly full employment and capacity utilization in the United States, this could in turn sharply push up US inflation and interest rates, severely affecting the housing and equity markets and potentially triggering a recession.

The domestic unsustainability derives from the historical reality that dollar overvaluation, and the huge and rising trade deficits that it produces, are the most accurate leading indicators of protectionist trade policies in the United States. Such overvaluation alters the domestic politics of US trade policy, adding to the number of industries seeking relief from imports and dampening the ability of exporting industries to mount effective countervailing pressures. It was trade policy pressures of this type that prompted drastic policy reversals by the Reagan administration, to drive the dollar down by 50 percent via the Plaza Agreement in the mid-1980s, and by the Nixon administration, to impose an import surcharge and take the dollar off gold to achieve the cumulative 20 percent devaluation of the early 1970s. The escalation of protectionist pressures against China at present, despite the strength of the US economy and the low level of unemployment, is the latest evidence of this relationship between currency values and trade policies. Continued failure to correct the currency misalignments could have a devastating impact on the global trading system.

It is thus essential to reduce the US and China imbalances by substantial amounts in an orderly manner. The goal of US adjustment should be to cut its global current account deficit to about 3 percent of GDP, less than half the present level, at which point the ratio of US foreign debt to GDP would stabilize. China’s goal, accepted at least in principle by its political leadership, should be to eliminate its global current account surplus and stop the buildup of foreign exchange reserves.

The United States should take the lead in addressing the imbalances by developing a credible program to convert its present, and especially foreseeable, budget deficits into modest surpluses as were in place as recently as the early years of this decade. Whether or not the United States effectively addresses its budget problem however, large changes in exchange rates are an essential component of the global correction. A change in China’s currency policy, in both the short and longer runs, is thus by far the most important issue in US-China economic relations.

In the short run, an increase of 20 to 40 percent in the value of the renminbi (and parallel appreciations of other key Asian currencies) is an essential component of an orderly correction of the global imbalances.¹ Such a sizeable change could be phased in over two or three years to ease the transitional impact on China.² It could be accomplished either by a series of step-level revaluations—like the 2.1 percent change of July 2005, only much larger and with a substantial initial “down payment” of at least 10 percent—or by a steady upward managed float of the renminbi.³ An increase of 20 percent in the renminbi and other Asian currencies would reduce the US global current account deficit by $60 billion to $80 billion per year.

Over the longer run, China should adopt a more flexible exchange rate that will respond primarily to market forces. These forces would clearly have pushed the renminbi to much higher levels by now in the absence of China’s official intervention. There is some justification, however, for China’s fears that an abrupt move to a freely floating exchange rate now, particularly if accompanied by abolition of their controls on financial outflows, could trigger capital flight and jeopardize their economy in view of the fragility of their banking system. Full-scale reform of China’s exchange rate system will have to await completion of the reform of its banking system, which will take at least several more years. Hence the adoption of a flexible exchange rate regime in China, which is essential to avoid re-creation of the current imbalances in the future, can be only the second stage of the resolution of the currency problem.⁴

A US Strategy for China’s Currency

It is obvious that China is extremely reluctant to make the needed changes in its currency policy. It is equally obvious that US efforts on the issue over the past three years, whether the earlier “quiet diplomacy” approach or the commendably more aggressive stance of the past six months or so, have borne little fruit. A new US policy approach needs to be adopted with considerable urgency in light of the upcoming visit of President Hu Jintao of China to Washington on April 20–21.

One cardinal requirement is for the administration and Congress to adopt a unified, or at least consistent, position. To date, there has been something of “good cop” (administration)–“bad cop” (Congress, e.g., the threat of the Schumer-Graham legislation) bifurcation between the two branches. China has exploited these differences, essentially counting on the administration to protect it from the Congress—a bet that, to date, has paid off.

I would therefore suggest a new five-part strategy for US policy on the currency issue:

1. It is clear that China has aggressively blocked appreciation of the renminbi through its massive intervention in the currency markets and that the Treasury Department will lose all credibility if it fails to carry out the requirements of current law to label China as a “currency manipulator.” The administration should therefore notify the Chinese immediately that, if China fails to make a significant “down payment” appreciation of at least 10 percent prior to the release of the Treasury Department’s next semi-annual report on currency issues in a month or so, it will be labeled a “manipulator.” This would trigger an explicit US negotiation with China on the currency issue.

2. The administration should also immediately notify its G-7 partners and the IMF that it plans to make such a designation, in the absence of major preventive action by China, with the goal of galvanizing a much broader multilateral effort on the issue and reducing its confrontational bilateral character. The Europeans and Japan have a major incentive to join the United States because their currencies will rise much more sharply when the dollar experiences its next large decline if China (and other Asians) continue to block their own adjustment.

3. The administration should also notify the Chinese that, absent acceptable correction in the renminbi, it will be unable to oppose responsible Congressional initiatives to address the issue such as the legislation just introduced by Senators Grassley and Baucus. That legislation would provide explicit sanctions against China (or other countries whose currencies are in “fundamental misalignment,” a far superior criterion to “currency manipulation”) including blockage of a larger Chinese quota at the International Monetary Fund⁵ and ineligibility for revocation of its status as a “nonmarket economy,” both of which the Chinese fervently desire.

4. The Congress should proceed with all due speed to pass the new Grassley-Baucus bill, whose currency sections are a highly desirable replacement for the similar sections of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 in any event. If China continues to fail to cooperate, passage of the bill should be accelerated to provide the administration with new tools to promote an acceptable outcome to the currency issue or to respond appropriately in the absence thereof.

5. If the first four steps in the strategy fail to produce the necessary results in the near future, Congress should pass the Schumer-Graham legislation to impose an across-the-board surcharge on imports from China. Such a step would be highly regrettable but must be envisaged as a last resort if all else fails to resolve the issue.

08 Apr 09 about china trade policy

China and the WTO: Changing

China, Changing World Trade

frome chinatradekey”s website: