WUHAN - INDUSTRIAL and commercial authorities in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, have shut down an underground workshop producing tofu products under a fake brand name.
The tofu appeared in the markets of Central China's Hubei and Hunan provinces in recent months.
Hao Jinqi, an official with the industrial and commerce bureau of Dongxihu district, Wuhan, told China Daily that they raided the illegal workshop in the city's Zhanggongdi area after receiving a report and inspecting the premises. 'There was production equipment worth more than 300,000 yuan ($58,750) and raw materials,' Mr Hao said.
Dean Fa Food Co Ltd in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, which produces Qianye Tofu, reported to the bureau that the company's products had undergone a serious decline in sales in Hunan and Hubei since May, while counterfeit tofu products had entered the market in Wuhan.
The packaging used on the tofu resembled that used by Dean Fa Food to such an extent that it even bore anti-counterfeit laser film labels. 'The laser label printing machine is worth about 8 million yuan and the printing house must be a pretty large one,' said Yang Shuaifeng, of Dean Fa Food.
The bureau sent a law enforcement team to inspect the workshop immediately after it received the report. Officials found four workers using fake packaging on their tofu products and closed down the workshop.
Source: ST Online/CHINA DAILY/ANN
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
6 held in China chemical wine scandal
BEIJING - SIX people have been detained, several wineries shut down and bottles pulled from shelves in China after authorities found wine containing several chemical additives, state media said on Monday.
The incident in Changli county in the central province of Hebei - an area dubbed 'China's Bordeaux' - is the latest food safety scare to rattle consumer confidence in a country still reeling from a deadly 2008 tainted milk scandal.
An expose broadcast by state television revealed that wineries were doctoring their beverages with sugar water, colouring agents and artificial flavourings, and then falsely using famous brand names, the Global Times said.
The newspaper quoted a leading industry expert, Huang Weidong, as saying the additives could cause cardiac irregularities and headaches, and were possibly carcinogenic.
'We are highly concerned about this behaviour. To ensure safety measures, we have already started to remove the suspected wines from the shelves,' a spokesman for Beijing area Wal-Mart stores, Zhang Tao, told the paper.
The Xinhua news agency reported that provincial authorities had shut down nearly 30 wineries. Corporate accounts with funds totalling US$427,000 (S$554,500) have been frozen, the Global Times said. More than 5,000 boxes of wine have been seized, the reports said, though it was not immediately clear how much of the adulterated wine was already on store shelves. -- AFP
Source: ST Online
The incident in Changli county in the central province of Hebei - an area dubbed 'China's Bordeaux' - is the latest food safety scare to rattle consumer confidence in a country still reeling from a deadly 2008 tainted milk scandal.
An expose broadcast by state television revealed that wineries were doctoring their beverages with sugar water, colouring agents and artificial flavourings, and then falsely using famous brand names, the Global Times said.
The newspaper quoted a leading industry expert, Huang Weidong, as saying the additives could cause cardiac irregularities and headaches, and were possibly carcinogenic.
'We are highly concerned about this behaviour. To ensure safety measures, we have already started to remove the suspected wines from the shelves,' a spokesman for Beijing area Wal-Mart stores, Zhang Tao, told the paper.
The Xinhua news agency reported that provincial authorities had shut down nearly 30 wineries. Corporate accounts with funds totalling US$427,000 (S$554,500) have been frozen, the Global Times said. More than 5,000 boxes of wine have been seized, the reports said, though it was not immediately clear how much of the adulterated wine was already on store shelves. -- AFP
Source: ST Online
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
More foreigners buying new private homes
FOREIGNERS were out in force in the property market last month, snapping up almost one in three new private homes in Singapore.
Market analysis from DMG & Partners Research shows that just under 30per cent of new private residential units were sold in November to foreigners or permanent residents (PRs).
This marks an 8-percentage point gain on the 22per cent seen in October.
The growth appears to come from Chinese buyers, who are increasingly making their presence felt.
DMG & Partners property research analyst Brandon Lee told The Straits Times: 'They really started coming in during the fourth quarter of 2007. Previously their numbers were single digit, but now we have seen their group hitting sometimes up to 20per cent.'
Indonesians and Malaysians continue to form the bulk of foreign buyers, Mr Lee added, with Malaysians making up 25-30per cent of the group and Indonesians up to 25per cent.
Mr Kenny Tay, an agent with Huttons Real Estate, said he has seen the number of his Indonesian clients grow by around 20per cent compared to two years ago.
One reason for the rise in foreign purchases last month could be the recent property cooling measures rolled out in other Asian cities, say analysts.
Ms Tay Huey Ying, research director at Colliers International, said the increased sliding scale of stamp duties and restraints on mortgage lending in Hong Kong had tempered interest in the Hong Kong and China markets.
'These buyers may not even be residing in Hong Kong or China. They could be foreign buyers who previously wanted to invest in those areas but have now diverted their attention to Singapore.'
Another factor could be that foreign buyers planning on buying HDB resale flats may have been deterred by the recent Government cooling measures. One new rule is that they cannot hold foreign property overseas at the time they buy an HDB flat.
DMG & Partners' Mr Lee suggests that some foreign buyers 'could be looking at mass market condos'.
Last month's figures also show that one-fifth of all buyers at Lakefront Residences near Lakeside MRT station were foreigners and PRs. The same proportion was seen at NV Residences in Pasir Ris.
Mr Lee said the Government's policy towards the Singapore dollar has also encouraged more foreign investors to invest here in the expectation that their property's value will rise in tandem with the Singdollar.
Unless there is another round of property cooling measures, the number of foreign buyers will continue to rise, predicts OrangeTee executive director of residential Steven Tan.
'(Foreign buyers) have confidence in Singapore's overall economy, low interest rate climate and political stability.'
Mr Tan added that some foreigners may turn towards high- end property projects like the bungalows on Sentosa or areas like Marina Bay.
He attributed this to the fact that prices for this segment have not recovered to the peaks seen in 2007.
Source ST Online
Market analysis from DMG & Partners Research shows that just under 30per cent of new private residential units were sold in November to foreigners or permanent residents (PRs).
This marks an 8-percentage point gain on the 22per cent seen in October.
The growth appears to come from Chinese buyers, who are increasingly making their presence felt.
DMG & Partners property research analyst Brandon Lee told The Straits Times: 'They really started coming in during the fourth quarter of 2007. Previously their numbers were single digit, but now we have seen their group hitting sometimes up to 20per cent.'
Indonesians and Malaysians continue to form the bulk of foreign buyers, Mr Lee added, with Malaysians making up 25-30per cent of the group and Indonesians up to 25per cent.
Mr Kenny Tay, an agent with Huttons Real Estate, said he has seen the number of his Indonesian clients grow by around 20per cent compared to two years ago.
One reason for the rise in foreign purchases last month could be the recent property cooling measures rolled out in other Asian cities, say analysts.
Ms Tay Huey Ying, research director at Colliers International, said the increased sliding scale of stamp duties and restraints on mortgage lending in Hong Kong had tempered interest in the Hong Kong and China markets.
'These buyers may not even be residing in Hong Kong or China. They could be foreign buyers who previously wanted to invest in those areas but have now diverted their attention to Singapore.'
Another factor could be that foreign buyers planning on buying HDB resale flats may have been deterred by the recent Government cooling measures. One new rule is that they cannot hold foreign property overseas at the time they buy an HDB flat.
DMG & Partners' Mr Lee suggests that some foreign buyers 'could be looking at mass market condos'.
Last month's figures also show that one-fifth of all buyers at Lakefront Residences near Lakeside MRT station were foreigners and PRs. The same proportion was seen at NV Residences in Pasir Ris.
Mr Lee said the Government's policy towards the Singapore dollar has also encouraged more foreign investors to invest here in the expectation that their property's value will rise in tandem with the Singdollar.
Unless there is another round of property cooling measures, the number of foreign buyers will continue to rise, predicts OrangeTee executive director of residential Steven Tan.
'(Foreign buyers) have confidence in Singapore's overall economy, low interest rate climate and political stability.'
Mr Tan added that some foreigners may turn towards high- end property projects like the bungalows on Sentosa or areas like Marina Bay.
He attributed this to the fact that prices for this segment have not recovered to the peaks seen in 2007.
Source ST Online
Friday, December 10, 2010
Beijing residents wonder: Liu Xiao-who?
BEIJING - LIU Xiaobo may be lauded by the international community for his tireless efforts to promote human rights and democracy in China, but the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner's ideals remain a mystery to many in Beijing.
Ask a person the street what he or she thinks of Liu, whose award will be formally bestowed in Oslo on Friday, and the first reaction is often: 'Who?'.
That response is testament to the effectiveness of government efforts to erase the memory of the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, an event seminal to Liu's life.
'I think I saw something about that on television, but I'm not sure,' said businesswoman Ma Junpeng when asked about Liu.
Ms Ma shrugged her shoulders upon being told he had won the prize for his efforts since 1989 to push for greater political freedom in China.
'It's not rational to reward a man like that,' she said, shivering in the Beijing cold. 'Everything is different now since the revolt of 1989. People's ideas have changed. China has changed. People like Liu are irrelevant.' China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state.
Source: ST Online/REUTERS
Ask a person the street what he or she thinks of Liu, whose award will be formally bestowed in Oslo on Friday, and the first reaction is often: 'Who?'.
That response is testament to the effectiveness of government efforts to erase the memory of the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, an event seminal to Liu's life.
'I think I saw something about that on television, but I'm not sure,' said businesswoman Ma Junpeng when asked about Liu.
Ms Ma shrugged her shoulders upon being told he had won the prize for his efforts since 1989 to push for greater political freedom in China.
'It's not rational to reward a man like that,' she said, shivering in the Beijing cold. 'Everything is different now since the revolt of 1989. People's ideas have changed. China has changed. People like Liu are irrelevant.' China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state.
Source: ST Online/REUTERS
Foreign TV, media sites blocked in China
BEIJING - CHINESE government censors have apparently begun blocking reports on foreign television networks about Chinese Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo in the run-up to Friday's award ceremony in Oslo.
Both CNN and BBC were intermittently blacked out on Friday, after access to the websites of both networks and Norwegian public broadcaster NRK was interrupted on the mainland on Thursday.
When Mr Liu was named the peace prize winner two months ago, reports of the news were blacked out on CNN, BBC and French satellite channel TV5, while the state network China Central Television did not report on the prize.
Mr Liu, 54, was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a petition calling for political reform in one-party Communist Party-ruled China.
China, which is furious over the award, has ignored any positive take on the Nobel prize given to Mr Liu, only reporting the news in state media accounts of Beijing's opposition to the Nobel committee's choice.
'CNN.com is completely blocked ... Every time our reports are broadcast about the Nobel Prize winner, the television screens black out,' CNN Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz said in comments posted on the network's website.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Both CNN and BBC were intermittently blacked out on Friday, after access to the websites of both networks and Norwegian public broadcaster NRK was interrupted on the mainland on Thursday.
When Mr Liu was named the peace prize winner two months ago, reports of the news were blacked out on CNN, BBC and French satellite channel TV5, while the state network China Central Television did not report on the prize.
Mr Liu, 54, was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a petition calling for political reform in one-party Communist Party-ruled China.
China, which is furious over the award, has ignored any positive take on the Nobel prize given to Mr Liu, only reporting the news in state media accounts of Beijing's opposition to the Nobel committee's choice.
'CNN.com is completely blocked ... Every time our reports are broadcast about the Nobel Prize winner, the television screens black out,' CNN Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz said in comments posted on the network's website.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Protest at Beijing UN office
BEIJING - A PROTEST took place in front of the United Nations office in Beijing on Friday, Human Rights Day, a UN official said, as the Nobel committee prepared to honour peace laureate Liu Xiaobo in Oslo.
'We saw a large group of people in front of the compound, and it was larger than in previous years on Human Rights Day,' the official, who refused to be named, told AFP.
The official could not give details as to how big the crowd was, whether there were dozens or hundreds of people there, or what they were protesting about.
More than a dozen security vehicles were stationed outside the complex in the city centre, and police were asking passers-by for proof of identity, an AFP correspondent saw.
A ceremony in Liu's honour is due to take place later Friday in Oslo, but neither Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, his wife - under house arrest - nor other members of his family will be able to collect his award.
Beijing has clamped down on dissidents, the Internet and the media ahead of the ceremony, with activists missing and strong security at his wife's flat.
Source: ST Online/AFP
'We saw a large group of people in front of the compound, and it was larger than in previous years on Human Rights Day,' the official, who refused to be named, told AFP.
The official could not give details as to how big the crowd was, whether there were dozens or hundreds of people there, or what they were protesting about.
More than a dozen security vehicles were stationed outside the complex in the city centre, and police were asking passers-by for proof of identity, an AFP correspondent saw.
A ceremony in Liu's honour is due to take place later Friday in Oslo, but neither Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, his wife - under house arrest - nor other members of his family will be able to collect his award.
Beijing has clamped down on dissidents, the Internet and the media ahead of the ceremony, with activists missing and strong security at his wife's flat.
Source: ST Online/AFP
'Dyed' oranges halted
SHANGHAI - SHANGHAI authorities have ordered fruit vendors to stop selling oranges that have allegedly been dyed with a toxic wax, Chinese media said on Friday, in the country's latest food safety scare.
The Shanghai government has ordered tests on the oranges after consumers complained their skin was turning red after coming in contact with oranges sold in local markets, the Oriental Morning Post reported.
'Tissues turn red when you wipe them and if you hold the oranges in your palm, it will turn red,' a consumer surnamed Hu told the newspaper.
An unnamed seller at a wholesale agricultural products market told the newspaper that some oranges had been dyed with a toxic industrial wax so 'they look fresher and sell at higher prices'.
Shanghai authorities have ordered sellers to pull the oranges off their shelves and are conducting tests, the report said.
It was unclear whether the oranges were dyed by sellers in the city or producers in Jiangxi province in eastern China, the report said. Industrial dyes can damage people's memory, immune systems and cause respiratory problems, the newspaper said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
The Shanghai government has ordered tests on the oranges after consumers complained their skin was turning red after coming in contact with oranges sold in local markets, the Oriental Morning Post reported.
'Tissues turn red when you wipe them and if you hold the oranges in your palm, it will turn red,' a consumer surnamed Hu told the newspaper.
An unnamed seller at a wholesale agricultural products market told the newspaper that some oranges had been dyed with a toxic industrial wax so 'they look fresher and sell at higher prices'.
Shanghai authorities have ordered sellers to pull the oranges off their shelves and are conducting tests, the report said.
It was unclear whether the oranges were dyed by sellers in the city or producers in Jiangxi province in eastern China, the report said. Industrial dyes can damage people's memory, immune systems and cause respiratory problems, the newspaper said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Monday, December 6, 2010
Web firm fined for 'online suicide'
BEIJING - A CHINESE Internet firm has been ordered to pay compensation to the parents of a university student who killed himself in a suicide pact arranged online via instant messaging, state press said on Monday.
The Internet firm Tencent was ordered by a court in east China's Zhejiang province to pay 55,600 yuan (S$10.896) for failing to block messages that led to the suicide of the student, the Global Times said.
Before his death, the student identified only as Fan, 20, had responded to an invitation to commit suicide circulated by another man surnamed Zhang through the popular messaging service QQ, run by Tencent, the report said.
Fan, a student in Shanghai, went to neighbouring Zhejiang to meet Zhang, 22, and the two burned charcoal in a sealed-up hotel room in June in an attempt to kill themselves by inhaling carbon monoxide, according to earlier reports.
Zhang, however, backed out of the suicide attempt, leaving the room, while Fan died.
Fan's parents began civil court proceedings in October to sue Tencent and Zhang for 270,000 yuan in compensation. The court ruled that Zhang should pay the parents about 111,000 yuan in damages for his involvement in the suicide, the Global Times said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
The Internet firm Tencent was ordered by a court in east China's Zhejiang province to pay 55,600 yuan (S$10.896) for failing to block messages that led to the suicide of the student, the Global Times said.
Before his death, the student identified only as Fan, 20, had responded to an invitation to commit suicide circulated by another man surnamed Zhang through the popular messaging service QQ, run by Tencent, the report said.
Fan, a student in Shanghai, went to neighbouring Zhejiang to meet Zhang, 22, and the two burned charcoal in a sealed-up hotel room in June in an attempt to kill themselves by inhaling carbon monoxide, according to earlier reports.
Zhang, however, backed out of the suicide attempt, leaving the room, while Fan died.
Fan's parents began civil court proceedings in October to sue Tencent and Zhang for 270,000 yuan in compensation. The court ruled that Zhang should pay the parents about 111,000 yuan in damages for his involvement in the suicide, the Global Times said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Schoolboy blows whistle on tainted mushrooms
BEIJING - AN 11-YEAR-OLD Beijing boy has become a hero to consumers for revealing that mushrooms declared safe by officials in the Chinese capital were tainted with harmful chemicals, state media said on Monday.
Primary school student Zhang Hao began investigating mushrooms - one of his favourite foods - after his mother barred him from eating them following reports casting doubt on their safety, the China Youth Daily said.
Hoping to disprove the latest fears to tarnish China's scandal-plagued food industry - that harmful bleaching agents were used to whiten the fungi - Zhang in July began gathering a range of mushroom samples.
He then tested them with the help of a research student at China Agriculture University using a microscope and fluorescent lighting.
Zhang found the chemicals were used on the overwhelming majority of the mushrooms tested, the report said.
Chinese press reports have said the whitening agents can cause a range of potential health problems including liver damage, skin allergies and respiratory ailments such as asthma.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Primary school student Zhang Hao began investigating mushrooms - one of his favourite foods - after his mother barred him from eating them following reports casting doubt on their safety, the China Youth Daily said.
Hoping to disprove the latest fears to tarnish China's scandal-plagued food industry - that harmful bleaching agents were used to whiten the fungi - Zhang in July began gathering a range of mushroom samples.
He then tested them with the help of a research student at China Agriculture University using a microscope and fluorescent lighting.
Zhang found the chemicals were used on the overwhelming majority of the mushrooms tested, the report said.
Chinese press reports have said the whitening agents can cause a range of potential health problems including liver damage, skin allergies and respiratory ailments such as asthma.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Detained for Tiananmen photo
BEIJING - A BEIJING activist was detained on a charge of inciting subversion after posting a photo online of China's 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations that were eventually crushed by the military, killing hundreds of people.
It was the first time Bai Dongping, 47, had ever been arrested though he was taken out of Beijing 'on holiday' by police or told to stay inside his home during high-profile events such as the Olympics, said his wife, Yang Dan, said by telephone on Tuesday.
Bai was taken away on Saturday, Ms Yang said, and Beijing police called her on Sunday to tell her why. China often uses the vaguely worded charge of subversion to lock up activists who are seen as troublemakers.
'I'm really scared. That's such a strong charge. It's the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing,' Ms Yang said.
The arrest comes as several Chinese activists have reported increasing harassment after imprisoned author Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October. Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion after co-authoring an appeal calling for reforms to China's one-party political system.
Bai was briefly released on Saturday before police returned and took him away again. He told his wife they had interrogated him about the Tiananmen photo he posted online.
Source: ST Online/AP
It was the first time Bai Dongping, 47, had ever been arrested though he was taken out of Beijing 'on holiday' by police or told to stay inside his home during high-profile events such as the Olympics, said his wife, Yang Dan, said by telephone on Tuesday.
Bai was taken away on Saturday, Ms Yang said, and Beijing police called her on Sunday to tell her why. China often uses the vaguely worded charge of subversion to lock up activists who are seen as troublemakers.
'I'm really scared. That's such a strong charge. It's the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing,' Ms Yang said.
The arrest comes as several Chinese activists have reported increasing harassment after imprisoned author Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October. Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion after co-authoring an appeal calling for reforms to China's one-party political system.
Bai was briefly released on Saturday before police returned and took him away again. He told his wife they had interrogated him about the Tiananmen photo he posted online.
Source: ST Online/AP
Monday, November 29, 2010
China directed Google hacking
WASHINGTON - THE United States believes that Chinese authorities orchestrated a hacking campaign into computers of Google and Western governments, according to leaked documents cited on Sunday by The New York Times.
The secret cables released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks included one in which the US embassy in Beijing cited 'a Chinese contact' who pointed to a government role in the hacking, the newspaper said.
'The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government,' the newspaper said, citing the cable.
Chinese operatives are also believed to have broken into computers of US and Western allies along with those of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, it said.
Google announced in March that it would no longer follow the communist government's instructions to filter searches for sensitive material after what it said were coordinated cyberattacks against the Internet company.
The hacking included infiltration of the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. -- AFP
source: ST Online
The secret cables released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks included one in which the US embassy in Beijing cited 'a Chinese contact' who pointed to a government role in the hacking, the newspaper said.
'The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government,' the newspaper said, citing the cable.
Chinese operatives are also believed to have broken into computers of US and Western allies along with those of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, it said.
Google announced in March that it would no longer follow the communist government's instructions to filter searches for sensitive material after what it said were coordinated cyberattacks against the Internet company.
The hacking included infiltration of the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. -- AFP
source: ST Online
Same-sex marriage could curb HIV
BEIJING - AS HIV/AIDS becomes more prevalent among the gay population on the mainland, some experts have joined the gay community in calling for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage as a means of curbing the infection.
Although the rate of HIV infection is 0.05 per cent nationwide, gay men have been the hardest hit by the sexually transmitted disease, experts warned ahead of this year's World AIDS Day, which fell on Wednesday.
In some cities, nearly one out of five is HIV positive in the gay community, experts said.
'To legalise same-sex marriage could help stabilize and sustain gay relationships, thereby lowering the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS,' said Zhang Beichuan, a professor at Qingdao University and an outspoken gay rights advocate.
In the meantime, the government continues to work hard to reach vulnerable groups, particularly gay men, and to provide safe sex education and free condoms, said Hao Yang, deputy director of the disease prevention and control bureau under the Ministry of Health.
While government programs currently reach 90,000 gay men a month, Mr Hao said it was insufficient.
Source: CHINA DAILY/ANN
Although the rate of HIV infection is 0.05 per cent nationwide, gay men have been the hardest hit by the sexually transmitted disease, experts warned ahead of this year's World AIDS Day, which fell on Wednesday.
In some cities, nearly one out of five is HIV positive in the gay community, experts said.
'To legalise same-sex marriage could help stabilize and sustain gay relationships, thereby lowering the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS,' said Zhang Beichuan, a professor at Qingdao University and an outspoken gay rights advocate.
In the meantime, the government continues to work hard to reach vulnerable groups, particularly gay men, and to provide safe sex education and free condoms, said Hao Yang, deputy director of the disease prevention and control bureau under the Ministry of Health.
While government programs currently reach 90,000 gay men a month, Mr Hao said it was insufficient.
Source: CHINA DAILY/ANN
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Liu's wife cut off from outside world
LONDON - THE wife of jailed Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has been completely cut off from the outside world since being put under house arrest following last month's prize announcement, a report said on Monday.
Liu Xia's telephone and Internet connections have been blocked and she has not been allowed to leave the couple's high-rise Beijing flat for almost a month, The Times said, quoting sources with knowledge of her family.
The report said she is allowed a daily phone call with her mother, but that is monitored by police. She also cannot leave to buy food - she must inform officers what she wants to eat for her evening meal so they can bring dishes from restaurants.
'She is not the kind of person who is able to bear this kind of pressure for anything more than a short period,' a friend who asked to remain anonymous told the newspaper. 'If it goes on beyond the (Nobel Prize) awards ceremony date, then I think she could be in a very bad way.'
The Chinese government reacted angrily to the Nobel prize committee's decision to award the peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident who is serving an 11-year jail sentence on subversion charges after calling for political reform. He will not be allowed to collect the prize at next month's ceremony in Oslo and at least six countries, including Russia, have said they will not attend.
The Times reported that a few days after the prize announcement on October 8, Liu Xia was allowed to visit shops, go to her parents' house and even take walks in the park as long as she was escorted by police. However, she was later told she would be allowed to stay in Beijing only if she agreed to stop communicating with friends and the outside world.
Her mother used to visit her but police insisted on being present, causing Liu to become angry and emotional and the visits have since been stopped, the Times said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Liu Xia's telephone and Internet connections have been blocked and she has not been allowed to leave the couple's high-rise Beijing flat for almost a month, The Times said, quoting sources with knowledge of her family.
The report said she is allowed a daily phone call with her mother, but that is monitored by police. She also cannot leave to buy food - she must inform officers what she wants to eat for her evening meal so they can bring dishes from restaurants.
'She is not the kind of person who is able to bear this kind of pressure for anything more than a short period,' a friend who asked to remain anonymous told the newspaper. 'If it goes on beyond the (Nobel Prize) awards ceremony date, then I think she could be in a very bad way.'
The Chinese government reacted angrily to the Nobel prize committee's decision to award the peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident who is serving an 11-year jail sentence on subversion charges after calling for political reform. He will not be allowed to collect the prize at next month's ceremony in Oslo and at least six countries, including Russia, have said they will not attend.
The Times reported that a few days after the prize announcement on October 8, Liu Xia was allowed to visit shops, go to her parents' house and even take walks in the park as long as she was escorted by police. However, she was later told she would be allowed to stay in Beijing only if she agreed to stop communicating with friends and the outside world.
Her mother used to visit her but police insisted on being present, causing Liu to become angry and emotional and the visits have since been stopped, the Times said.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Friday, November 19, 2010
Chinese woman sent to labour camp for retweeting
China has sentenced a woman to a year in a labour camp for "disrupting social order" by retweeting a satirical message urging Chinese protesters to smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, an international rights group said.
Cheng Jianping, 46, re-posted a message from the social networking site Twitter last month hinting that Chinese protesters should smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and adding on the message "Angry youth, charge!" according to Amnesty International, which condemned the sentence in a statement last night.
Amnesty and Cheng's husband said her retweet was meant as satire, mocking anti-Japanese protesters who had grown in number since tensions between the countries increased after a dispute erupted in September over islands claimed by both Japan and China.
"Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi said in a statement.
Cheng's husband, Hua Chunhui, said he thought the government reacted the way it did to the tweet was because he and his wife are activists.
"My personal opinion is that this sentencing wasn't about this one statement. The government wants to make an example of us activists," said Hua, who lives in Wuxi in China's eastern province of Jiangsu. "The government doesn't like what we do. We actively communicate with other Chinese activists and celebrated on Twitter Liu Xiaobo's Nobel prize."
Hua said that he posted the original tweet because he was mad at all the anti-Japanese protests.
"So I posted that message on Twitter, satirically saying that if they really want to do something big, they should just get on a plane and attack the Japan pavilion at the expo. Of course, that is not possible."
The Shanghai Expo was a major event treated with great sensitivity by China and any threats against it would have been taken seriously by the government. Authorities pulled out all the stops to make sure it was a success and imposed heavy security to ensure there were no disruptions. More than 70 million people visited it before it closed at the end of October after its six-month run.
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Twitter is blocked in China, but some human rights activists use it by bypassing government controls.
Hua said his wife arrived at a labour re-education centre in central China's Henan Province on Wednesday evening. He said he is not allowed to visit her.
Cheng's sentencing comes as China is under fire for its hardline reaction to the Liu's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Source: Guardian online
Cheng Jianping, 46, re-posted a message from the social networking site Twitter last month hinting that Chinese protesters should smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and adding on the message "Angry youth, charge!" according to Amnesty International, which condemned the sentence in a statement last night.
Amnesty and Cheng's husband said her retweet was meant as satire, mocking anti-Japanese protesters who had grown in number since tensions between the countries increased after a dispute erupted in September over islands claimed by both Japan and China.
"Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi said in a statement.
Cheng's husband, Hua Chunhui, said he thought the government reacted the way it did to the tweet was because he and his wife are activists.
"My personal opinion is that this sentencing wasn't about this one statement. The government wants to make an example of us activists," said Hua, who lives in Wuxi in China's eastern province of Jiangsu. "The government doesn't like what we do. We actively communicate with other Chinese activists and celebrated on Twitter Liu Xiaobo's Nobel prize."
Hua said that he posted the original tweet because he was mad at all the anti-Japanese protests.
"So I posted that message on Twitter, satirically saying that if they really want to do something big, they should just get on a plane and attack the Japan pavilion at the expo. Of course, that is not possible."
The Shanghai Expo was a major event treated with great sensitivity by China and any threats against it would have been taken seriously by the government. Authorities pulled out all the stops to make sure it was a success and imposed heavy security to ensure there were no disruptions. More than 70 million people visited it before it closed at the end of October after its six-month run.
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Twitter is blocked in China, but some human rights activists use it by bypassing government controls.
Hua said his wife arrived at a labour re-education centre in central China's Henan Province on Wednesday evening. He said he is not allowed to visit her.
Cheng's sentencing comes as China is under fire for its hardline reaction to the Liu's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Source: Guardian online
Fishing in the Yellow River
NEAR CHANGPO VILLAGE, China — From his perch on an overhang above the Yellow River, Wei Jinpeng pointed to a fisherman's cove below and began counting his latest catch. He stopped after six, and guessed that perhaps a dozen human corpses were bobbing in the murky waters.
The bodies were floating facedown and tethered by ropes to the shore, their mud-covered limbs and rumps protruding from the water.
Wei is a fisher of dead people. He scans the river for cadavers, drags them to shore with a small boat and then charges grieving families to recover their relatives' corpses. Wei said he kept the faces submerged to preserve their features. Any dispute about identity makes it harder to collect his bounty.
Wei doesn't worry about how they got here, but he's heard tales over the years from relatives who've come to claim the bodies, haunting portraits of average people crushed in the extraordinary stress of China's economic boom.
While some of the 80 to 100 bodies Wei gathers each year are victims of accidents and floods, he thinks that the majority end up in the river after suicide or murder. There's no overt sign of a crime spree, though there's evidence of many people taking their own lives. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death for women in rural China, and 26 percent of all suicides in the world take place in the nation, according to the World Health Organization
Most of the bodies apparently are swept downriver from Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu in the country's northwest. The city boasts rows of new skyscrapers, built by a rush of poor laborers with few rights, and businessmen notorious for operating above the law.
The work of "body fishers" has received increased attention in Chinese media lately, including the release of a documentary about a clan of them who work near Wei. One English-language state newspaper described the profession as "living on the dead"; it noted that the filmmaker saw the family retrieving bodies almost daily.
Wei's fishing spot is about 18 miles from Lanzhou. A bend in the river and a hydroelectric dam slow the currents and give the bodies a place to float to the surface.
The family members who come to claim them whisper about a father who, unable to make ends meet with low pay, killed himself by jumping off a bridge. Wei also has retrieved bodies with gagged mouths and bound hands, the hallmark of criminal gangs and corrupt police. Finally, there are the remains of young women whom no one recognizes, which Wei eventually cuts loose back into the river, he said.
"Most of the bodies that are not claimed by relatives are female migrant workers who had moved to Lanzhou," said Wei, who drives a red motorcycle and wears large circle-rimmed sunglasses. "Most of them have been murdered. ... Their families don't know; they think they're still working in Lanzhou."
The families who are left to search for the deceased often do so without much help from the police and, instead, have to haggle with men such as Wei over the price of the dead.
A Lanzhou business journal wrote in 2006 about a local firm that got a call from a body fisher who'd found a corpse floating in the river with employee identification. When a company representative, identified only by the surname Wang, went to collect the body, he was told that it would cost 200 yuan (about $30) to view the face and 6,000 yuan ($895) to take the dead man away. Wang and the body fisher argued, finally settling on 4,000 yuan ($597). The news article expressed outrage at the situation and quoted police as saying there'd be a crackdown, something that almost four years later has yet to happen.
Body fishing is by all accounts a thriving business in Gansu province; practitioners advertise their names and phone numbers by painting them on the sides of buildings near the river. Chinese newspapers and news websites have run stories recently about body fishers working from the southwest mega-city of Chonqing to the eastern coastal province of Shandong.
Wei and others said they called the police when they'd found murder victims, though it isn't clear that's always the case.
"They're not only making a business from this, but they're cheating people," said Zhu Wenhuan, a Lanzhou man who's visited Wei twice looking for his mother after she vanished June 3.
Police in the area refused interview requests for this story.
However, Lanzhou residents and news accounts confirmed much of what Wei and his colleagues said.
For example, the wife of Lanzhou resident Zhang Daqiang went missing on May 22. On the suspicion that his wife had flung herself into the river because of problems at work, Zhang has posted fliers and made the rounds of local body fishers. In a telephone interview, he told McClatchy that his wife was facing increased pressure at work after management withheld pay and canceled holidays. She's one of three workers who've disappeared since employees at the company staged a strike in March to protest the conditions, Zhang said.
Lanzhou is a dusty outpost compared with the glitter of a Shanghai, but it anchors a province whose economic output more than doubled from 2004 to 2009. There are BMW and Audi dealerships near towering office buildings in what once was a part of the old Silk Road.
Dong Xiangrong, a Lanzhou university student, said that everyone knew the other side of that new wealth: Workers in the city of some 2 million people, especially migrants, are at times treated like cattle.
"Sometimes their bosses don't pay them, and when they go to argue, the bosses beat them and dump them in the river," Dong, 21, said with a matter-of-fact tone.
Sitting at a nearby park, the Ma brothers paused to consider the issue.
"Some employers don't pay the staff, so their employees commit suicide," said Ma Yinglong, a 55-year-old retired factory worker.
Ma Yingbao, a 44-year-old who's out of work, added: "There could be many reasons for a body to be in the river. ... Some people are under too much pressure."
Before Wei got into the business in 2003, he ran a pear orchard and made some 4,000 yuan a year. He now charges 500 yuan when a farmer comes to gather a body, 2,000 yuan if the customer has a job and 3,000 yuan when a company is covering the bill.
Wei acknowledged that some in the community criticize the work as profiting from tragedy. He pointed out that it's a job that few others are willing to do. Several people in Lanzhou agreed that without Wei and others scooping up bodies, there'd be no way to collect the dead.
Just down the road, Wei Yingquan and his two sons, who were profiled in the documentary, have diversified from sheep farming to body fishing. They charge people 300 yuan (about $45) just to turn over corpses to see whether they recognize them.
"Some people say that I am a swindler, that I am kidnapping bodies," said Wei Yingquan, a 64-year-old with tobacco-stained teeth and a grimy white sweater. Nevertheless, he said, "people come every day to look at the bodies."
Source:Mcclatchy Online
The bodies were floating facedown and tethered by ropes to the shore, their mud-covered limbs and rumps protruding from the water.
Wei is a fisher of dead people. He scans the river for cadavers, drags them to shore with a small boat and then charges grieving families to recover their relatives' corpses. Wei said he kept the faces submerged to preserve their features. Any dispute about identity makes it harder to collect his bounty.
Wei doesn't worry about how they got here, but he's heard tales over the years from relatives who've come to claim the bodies, haunting portraits of average people crushed in the extraordinary stress of China's economic boom.
While some of the 80 to 100 bodies Wei gathers each year are victims of accidents and floods, he thinks that the majority end up in the river after suicide or murder. There's no overt sign of a crime spree, though there's evidence of many people taking their own lives. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death for women in rural China, and 26 percent of all suicides in the world take place in the nation, according to the World Health Organization
Most of the bodies apparently are swept downriver from Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu in the country's northwest. The city boasts rows of new skyscrapers, built by a rush of poor laborers with few rights, and businessmen notorious for operating above the law.
The work of "body fishers" has received increased attention in Chinese media lately, including the release of a documentary about a clan of them who work near Wei. One English-language state newspaper described the profession as "living on the dead"; it noted that the filmmaker saw the family retrieving bodies almost daily.
Wei's fishing spot is about 18 miles from Lanzhou. A bend in the river and a hydroelectric dam slow the currents and give the bodies a place to float to the surface.
The family members who come to claim them whisper about a father who, unable to make ends meet with low pay, killed himself by jumping off a bridge. Wei also has retrieved bodies with gagged mouths and bound hands, the hallmark of criminal gangs and corrupt police. Finally, there are the remains of young women whom no one recognizes, which Wei eventually cuts loose back into the river, he said.
"Most of the bodies that are not claimed by relatives are female migrant workers who had moved to Lanzhou," said Wei, who drives a red motorcycle and wears large circle-rimmed sunglasses. "Most of them have been murdered. ... Their families don't know; they think they're still working in Lanzhou."
The families who are left to search for the deceased often do so without much help from the police and, instead, have to haggle with men such as Wei over the price of the dead.
A Lanzhou business journal wrote in 2006 about a local firm that got a call from a body fisher who'd found a corpse floating in the river with employee identification. When a company representative, identified only by the surname Wang, went to collect the body, he was told that it would cost 200 yuan (about $30) to view the face and 6,000 yuan ($895) to take the dead man away. Wang and the body fisher argued, finally settling on 4,000 yuan ($597). The news article expressed outrage at the situation and quoted police as saying there'd be a crackdown, something that almost four years later has yet to happen.
Body fishing is by all accounts a thriving business in Gansu province; practitioners advertise their names and phone numbers by painting them on the sides of buildings near the river. Chinese newspapers and news websites have run stories recently about body fishers working from the southwest mega-city of Chonqing to the eastern coastal province of Shandong.
Wei and others said they called the police when they'd found murder victims, though it isn't clear that's always the case.
"They're not only making a business from this, but they're cheating people," said Zhu Wenhuan, a Lanzhou man who's visited Wei twice looking for his mother after she vanished June 3.
Police in the area refused interview requests for this story.
However, Lanzhou residents and news accounts confirmed much of what Wei and his colleagues said.
For example, the wife of Lanzhou resident Zhang Daqiang went missing on May 22. On the suspicion that his wife had flung herself into the river because of problems at work, Zhang has posted fliers and made the rounds of local body fishers. In a telephone interview, he told McClatchy that his wife was facing increased pressure at work after management withheld pay and canceled holidays. She's one of three workers who've disappeared since employees at the company staged a strike in March to protest the conditions, Zhang said.
Lanzhou is a dusty outpost compared with the glitter of a Shanghai, but it anchors a province whose economic output more than doubled from 2004 to 2009. There are BMW and Audi dealerships near towering office buildings in what once was a part of the old Silk Road.
Dong Xiangrong, a Lanzhou university student, said that everyone knew the other side of that new wealth: Workers in the city of some 2 million people, especially migrants, are at times treated like cattle.
"Sometimes their bosses don't pay them, and when they go to argue, the bosses beat them and dump them in the river," Dong, 21, said with a matter-of-fact tone.
Sitting at a nearby park, the Ma brothers paused to consider the issue.
"Some employers don't pay the staff, so their employees commit suicide," said Ma Yinglong, a 55-year-old retired factory worker.
Ma Yingbao, a 44-year-old who's out of work, added: "There could be many reasons for a body to be in the river. ... Some people are under too much pressure."
Before Wei got into the business in 2003, he ran a pear orchard and made some 4,000 yuan a year. He now charges 500 yuan when a farmer comes to gather a body, 2,000 yuan if the customer has a job and 3,000 yuan when a company is covering the bill.
Wei acknowledged that some in the community criticize the work as profiting from tragedy. He pointed out that it's a job that few others are willing to do. Several people in Lanzhou agreed that without Wei and others scooping up bodies, there'd be no way to collect the dead.
Just down the road, Wei Yingquan and his two sons, who were profiled in the documentary, have diversified from sheep farming to body fishing. They charge people 300 yuan (about $45) just to turn over corpses to see whether they recognize them.
"Some people say that I am a swindler, that I am kidnapping bodies," said Wei Yingquan, a 64-year-old with tobacco-stained teeth and a grimy white sweater. Nevertheless, he said, "people come every day to look at the bodies."
Source:Mcclatchy Online
Friday, November 12, 2010
China Not Taking Yuan ‘Medicine’ Stalls G-20 Progress
Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Group of 20 nations’ efforts to tackle currency and trade imbalances floundered as China rejected policy prescriptions that fault its exchange rate regime and directed criticism at monetary easing in the U.S.
“Don’t make other people take the medicine for your disease,” Yu Jianhua, a director general at China’s Ministry of Commerce, told reporters in Seoul late yesterday. “Quantitative easing will have a very big impact on developing countries including China.”
At stake for the global economy is averting a repeat of the currency and trade tensions that erupted in the 1930s and were blamed for worsening the Great Depression. The pivotal roles China and the U.S. must play to get a breakthrough at the G-20 was underscored by an 80-minute meeting between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao dominated by exchange rates.
“The Chinese can’t help but think this is just a way of continuing to point the finger at China,” said Neil Mackinnon, an economist at VTB Capital Inc. in London and a former Treasury official. “It doesn’t look as if we’re going to see anything specific or substantive that will address global imbalances.”
China’s record $28 billion trade surplus with the U.S. in August heightened criticism its government maintains an unfair cap on yuan appreciation to the detriment of U.S. businesses. Obama, who has pledged to double exports within five years, has sought to broaden the currency debate by linking it to a worldwide effort to rein in current-account excesses.
Germany’s Surplus
Germany’s current-account surplus as a percentage of gross domestic product for 2010 is set to be 6.1 percent, the second highest in the G-20 after Saudi Arabia, based on International Monetary Fund projections. The U.S. is likely to see a deficit equivalent to 3.2 percent of GDP, the third deepest, it said.
China is seeking to modify the language on trade imbalances in the summit communique, said a German official taking part in the talks who requested anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak publicly for the government. G-20 finance chiefs last month agreed to “pursue the full range of policies conducive to reducing excessive imbalances and maintaining current account balances at sustainable levels.”
G-20 negotiators made progress on currency and current- account issues late last night, G-20 committee spokesman Kim Yoon Kyung said today.
‘Positive’ Prospects
“The prospect is now positive. The G-20 leaders will likely move forward beyond the Gyeongju commitment over currency and current-account issues,” he said, referring to the South Korean city where the G-20 finance chiefs met last month.
Obama and Hu spent “the bulk” of their talks discussing exchange rates before attending a dinner with other leaders, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was “not so sure” an agreement can be reached in time for the summit’s conclusion later today.
Hu told Obama yesterday that China was committed to reforming the yuan exchange rate regime, Chinese delegation spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters last night. Hu told Obama that it would be an “incremental process” that required a “sound” global economy, Ma said.
“They have to deal with the underlying causes for this instability, which are these imbalances,” said Josef Ackermann, chief executive officer of Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG. “It’s not about assigning blame to who is in deficit and who is in surplus -- the markets will decide who is in surplus and who in deficit -- but to create a framework to find the right balance.”
Yuan Gains
China’s yuan rose 0.16 percent to 6.6238 per dollar as of 5:30 p.m. in Shanghai yesterday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading System. The yuan has risen about 3 percent against the U.S. currency since June 19, when China said it was allowing a resumption of appreciation that was frozen in 2008. China permitted a faster pace of gains this week, a strengthening of about 0.8 percent since Nov. 8, the yuan’s biggest three-day advance since a currency peg ended in July 2005.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said that the yuan remains undervalued and that China needs to show continued commitment to allow the Chinese currency to rise further over time. China says that a quick increase in the yuan’s value would cause economic and social disruption.
Geithner is due to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan today.
October Meeting
The G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers last month agreed to move toward “more market-determined exchange rate systems” and make efforts on “reducing excessive imbalances.” The U.S. Federal Reserve a week later said it would pump $600 billion into the economy to spur growth. Brazil, Germany and China said the move would drive down the dollar and fuel speculative capital flows that risk asset bubbles.
Copper on the London Metal Exchange rose to a record yesterday, while gold and cotton touched all-time highs this week as investors sought assets as a hedge against currency debasement. The weak dollar and low interest rates are fueling inflows of funds to higher-yielding markets, with governments in South Korea, Brazil and Taiwan raising barriers to foreign investors.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, writing in an opinion piece in the Financial Times yesterday, said that both the U.S. and China were depressing their currencies.
No Weapon
“We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage,” Geithner said in an interview with CNBC television, according to a transcript released yesterday.
China, the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner, had a trade surplus in excess of $170 billion with the U.S. in the 12 months through August, according to the American Department of Commerce.
China, along with Germany, opposed a suggestion last month by Geithner that the G-20 consider targets for reining in current-account imbalances. To meet the targets, countries like China would likely have to let the value of their currency rise, making their exports more expensive.
Differences in competitiveness between nations can’t be leveled by “politically imposed limits,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told global business leaders in Seoul yesterday.
Setting limits on trade gaps “is an idea that should be discussed,” French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said.
France takes over the presidency of the Group of 20 tomorrow after the summit chaired by South Korea’s Lee.
“Some countries, those with big deficits, need to deal with those deficits,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said in Seoul. The big fear is “countries pursuing beggar-my-neighbor policies -- trying to do well for themselves but not caring about the rest of the world.”
Source: Bloomberg
“Don’t make other people take the medicine for your disease,” Yu Jianhua, a director general at China’s Ministry of Commerce, told reporters in Seoul late yesterday. “Quantitative easing will have a very big impact on developing countries including China.”
At stake for the global economy is averting a repeat of the currency and trade tensions that erupted in the 1930s and were blamed for worsening the Great Depression. The pivotal roles China and the U.S. must play to get a breakthrough at the G-20 was underscored by an 80-minute meeting between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao dominated by exchange rates.
“The Chinese can’t help but think this is just a way of continuing to point the finger at China,” said Neil Mackinnon, an economist at VTB Capital Inc. in London and a former Treasury official. “It doesn’t look as if we’re going to see anything specific or substantive that will address global imbalances.”
China’s record $28 billion trade surplus with the U.S. in August heightened criticism its government maintains an unfair cap on yuan appreciation to the detriment of U.S. businesses. Obama, who has pledged to double exports within five years, has sought to broaden the currency debate by linking it to a worldwide effort to rein in current-account excesses.
Germany’s Surplus
Germany’s current-account surplus as a percentage of gross domestic product for 2010 is set to be 6.1 percent, the second highest in the G-20 after Saudi Arabia, based on International Monetary Fund projections. The U.S. is likely to see a deficit equivalent to 3.2 percent of GDP, the third deepest, it said.
China is seeking to modify the language on trade imbalances in the summit communique, said a German official taking part in the talks who requested anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak publicly for the government. G-20 finance chiefs last month agreed to “pursue the full range of policies conducive to reducing excessive imbalances and maintaining current account balances at sustainable levels.”
G-20 negotiators made progress on currency and current- account issues late last night, G-20 committee spokesman Kim Yoon Kyung said today.
‘Positive’ Prospects
“The prospect is now positive. The G-20 leaders will likely move forward beyond the Gyeongju commitment over currency and current-account issues,” he said, referring to the South Korean city where the G-20 finance chiefs met last month.
Obama and Hu spent “the bulk” of their talks discussing exchange rates before attending a dinner with other leaders, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was “not so sure” an agreement can be reached in time for the summit’s conclusion later today.
Hu told Obama yesterday that China was committed to reforming the yuan exchange rate regime, Chinese delegation spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters last night. Hu told Obama that it would be an “incremental process” that required a “sound” global economy, Ma said.
“They have to deal with the underlying causes for this instability, which are these imbalances,” said Josef Ackermann, chief executive officer of Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG. “It’s not about assigning blame to who is in deficit and who is in surplus -- the markets will decide who is in surplus and who in deficit -- but to create a framework to find the right balance.”
Yuan Gains
China’s yuan rose 0.16 percent to 6.6238 per dollar as of 5:30 p.m. in Shanghai yesterday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading System. The yuan has risen about 3 percent against the U.S. currency since June 19, when China said it was allowing a resumption of appreciation that was frozen in 2008. China permitted a faster pace of gains this week, a strengthening of about 0.8 percent since Nov. 8, the yuan’s biggest three-day advance since a currency peg ended in July 2005.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said that the yuan remains undervalued and that China needs to show continued commitment to allow the Chinese currency to rise further over time. China says that a quick increase in the yuan’s value would cause economic and social disruption.
Geithner is due to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan today.
October Meeting
The G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers last month agreed to move toward “more market-determined exchange rate systems” and make efforts on “reducing excessive imbalances.” The U.S. Federal Reserve a week later said it would pump $600 billion into the economy to spur growth. Brazil, Germany and China said the move would drive down the dollar and fuel speculative capital flows that risk asset bubbles.
Copper on the London Metal Exchange rose to a record yesterday, while gold and cotton touched all-time highs this week as investors sought assets as a hedge against currency debasement. The weak dollar and low interest rates are fueling inflows of funds to higher-yielding markets, with governments in South Korea, Brazil and Taiwan raising barriers to foreign investors.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, writing in an opinion piece in the Financial Times yesterday, said that both the U.S. and China were depressing their currencies.
No Weapon
“We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage,” Geithner said in an interview with CNBC television, according to a transcript released yesterday.
China, the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner, had a trade surplus in excess of $170 billion with the U.S. in the 12 months through August, according to the American Department of Commerce.
China, along with Germany, opposed a suggestion last month by Geithner that the G-20 consider targets for reining in current-account imbalances. To meet the targets, countries like China would likely have to let the value of their currency rise, making their exports more expensive.
Differences in competitiveness between nations can’t be leveled by “politically imposed limits,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told global business leaders in Seoul yesterday.
Setting limits on trade gaps “is an idea that should be discussed,” French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said.
France takes over the presidency of the Group of 20 tomorrow after the summit chaired by South Korea’s Lee.
“Some countries, those with big deficits, need to deal with those deficits,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said in Seoul. The big fear is “countries pursuing beggar-my-neighbor policies -- trying to do well for themselves but not caring about the rest of the world.”
Source: Bloomberg
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
China jails tainted milk activist Zhao Lianhai
A Chinese activist who campaigned for compensation for victims of a 2008 contaminated baby milk scandal has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.
Zhao Lianhai, whose child was among the 300,000 made ill by the milk, was convicted of inciting social disorder.
Mr Zhao founded a website to provide information for parents after it was found milk formula had been laced with the industrial chemical melamine to give it a high protein-content reading.
At least six babies died.
"It is such a harsh sentence," Mr Zhao's lawyer Li Fangping told the Associated Press news agency.
"The crimes he was accused of were nothing more than what regular citizens would do to defend their rights."
Mr Zhao's wife, Li Xuemei, said the sentence was unacceptable.
"We will appeal. This is something we have to do," she was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying after the verdict was delivered in Beijing.
Mr Zhao had previously worked for the country's food quality and safety authority.
Major embarrassment
Melamine is normally used to make plastics, fertilisers and concrete.
When added to food products it indicates a higher apparent protein content but can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.
In 2008, melamine was found in the products of 22 Chinese dairy companies - one out of every five suppliers in China.
More than 20 people were convicted for their roles in the scandal, and three people were given the death penalty.
The incident led to a worldwide recall of Chinese dairy products, and was a major embarrassment for the leadership, who vowed to tackle the problem and restore consumer confidence.
Mr Zhao's sentence comes at a time when China is facing intense scrutiny over the amount of criticism it tolerates from its own people.
Source: BBC News
Zhao Lianhai, whose child was among the 300,000 made ill by the milk, was convicted of inciting social disorder.
Mr Zhao founded a website to provide information for parents after it was found milk formula had been laced with the industrial chemical melamine to give it a high protein-content reading.
At least six babies died.
"It is such a harsh sentence," Mr Zhao's lawyer Li Fangping told the Associated Press news agency.
"The crimes he was accused of were nothing more than what regular citizens would do to defend their rights."
Mr Zhao's wife, Li Xuemei, said the sentence was unacceptable.
"We will appeal. This is something we have to do," she was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying after the verdict was delivered in Beijing.
Mr Zhao had previously worked for the country's food quality and safety authority.
Major embarrassment
Melamine is normally used to make plastics, fertilisers and concrete.
When added to food products it indicates a higher apparent protein content but can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.
In 2008, melamine was found in the products of 22 Chinese dairy companies - one out of every five suppliers in China.
More than 20 people were convicted for their roles in the scandal, and three people were given the death penalty.
The incident led to a worldwide recall of Chinese dairy products, and was a major embarrassment for the leadership, who vowed to tackle the problem and restore consumer confidence.
Mr Zhao's sentence comes at a time when China is facing intense scrutiny over the amount of criticism it tolerates from its own people.
Source: BBC News
Visiting HK for groceries
HONG KONG/SHANGHAI - GROWING inflationary pressure on the Chinese mainland, led by rising food prices, is driving mainland buyers to Hong Kong to fill their shopping carts - not for the luxury and imported goods the financial hub is known for, but for daily necessities that used to flow the other way.
More and more residents in South China's Guangdong province, especially Shenzhen, have in the past few weeks been queuing to cross the border into Hong Kong to buy sugar, salt, soybean sauce and even tissue paper in bulk to cushion increasing pressure from rising food prices at home.
Figures from the Shatoujiao border station in Shenzhen show that in the past two weeks, the number of people passing the station to visit Hong Kong on weekdays has increased by 16.7 per cent compared with two weeks ago, while at weekends the figure has been up by 27.8 per cent. Many of them are going to the other side to buy daily necessities, according to local media reports.
Only a few years ago it was Hong Kong residents who would come to Shenzhen to spend weekends shopping and dining.
A Shenzhen local woman surnamed Zhang said shopping for supplies in Hong Kong has been the norm for her since 2009, when she was allowed to apply for multiple entries to Hong Kong within one year.
Since then, the number of items on her shopping list has been growing from imported goods to most daily necessities, including products made on the mainland.
Source: CHINA DAILY/ANN
More and more residents in South China's Guangdong province, especially Shenzhen, have in the past few weeks been queuing to cross the border into Hong Kong to buy sugar, salt, soybean sauce and even tissue paper in bulk to cushion increasing pressure from rising food prices at home.
Figures from the Shatoujiao border station in Shenzhen show that in the past two weeks, the number of people passing the station to visit Hong Kong on weekdays has increased by 16.7 per cent compared with two weeks ago, while at weekends the figure has been up by 27.8 per cent. Many of them are going to the other side to buy daily necessities, according to local media reports.
Only a few years ago it was Hong Kong residents who would come to Shenzhen to spend weekends shopping and dining.
A Shenzhen local woman surnamed Zhang said shopping for supplies in Hong Kong has been the norm for her since 2009, when she was allowed to apply for multiple entries to Hong Kong within one year.
Since then, the number of items on her shopping list has been growing from imported goods to most daily necessities, including products made on the mainland.
Source: CHINA DAILY/ANN
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Hookers' 'training' ring busted
BEIJING - POLICE in Beijing have cracked a gang suspected of forcing nearly 100 women into sex slavery after giving them a 'training course' and requiring them to pass a 'hooker test', state media said on Tuesday.
At least 20 people have been arrested for allegedly forcing the girls to train as prostitutes and sending them to bathhouses, karaoke bars and massage parlours to work, the Global Times reported, quoting the police.
The gang was reportedly led by a 32-year-old man called Xie Zhaobin, who posted job ads in small newspapers in several Beijing districts last year, claiming to be looking for receptionists and PR workers, it said.
After a fake interview process, Xie's accomplices would allegedly confiscate the girls' IDs and he would then rape them and film the act, using the footage as leverage to force them to work as prostitutes.
Xie and his girlfriend Niu Xueying even provided a 'training course' for the girls, which sometimes involved the couple having sex in front of them to show them what to do and ended in a 'hooker test', the report said.
The gang allegedly received agent fees from the bars and clubs where the women were sent to work, and pocketed the girls' pay, making more than 500,000 yuan (almost S$97,000 dollars), according to initial police investigations.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Monday, November 1, 2010
For some Chinese college students, sex is a business opportunity
In a country fast-changing economically and culturally, some middle-class women become mistresses to live a better life. A university pimp explains how it works.
Reporting from Beijing — The girls from the drama academy cost the most. Actresses are pretty, after all, and pretty is the point. Steady access to their sexual favors could cost a man more than $25,000 a year, not to mention the perks and gifts they would expect.
The gentleman on a budget had better browse through students at the tourism institute, or perhaps the business school. Women there can be had for as low as $5,000 a year.
Those are the prices advertised by the young man who calls himself "Student Ding," a senior at Shanghai University who, in the grand tradition of Chinese entrepreneurship, is earning his money by working as a pimp.
Ding calls himself "an agent, a fixer," but his job is all pimp. He started out small: fliers passed on the street to the chauffeurs of expensive cars. He has found his niche arranging long-term, cash-for-sex arrangements between wealthy men and aspirational students, taking a 10% commission off the top.
He is nonchalant about the work, even vaguely proud. He insists that he is doing a service to the men who don't want to hire streetwalkers, and to his middle-class, ambitious and frostily pragmatic college friends.
"Most of the girls are financially comfortable, but they see their classmates carrying Louis Vuitton or Gucci bags, and they're jealous," he said on the phone from Shanghai. "These girls want to have better lives."
He is feeding on a wave of prostitution that, academics and sex workers say, has spread throughout universities and among young, would-be professionals in recent years. This semester, at least two universities introduced rules banning students from working as escorts or mistresses.
But the motivation is strong. The young women are coming of age at a time when China's family structure has eroded and staggering class divisions mean living, for the first time, in a country where shiny things are dangled carelessly under the noses of those who can't afford them.
In China, everybody seems to be ing something these days. Advertising crowds the skyline and the roadsides. A closed country has opened up in a span of decades, and is experiencing an economic boom that has introduced new desires and an "anything goes" mentality.
Reporting from Beijing — The girls from the drama academy cost the most. Actresses are pretty, after all, and pretty is the point. Steady access to their sexual favors could cost a man more than $25,000 a year, not to mention the perks and gifts they would expect.
The gentleman on a budget had better browse through students at the tourism institute, or perhaps the business school. Women there can be had for as low as $5,000 a year.
Those are the prices advertised by the young man who calls himself "Student Ding," a senior at Shanghai University who, in the grand tradition of Chinese entrepreneurship, is earning his money by working as a pimp.
Ding calls himself "an agent, a fixer," but his job is all pimp. He started out small: fliers passed on the street to the chauffeurs of expensive cars. He has found his niche arranging long-term, cash-for-sex arrangements between wealthy men and aspirational students, taking a 10% commission off the top.
He is nonchalant about the work, even vaguely proud. He insists that he is doing a service to the men who don't want to hire streetwalkers, and to his middle-class, ambitious and frostily pragmatic college friends.
"Most of the girls are financially comfortable, but they see their classmates carrying Louis Vuitton or Gucci bags, and they're jealous," he said on the phone from Shanghai. "These girls want to have better lives."
He is feeding on a wave of prostitution that, academics and sex workers say, has spread throughout universities and among young, would-be professionals in recent years. This semester, at least two universities introduced rules banning students from working as escorts or mistresses.
But the motivation is strong. The young women are coming of age at a time when China's family structure has eroded and staggering class divisions mean living, for the first time, in a country where shiny things are dangled carelessly under the noses of those who can't afford them.
In China, everybody seems to be ing something these days. Advertising crowds the skyline and the roadsides. A closed country has opened up in a span of decades, and is experiencing an economic boom that has introduced new desires and an "anything goes" mentality.
Tiny village becomes hub
Taobao changed residents' lives to a focus on online business and getting rich. Xu Junqian found out how they run stores in Qingyanliu, Zhejiang province.
It is a few minutes to 4:00 pm at Qingyanliu, a small village tucked away in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, and it is so quiet you can almost hear a pin drop. Few people can be seen walking around. Rooms on the first floor of every building are tightly shuttered. The entire village is so quiet and empty, it appears to have been evacuated. The one innocuous sight is the number of luxury cars parked in the streets.
However, behind the iron gates of almost every residence in the village, narrow staircases lead to a totally different world consisting of thousands of 300 square meter underground warehouses.
This is "Taobao village", as it has become known, and it is famous for its billion yuan annual sales volume on taobao.com, China's largest online shopping bazaar.
Illuminated brightly by hundreds of fluorescent lights, the underground space is a world buzzing with activity. Lines of shelves groaning with boxes of goods take up more than half of the basement.
Workers busily shuttle through, picking up goods according to the printed orders in their hands and passing them to other workers who sit on stools immersed in packing.
The floor is piled with so many paper boxes of different sizes that one can barely set foot in. The sound of tape being ripped mingles with shouted demands. The stuffy air is ripe with the smell of perspiration. Lunch box leftovers litter what little space remains.
At the stroke of 4:00 pm, the whole village seems to wake up and spring into action, as if by order of an invisible magic hand.
The small gates that separate the underground world from the outside are all opened. Wrapped boxes come pouring out.
Trucks and vans crowd into the village one after another and park by the gates, waiting to be filled up. The underground workers emerge and begin bustling about with the freight.
"This is the everyday routine of the village. People's lives here are centered around the business schedule of Taobao," said Liu Wengao, secretary-general of the local e-commerce association, which was voluntarily founded by some online business dealers in the village in April.
"They get up at noon, begin taking orders from all around the country, then express deliveries come to pick up the goods at dusk. Dealers continue their business late into the night," Liu added.
It all started in 2005, said Liu, who was born and bred in the village. Before that, just 1,500 people lived a largely carefree life of leisure like most countryside people in East China. They did little work and would gather together and play mahjong during the day, living mostly on the proceeds of renting out their family property.
But 2005 witnessed a facelift for the century-old village. More than 200 five-floor buildings were constructed, creating an abundance of cheap rooms.
Given its strategic location next to Yiwu's biggest shipping market, the village became an ideal base for young entrepreneurs, who flock there from all over the country. Yiwu is home to the world's largest wholesale market.
In 2009, there were around 120 stores in the village whose owners bought goods from the market and sold them online. The annual sales volume reached 4 billion yuan ($600 million), five times that in 2008.
This year the total number of online stores rose to 1,800 and the sales volume is expected to be 10 billion yuan.
Home to more than 8,000 people now, Qingyanliu village has become a "lucky base" for hundreds of millionaires who are making their fortunes there.
Tales of rags to riches are in plentiful supply here. Having worked as a salesman in Handan, Southwest China, on a salary of less than 2,000 yuan every month, 28-year-old Wang Shibing left for the village in 2005 and now has more than 40 employees, a factory that produces items such as key rings, folding baskets and nylon bags for both his own store and other online sales platforms - and piles of cash.
"Qingyanliu is a 'dangerous' place," said Wang. "One may come to the village to try one's luck but end up spending the rest of one's life here." Wang has bought apartments, got married, had a son here and brought both his parents from their hometown to the village.
The businessman was unwilling to reveal details of his annual income, but he told China Daily that the sales volume of his store used to account for 3 percent of the entire grocery market on Taobao, which had more than 100,000 stores of this kind, before it was blocked and forced to "readjust" by the website administrators over fears of price manipulation. The business steadily increased by 300 to 400 percent year-on-year at the beginning but has slowed down to 50 to 60 percent in recent years.
Tempted by the large profits, locals put away their mahjong and started their own online stores as well.
Zhang Feng, a 25-year-old college graduate, is one of them. After a few frustrating experiences in the job market, he opened his online grocery shop in 2008 with an investment of 40,000 yuan, taken out on his credit card. Today, he has a brand new black BMW in his crowded garage, has broken away from Taobao, established an independent online sales platform and sells products manufactured by his own factory.
Despite the high-speed development of online shopping, businessmen in the village including Wang Shibing and Zhang Feng are far from satisfied with the current situation.
According to statistics from iResearch, there were around 400 million netizens in China in 2009. Twenty-eight percent of them have shopped online at least once. The proportion is expected to rise to 30 percent in 2010. In the United States, 94 percent of netizens regularly shop online. In South Korea, the number is 99 percent.
The overall sales volume of online shopping reached 247.35 billion yuan in China last year, accounting for 1.97 percent of the Chinese retail industry. It is expected to increase to 4.83 percent in 2013.
The flourishing online business in the village has also boosted many other industries.
Manufacturers of paper boxes and tape have soared. The number of restaurants that serve midnight snacks has risen exponentially.
There are also more than 20 express delivery companies in the village. Picked by the e-commerce association from hundreds of candidates, these companies agreed to lower their price from an original 5 yuan for each article to 3.5 yuan.
That saves the village's dealers a total of 30 million yuan every year and increased the number of articles handled by about 1.5 million.
With the ever-expanding scale of online business in the village, many sellers have had to relocate elsewhere to bigger warehouses.
"As much as we are attached to this second hometown, our growing business left us no choice but to leave for a more spacious area," said Wang, the grocery magnate, who has bought a new 8,000 square meter warehouse in an industrial district miles away from Qingyanliu.
"We have built an efficient network for newcomers and old timers to together enjoy the privilege of doing business here," said Liu, of the e-commerce association. "It is called a supermarket of online goods. "Maybe one day, our village will also become a shopping destination for tourists."
By Xu Junqian
Source: China Daily
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Faked In China
WASHINGTON/GUANGZHOU (Reuters) – Anybody could tell right away that the Louis Vuitton shoulder bag was fake because it was delivered in a recycled box that once shipped batteries.
Warnings printed on the inside of the box read: "Danger Contains Sulfuric Acid" and "Poison - Causes Severe Burns" -- not the sort of messages that would normally accompany a product from one of the world's most iconic luxury brands.
But it sure looked real. It was dark brown, sported a braided strap with brass fittings and the Louis Vuitton monogram stamped all across the bag.
I had ordered the bag from a website called www.ericwhy.com for this special report, which explores the growing problem of counterfeit merchandise sold over the Internet.
Reuters wanted to trace the problem from a consumer in Washington D.C. to the shadowy producers based in Guangzhou China, where my colleague Melanie Lee found the illicit workshops and markets.
Ericwhy, based in Guangzhou, calls its stuff "designer-inspired alternative to actual Louis Vuitton" in a disclaimer on its website. "We assume no civil or criminal liability for the actions of those who buy our products."
Yet, U.S. law enforcement officials say this website and many others that offer a dazzling array of goods online -- clothes, electronics, footwear, watches, medicines -- are outlaws, and they plan to go after them hard.
Counterfeit commerce over the Internet has soared in the past couple of years, turning what had been an irritant to businesses into a serious competitive threat, the officials say.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the amount of counterfeit goods and pirated copyrights in world trade grew from about $100 billion in 2001 to about $250 billion in 2007, the last year for which they have made an estimate. While there are no separate estimates for how much of that is sold on the Internet, authorities say it is considerable.
"The Internet has just completely changed the face of the problem, made it more complicated and more pervasive," says John Morton, assistant secretary in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Whole industries now have been attacked, not from the street, but from the Internet."
Visitors to www.ericwhy.com can choose from more than 1,800 imitation Louis Vuitton bags, ranging from a pink shoulder tote and a tiger-colored "Whisper bag" to a simple bright red clutch.
The one I ordered cost $122 with a $40 shipping fee, so by my definition it was not exactly cheap. But comparable bags sold at a local Louis Vuitton retail store were $1,000 or more.
I entered my Washington D.C. address and credit card information, and instantly got an email from my credit card company warning of possible fraud on my account. Soon, I received a second email, this one a receipt with a Worldwide Express Mail Service (EMS) tracking number so I could follow my package.
The bag left Guangzhou, China on September 14 and arrived on my desk by the 20th. It was wrapped in a yellow sheath with the Louis Vuitton logo and smelled strongly of leather.
But in another sign something was not quite right, the English instructions that came with it read: "Louis Vuitton has created for you prestigious glazed leather" -- the sentence ending abruptly without the word "bag."
I took the bag to a Louis Vuitton store in Chevy Chase, Maryland to see how it compared with the real article. The store clerk, a tall man in a stylish suit, was restrained. "We only talk about our own products," he said icily, adding "we don't have any bags like that."
That Louis Vuitton doesn't want its store personnel to talk about how easily their products can be copied is perhaps understandable. If word got around fake bags were on the street, then people might begin to wonder if their own bags were real. Part of the brand's cachet is its exclusivity, which easily available counterfeits devalue.
Last year, U.S. customs and other law enforcement agents made nearly 15,000 seizures of counterfeit goods, 80 percent of which came from China. Handbags were third on the list, behind consumer electronics and footwear -- the top item for four consecutive years.
"They aren't just selling counterfeit clothing or electronics," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told an intellectual property conference in Hong Kong last week.
"They're selling defective and dangerous imitations of critical components, like brake pads, or everyday consumer goods, like toothpaste. They're conducting corporate espionage. They're pirating music, movies, games, software and other copyrighted works -- both on our cities' streets and online. And the consequences are devastating."
When it comes to making counterfeit goods and pirating brands, China is the counterfeit "workshop of the world." Along with a relentlessly widening U.S. trade deficit, which Washington blames on China's undervalued currency, rampant piracy is stoking economic tensions between two of the world's biggest economies.
SHADY FACTORIES
The grubby town of Shiling, an hour's drive from the southern port of Guangzhou, has the biggest leatherworking industry in China. In the 1980s, multinationals from various industries began outsourcing production to factories in the coastal provinces. In this part of Guangdong province, it was leather.
By the late 1990s, low-budget workshops in inconspicuous neighborhoods near the outsourcing factories had sprung up making fake versions of the products. Today, much of Shiling's leather goods are destined for the counterfeit trade.
At one such workshop near Shiling Secondary School, women and their young daughters could be seen cutting and sewing leather by the windows. Lanky men loitered on the ground floor by a "help wanted" poster seeking leather workers, serving as lookouts.
These places are occasionally targeted for police raids.
Zhou She, a private investigator whose job is to sniff out illicit hives of counterfeiting operations, told us about this cluster of workshops, but we must act discreetly, he says.
Walking gingerly around the three-storey shop-house factories and watching men and women pound metal hardware into leather in the back alleys, it feels like we are in a pirates' lair.
Police officials say organized crime gangs, sometimes called triads in this part of China, are deeply involved, given their extensive underground networks. "Of course they are involved. It is very low risk for them," Zhou said.
He works the detective gumshoe routine, spending hours trailing trucks carrying suspected cargo in and out of Shiling, conducting camera surveillance and interviews.
A former Peoples' Liberation Army intelligence officer, Zhou, who has been in the industry for 12 years, has the tanned, leathery skin and sharp crew cut of a military man. His austere presence is betrayed only by a brown, expensive-looking leather purse, which he showed off proudly -- a gift from an Italian client after he found a counterfeit workshop for them.
Luxury brands hire him to gather information on the location of warehouses and factories, who then use that evidence to persuade Chinese police to conduct a raid.
The workshops take real luxury handbags and reverse engineer them. Everything from the metal fittings to the monogrammed leather of a Louis Vuitton bag is produced in China.
After it is put together at one of the workshops in Shiling, the bag usually winds up in nearby Baiyun, by the old airport in northern Guangzhou.
SPILLING OUT OF STORES
The Guangzhou Baiyun World Leather market is the epicenter of the world's counterfeit trade when it comes to wholesaling fake leather goods and apparel, experts say.
Counterfeit Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and Hermes handbags literally spill out of shops that occupy commercial space the size of five football fields. Smaller stores provide auxiliary products, such as counterfeit paper bags, receipts and catalogues for wholesalers.
Gina, who declined to give her surname, is one such wholesaler from Colonia, Uruguay. Tugging a large, gray Louis Vuitton suitcase through the narrow paths of the leather market with her 66-year-old mother in tow, she is looking for a shop that can make Louis Vuitton satchels out of "pleather" (synthetic leather).
"Don't worry, she can manage, we are very used to this," Gina said as her arthritic mother slowly shuffles forward, carrying bags laden with fake scarves and leather goods, before they stop at a bag shop.
"I don't need real leather, just pleather. No need to be 5-As, just double A enough," Gina told the shopkeeper in heavily accented English.
She has traveled halfway around the world to Baiyun to make a personal connection in the world's largest market for counterfeit leather goods. "I used to buy online from China, but after one bad experience, I said never again!" She said she wound up taking delivery of 800 bags in red instead of the black she ordered.
Gina was looking for a factory that can make 500 satchels, which she planned to ship to Argentina before bringing them into Uruguay where she has a beachfront store. It's less suspicious to bring it over the border than have it come directly from China. Clutching sheets of paper with information about the bags she wants made, Gina, with her streaked blond hair, tanned skin and branded accessories, looked more like a Hollywood fashonista than somebody's idea of a pirate. "I've been in this business for eight years now," she said. "It's a good business."
Indeed, while criminal syndicates are getting increasingly involved in the counterfeit trade, both in the United States and China, authorities say, it is ordinary folks like Gina and the shopkeepers she deals with who are the face of the counterfeit business in China.
HALF-HEARTED ENFORCEMENT
Guangzhou authorities occasionally raid the Baiyun market, including the day Reuters journalists visited there. Shops, tipped to the impending raid, dutifully closed their doors, though customers only had to knock to be let in surreptitiously.
"They are raiding now. I don't know when it will end. It's because of the Asian Games," said one shopkeeper. Guangzhou is hosting the games in November.
After a few minutes, the raid apparently ends with no arrests made. Shop owners slide off their stools, fling open their glass doors and stand outside beaming and beckoning at customers again. They don't cater to tourists, but sell in bulk to wholesalers such as Gina. Each shop claimed to have a factory backing it.
In the basement of the stores are the shippers, who expertly pack and label the items so they sail through customs.
"If you want to send to France, it is a bit hard, because they check thoroughly. But sending via UPS has an 80 percent success rate," said one such shipper named Chen, who like the others interviewed in China for this story, declined to give his full name to avoid getting in trouble.
They will also route shipments through ports in the Middle East or Africa to avoid detection by customs in the European Union and the United States, he said.
Sitting on a small stool in a Baiyun shop, Gary, a 30-year-old Congolese, represents another branch of the industry -- the intermediary. Speaking Mandarin to a shopkeeper and switching to French for his three African clients, he was trying to put together a deal on counterfeit Italian Miu Miu bags.
He came to China two years ago to study, but has made helping European and African clients buy fakes a thriving side business.
"I buy a lot and pack them in boxes of 10. Then I ship them to England and then I drive (them) into France and they get picked up," Gary whispered in Mandarin. "It's a sensitive business," he said with his baseball cap shoved low on his head.
Similarly, Nana, 30, a native of Moscow, has lived in Guangzhou for four years. She was buying fake Tommy Hilfinger and Gucci clothes in Baiyung, which she planned to supply to 20 websites in Russia.
Few if any foreigners are ever caught or prosecuted, and not many locals, either. China's counterfeit industry employs millions of workers, distributors and shop clerks across the nation, one reason why authorities have often been half-hearted in their enforcement measures.
But last week, the government said it would soon launch a six-month crackdown on piracy and trademark infringement. The illicit traders "upset the market's normal order, impair the competitive strength and innovation of businesses, and hurt China's image abroad," the State Council, or Cabinet, said in a statement.
In the second half of last year, China's customs department seized 2.6 million counterfeit items from the country's postal and express consignments, Meng Yang, a director general in the customs department, said in a speech in Shanghai last month.
That's probably just a small fraction of the total trade in China, experts say, given the amount of fake merchandise from China seized abroad.
NEW WEAPONS AGAINST PIRATES
Back in Washington, I handed over the fake Louis Vuitton bag down to the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. Federal agents, standing in front of a display case of counterfeit shampoo, condoms, medicine and other products seized over the years, good-naturedly accept the bag. They said it was much better quality than the ones they had brought in to show me.
The new center is a partnership among a dozen federal law enforcement agencies and the Mexican government. Richard Halverson, its chief for outreach and training, said U.S. customs officials and postal inspectors have been on the lookout for counterfeit goods from China, but can't catch every one.
The money to be made selling counterfeit goods is so good "we have seen organized crime groups, what you would consider drug trafficking groups, actually move away from some of those other crimes into the counterfeit goods trade because it is a high-profit, low-risk cash business -- the prime things that criminals are looking for," Halverson said.
It may seem harmless enough, but a consumer surfing the web looking for a good deal on prescription drugs, for example, needs to beware. "You may be looking at what you believe to be a Canadian pharmacy, when in fact the drugs are being manufactured in India, the site is being run out of China, and your payment is going to another group in Russia," Halverson said.
In the 2009 budget year, U.S. Customs agents and other officials made 14,481 seizures valued at $260.7 million dollars. When the final tally for 2010 budget year is in, the figures will be much higher, Halverson said, noting that in just one operation U.S. agents in Baltimore working with London police seized eight containers of counterfeit shoes and handbags.
One recent IPR Center enforcement action, called "Operation in Our Sites" seized the domain names of seven websites that allow visitors to stream or illegally download first-run movies, often just within hours of hitting the theaters.
Halverson took me to the IPR's operations room, where undercover agents search out websites and plot ways to disrupt them. The room, with a huge video monitor on the far wall, also functions as a command post to run operations in the field.
"Our undercover operation here is just Internet-based. We don't have any face-to-face meetings," one agent said, explaining they use "undercover computers" that allow them to trawl for counterfeiters without being identified.
After making a buy and confirming it is a counterfeit item, ICE agents will get a court order to seize the site's domain name and shut it down. But a longer criminal investigation is required to seize assets and put people in jail, the agent said.
Many owners of the domain names, such as Ericwhy, are overseas, making it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to go after them. So often the most viable option is to close the site, another agent said.
ORGANISED CRIME LINKS
While it often seems the counterfeit industry in China is mostly Mom and Pop, Washington sees the problems caused by fake goods as much bigger and more sinister than many imagine. "Counterfeiting and piracy is increasingly the focus of organized crime," said Morton, who heads ICE, the U.S. government's second-largest criminal investigation agency after the FBI.
"There's a lot of money in it and you need a fairly sophisticated operation to pull it off. You need an ability to manufacture goods on a grand scale, you need a shipping network," Morton said in an interview in his office at ICE headquarters with a view of the Washington Monument and Potomac River.
"It literally affects every segment of American manufacturing and business," he continued, ticking off examples: "Counterfeit aircraft engine parts, counterfeit ball bearings for machines, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit electronics."
The Internet has made it much easier for unscrupulous companies to sell fake or pirated goods. "You don't have to go to the corner of Fourth and Main to buy your fake Gucci handbag. You can order it over the Internet," Morton said.
Counterfeit products are also increasingly sophisticated and hard to distinguish from the real thing. In the old days, Morton said, everyone knew an item was a knock-off because it looked like a cheaper version of the original. But now, counterfeiters want to mimic the item as closely as possible to get higher prices and profits.
One new tool Washington hopes will help in the international fight is a proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Negotiators from the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore and Switzerland reached a tentative agreement in late September on the pact, which has been years in the making.
With support from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Software Alliance, Congress is preparing legislation giving the U.S. Justice Department broad new powers to take down "rogue websites," both at home and overseas.
"Sites like this one (ericwhy.com) are stealing the ideas and designs of legitimate, hardworking manufacturers to line the pockets of foreign criminal networks," said Rob Calia, senior director for counterfeiting and piracy at the U.S. Chamber.
"It's theft, plain and simple, and it's hurting our economy."
INTERNET CHAT ROOMS
It is on the Internet where counterfeit traders in China are finding a growing market, not to mention a safer place from which to deal. Chat rooms on sites such as thefashionspot.com are dedicated solely to finding suppliers and discussing bags. Other sites such as Replica Underground offer members direct links to Chinese suppliers.
The consensus in the chat rooms is that the best quality fakes that can be bought from websites come from Jacky, Catty and Joy -- all pseudonyms.
Joy, 30, started selling fake Louis Vuittons as a sideline. Having spent a couple of years overseas, she banters with potential customers on her website in flawless English. But behind the cheery facade is a troubled pirate.
"I am worried every day about being caught," Joy told Reuters in an email interview. "The old Chinese saying goes: It's a dagger hanging on top of my heart. I've been trying to get out of the business since day one. I have tried everything. I even started my own brand, but nothing sells like replicas," she said.
Catty, who has been in the business of making "mirror-image" Chanel bags for six years, sells 2,000 to 3,000 bags a month to customers all over the world, for about $100 each. Under Chinese law, that size of operation surpasses the threshold required to begin a criminal investigation, as opposed to a civil fine.
"Yes, I am so afraid of getting caught, but in China many, many people do this job. You can find many people doing my job on iOffer, Taobao and Ebay," Catty said in an email interview, referring to online auction sites.
The online merchandising trend, and shipping via small parcels, has made it increasingly hard for authorities to track the extent of the problem
"Traditionally, we'd find a few containers every year and they're nice figures to report," said John Taylor, an official with the European Union IPR enforcement unit. "But now there are less containers identified, and customs is working almost twice as hard to find as many products because of the growing trend for consumers to buy items over the Internet," he told Reuters.
Ebay, which has lost lawsuits in France to Louis Vutton for not policing the site for fakes actively enough, said the firm has made an increased effort of late.
"We're serious about it. We vet Chinese sellers. If China is going to connect with the rest of the world, China has to confront piracy and counterfeits themselves," Ebay's Chief Executive John Donahue told Reuters in an interview.
Jack Chang is a veteran campaigner against counterfeit goods. As chairman of China's leading intellectual property protection group, the Quality Brands Protection Committee, he has worked with the Chinese government to make enforcement a priority.
China's dual system for counterfeit goods enforcement, with duties shared between China's administrative authorities and its police, provides enforcement options for brand owners. But it also forms one of the biggest problems in cracking down on the illicit industry.
Under Chinese law, a counterfeit case is not subject to criminal investigation unless it surpasses a certain value or volume threshold. However, unless an investigation is made, it is nearly impossible to know the magnitude of the counterfeiting. Without evidence to prove that the threshold is met, the police cannot start the investigation. "It's a which came first situation: the chicken or the egg," Chang said.
Adding to the problem are the sheer numbers of Mom and Pop stores selling these goods.
"It's a never-ending story. Every time you hit one, another one pops up somewhere else, and you have to hit it again. So it's tough," Jean Cassegrain, chief executive of French luxury house Longchamp, told Reuters.
FRUSTRATION WITH CHINA
On Capitol Hill, frustration with China's pirates is adding to rising tensions with China over a range of issues, including the trade deficit and other unfair trade practices they say are taking away American jobs.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat from North Dakota, was conducting a recent hearing on pirated movies, as chairman of a watchdog panel set up after China and the United States normalized trade ties in 2000.
Many thought China's entry into the World Trade Organization would create a boom for U.S. exports. Instead, the trade gap has gotten worse year after year, with the deficit on track this year to reach about $250 billion.
Dorgan is grilling Greg Frazier, a vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, about how Washington ended up agreeing to limit the number of foreign films that can be shown in China to just 20 a year under the WTO pact.
The U.S. movie industry believes the quota has fueled the huge market for pirated DVDs and illegal Internet downloads. "Here is the paradox: there's an abundance of American movies in China but most of them are pirated," Frazier told the hearing.
China's policing of the Internet for pornography and political content raises questions why it can't do the same for sites that offer pirated or counterfeit goods, legislators say.
"We know the Chinese government could be doing far more -- far, far more -- to protect intellectual property rights," Rep. Sander Levin, a Democrat from Detroit, tells the hearing. "There's a widening chasm between what we hear from the Chinese government about IPR protection and what we know to be true."
Source: Reuters
Warnings printed on the inside of the box read: "Danger Contains Sulfuric Acid" and "Poison - Causes Severe Burns" -- not the sort of messages that would normally accompany a product from one of the world's most iconic luxury brands.
But it sure looked real. It was dark brown, sported a braided strap with brass fittings and the Louis Vuitton monogram stamped all across the bag.
I had ordered the bag from a website called www.ericwhy.com for this special report, which explores the growing problem of counterfeit merchandise sold over the Internet.
Reuters wanted to trace the problem from a consumer in Washington D.C. to the shadowy producers based in Guangzhou China, where my colleague Melanie Lee found the illicit workshops and markets.
Ericwhy, based in Guangzhou, calls its stuff "designer-inspired alternative to actual Louis Vuitton" in a disclaimer on its website. "We assume no civil or criminal liability for the actions of those who buy our products."
Yet, U.S. law enforcement officials say this website and many others that offer a dazzling array of goods online -- clothes, electronics, footwear, watches, medicines -- are outlaws, and they plan to go after them hard.
Counterfeit commerce over the Internet has soared in the past couple of years, turning what had been an irritant to businesses into a serious competitive threat, the officials say.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the amount of counterfeit goods and pirated copyrights in world trade grew from about $100 billion in 2001 to about $250 billion in 2007, the last year for which they have made an estimate. While there are no separate estimates for how much of that is sold on the Internet, authorities say it is considerable.
"The Internet has just completely changed the face of the problem, made it more complicated and more pervasive," says John Morton, assistant secretary in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Whole industries now have been attacked, not from the street, but from the Internet."
Visitors to www.ericwhy.com can choose from more than 1,800 imitation Louis Vuitton bags, ranging from a pink shoulder tote and a tiger-colored "Whisper bag" to a simple bright red clutch.
The one I ordered cost $122 with a $40 shipping fee, so by my definition it was not exactly cheap. But comparable bags sold at a local Louis Vuitton retail store were $1,000 or more.
I entered my Washington D.C. address and credit card information, and instantly got an email from my credit card company warning of possible fraud on my account. Soon, I received a second email, this one a receipt with a Worldwide Express Mail Service (EMS) tracking number so I could follow my package.
The bag left Guangzhou, China on September 14 and arrived on my desk by the 20th. It was wrapped in a yellow sheath with the Louis Vuitton logo and smelled strongly of leather.
But in another sign something was not quite right, the English instructions that came with it read: "Louis Vuitton has created for you prestigious glazed leather" -- the sentence ending abruptly without the word "bag."
I took the bag to a Louis Vuitton store in Chevy Chase, Maryland to see how it compared with the real article. The store clerk, a tall man in a stylish suit, was restrained. "We only talk about our own products," he said icily, adding "we don't have any bags like that."
That Louis Vuitton doesn't want its store personnel to talk about how easily their products can be copied is perhaps understandable. If word got around fake bags were on the street, then people might begin to wonder if their own bags were real. Part of the brand's cachet is its exclusivity, which easily available counterfeits devalue.
Last year, U.S. customs and other law enforcement agents made nearly 15,000 seizures of counterfeit goods, 80 percent of which came from China. Handbags were third on the list, behind consumer electronics and footwear -- the top item for four consecutive years.
"They aren't just selling counterfeit clothing or electronics," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told an intellectual property conference in Hong Kong last week.
"They're selling defective and dangerous imitations of critical components, like brake pads, or everyday consumer goods, like toothpaste. They're conducting corporate espionage. They're pirating music, movies, games, software and other copyrighted works -- both on our cities' streets and online. And the consequences are devastating."
When it comes to making counterfeit goods and pirating brands, China is the counterfeit "workshop of the world." Along with a relentlessly widening U.S. trade deficit, which Washington blames on China's undervalued currency, rampant piracy is stoking economic tensions between two of the world's biggest economies.
SHADY FACTORIES
The grubby town of Shiling, an hour's drive from the southern port of Guangzhou, has the biggest leatherworking industry in China. In the 1980s, multinationals from various industries began outsourcing production to factories in the coastal provinces. In this part of Guangdong province, it was leather.
By the late 1990s, low-budget workshops in inconspicuous neighborhoods near the outsourcing factories had sprung up making fake versions of the products. Today, much of Shiling's leather goods are destined for the counterfeit trade.
At one such workshop near Shiling Secondary School, women and their young daughters could be seen cutting and sewing leather by the windows. Lanky men loitered on the ground floor by a "help wanted" poster seeking leather workers, serving as lookouts.
These places are occasionally targeted for police raids.
Zhou She, a private investigator whose job is to sniff out illicit hives of counterfeiting operations, told us about this cluster of workshops, but we must act discreetly, he says.
Walking gingerly around the three-storey shop-house factories and watching men and women pound metal hardware into leather in the back alleys, it feels like we are in a pirates' lair.
Police officials say organized crime gangs, sometimes called triads in this part of China, are deeply involved, given their extensive underground networks. "Of course they are involved. It is very low risk for them," Zhou said.
He works the detective gumshoe routine, spending hours trailing trucks carrying suspected cargo in and out of Shiling, conducting camera surveillance and interviews.
A former Peoples' Liberation Army intelligence officer, Zhou, who has been in the industry for 12 years, has the tanned, leathery skin and sharp crew cut of a military man. His austere presence is betrayed only by a brown, expensive-looking leather purse, which he showed off proudly -- a gift from an Italian client after he found a counterfeit workshop for them.
Luxury brands hire him to gather information on the location of warehouses and factories, who then use that evidence to persuade Chinese police to conduct a raid.
The workshops take real luxury handbags and reverse engineer them. Everything from the metal fittings to the monogrammed leather of a Louis Vuitton bag is produced in China.
After it is put together at one of the workshops in Shiling, the bag usually winds up in nearby Baiyun, by the old airport in northern Guangzhou.
SPILLING OUT OF STORES
The Guangzhou Baiyun World Leather market is the epicenter of the world's counterfeit trade when it comes to wholesaling fake leather goods and apparel, experts say.
Counterfeit Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and Hermes handbags literally spill out of shops that occupy commercial space the size of five football fields. Smaller stores provide auxiliary products, such as counterfeit paper bags, receipts and catalogues for wholesalers.
Gina, who declined to give her surname, is one such wholesaler from Colonia, Uruguay. Tugging a large, gray Louis Vuitton suitcase through the narrow paths of the leather market with her 66-year-old mother in tow, she is looking for a shop that can make Louis Vuitton satchels out of "pleather" (synthetic leather).
"Don't worry, she can manage, we are very used to this," Gina said as her arthritic mother slowly shuffles forward, carrying bags laden with fake scarves and leather goods, before they stop at a bag shop.
"I don't need real leather, just pleather. No need to be 5-As, just double A enough," Gina told the shopkeeper in heavily accented English.
She has traveled halfway around the world to Baiyun to make a personal connection in the world's largest market for counterfeit leather goods. "I used to buy online from China, but after one bad experience, I said never again!" She said she wound up taking delivery of 800 bags in red instead of the black she ordered.
Gina was looking for a factory that can make 500 satchels, which she planned to ship to Argentina before bringing them into Uruguay where she has a beachfront store. It's less suspicious to bring it over the border than have it come directly from China. Clutching sheets of paper with information about the bags she wants made, Gina, with her streaked blond hair, tanned skin and branded accessories, looked more like a Hollywood fashonista than somebody's idea of a pirate. "I've been in this business for eight years now," she said. "It's a good business."
Indeed, while criminal syndicates are getting increasingly involved in the counterfeit trade, both in the United States and China, authorities say, it is ordinary folks like Gina and the shopkeepers she deals with who are the face of the counterfeit business in China.
HALF-HEARTED ENFORCEMENT
Guangzhou authorities occasionally raid the Baiyun market, including the day Reuters journalists visited there. Shops, tipped to the impending raid, dutifully closed their doors, though customers only had to knock to be let in surreptitiously.
"They are raiding now. I don't know when it will end. It's because of the Asian Games," said one shopkeeper. Guangzhou is hosting the games in November.
After a few minutes, the raid apparently ends with no arrests made. Shop owners slide off their stools, fling open their glass doors and stand outside beaming and beckoning at customers again. They don't cater to tourists, but sell in bulk to wholesalers such as Gina. Each shop claimed to have a factory backing it.
In the basement of the stores are the shippers, who expertly pack and label the items so they sail through customs.
"If you want to send to France, it is a bit hard, because they check thoroughly. But sending via UPS has an 80 percent success rate," said one such shipper named Chen, who like the others interviewed in China for this story, declined to give his full name to avoid getting in trouble.
They will also route shipments through ports in the Middle East or Africa to avoid detection by customs in the European Union and the United States, he said.
Sitting on a small stool in a Baiyun shop, Gary, a 30-year-old Congolese, represents another branch of the industry -- the intermediary. Speaking Mandarin to a shopkeeper and switching to French for his three African clients, he was trying to put together a deal on counterfeit Italian Miu Miu bags.
He came to China two years ago to study, but has made helping European and African clients buy fakes a thriving side business.
"I buy a lot and pack them in boxes of 10. Then I ship them to England and then I drive (them) into France and they get picked up," Gary whispered in Mandarin. "It's a sensitive business," he said with his baseball cap shoved low on his head.
Similarly, Nana, 30, a native of Moscow, has lived in Guangzhou for four years. She was buying fake Tommy Hilfinger and Gucci clothes in Baiyung, which she planned to supply to 20 websites in Russia.
Few if any foreigners are ever caught or prosecuted, and not many locals, either. China's counterfeit industry employs millions of workers, distributors and shop clerks across the nation, one reason why authorities have often been half-hearted in their enforcement measures.
But last week, the government said it would soon launch a six-month crackdown on piracy and trademark infringement. The illicit traders "upset the market's normal order, impair the competitive strength and innovation of businesses, and hurt China's image abroad," the State Council, or Cabinet, said in a statement.
In the second half of last year, China's customs department seized 2.6 million counterfeit items from the country's postal and express consignments, Meng Yang, a director general in the customs department, said in a speech in Shanghai last month.
That's probably just a small fraction of the total trade in China, experts say, given the amount of fake merchandise from China seized abroad.
NEW WEAPONS AGAINST PIRATES
Back in Washington, I handed over the fake Louis Vuitton bag down to the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. Federal agents, standing in front of a display case of counterfeit shampoo, condoms, medicine and other products seized over the years, good-naturedly accept the bag. They said it was much better quality than the ones they had brought in to show me.
The new center is a partnership among a dozen federal law enforcement agencies and the Mexican government. Richard Halverson, its chief for outreach and training, said U.S. customs officials and postal inspectors have been on the lookout for counterfeit goods from China, but can't catch every one.
The money to be made selling counterfeit goods is so good "we have seen organized crime groups, what you would consider drug trafficking groups, actually move away from some of those other crimes into the counterfeit goods trade because it is a high-profit, low-risk cash business -- the prime things that criminals are looking for," Halverson said.
It may seem harmless enough, but a consumer surfing the web looking for a good deal on prescription drugs, for example, needs to beware. "You may be looking at what you believe to be a Canadian pharmacy, when in fact the drugs are being manufactured in India, the site is being run out of China, and your payment is going to another group in Russia," Halverson said.
In the 2009 budget year, U.S. Customs agents and other officials made 14,481 seizures valued at $260.7 million dollars. When the final tally for 2010 budget year is in, the figures will be much higher, Halverson said, noting that in just one operation U.S. agents in Baltimore working with London police seized eight containers of counterfeit shoes and handbags.
One recent IPR Center enforcement action, called "Operation in Our Sites" seized the domain names of seven websites that allow visitors to stream or illegally download first-run movies, often just within hours of hitting the theaters.
Halverson took me to the IPR's operations room, where undercover agents search out websites and plot ways to disrupt them. The room, with a huge video monitor on the far wall, also functions as a command post to run operations in the field.
"Our undercover operation here is just Internet-based. We don't have any face-to-face meetings," one agent said, explaining they use "undercover computers" that allow them to trawl for counterfeiters without being identified.
After making a buy and confirming it is a counterfeit item, ICE agents will get a court order to seize the site's domain name and shut it down. But a longer criminal investigation is required to seize assets and put people in jail, the agent said.
Many owners of the domain names, such as Ericwhy, are overseas, making it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to go after them. So often the most viable option is to close the site, another agent said.
ORGANISED CRIME LINKS
While it often seems the counterfeit industry in China is mostly Mom and Pop, Washington sees the problems caused by fake goods as much bigger and more sinister than many imagine. "Counterfeiting and piracy is increasingly the focus of organized crime," said Morton, who heads ICE, the U.S. government's second-largest criminal investigation agency after the FBI.
"There's a lot of money in it and you need a fairly sophisticated operation to pull it off. You need an ability to manufacture goods on a grand scale, you need a shipping network," Morton said in an interview in his office at ICE headquarters with a view of the Washington Monument and Potomac River.
"It literally affects every segment of American manufacturing and business," he continued, ticking off examples: "Counterfeit aircraft engine parts, counterfeit ball bearings for machines, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit electronics."
The Internet has made it much easier for unscrupulous companies to sell fake or pirated goods. "You don't have to go to the corner of Fourth and Main to buy your fake Gucci handbag. You can order it over the Internet," Morton said.
Counterfeit products are also increasingly sophisticated and hard to distinguish from the real thing. In the old days, Morton said, everyone knew an item was a knock-off because it looked like a cheaper version of the original. But now, counterfeiters want to mimic the item as closely as possible to get higher prices and profits.
One new tool Washington hopes will help in the international fight is a proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Negotiators from the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore and Switzerland reached a tentative agreement in late September on the pact, which has been years in the making.
With support from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Software Alliance, Congress is preparing legislation giving the U.S. Justice Department broad new powers to take down "rogue websites," both at home and overseas.
"Sites like this one (ericwhy.com) are stealing the ideas and designs of legitimate, hardworking manufacturers to line the pockets of foreign criminal networks," said Rob Calia, senior director for counterfeiting and piracy at the U.S. Chamber.
"It's theft, plain and simple, and it's hurting our economy."
INTERNET CHAT ROOMS
It is on the Internet where counterfeit traders in China are finding a growing market, not to mention a safer place from which to deal. Chat rooms on sites such as thefashionspot.com are dedicated solely to finding suppliers and discussing bags. Other sites such as Replica Underground offer members direct links to Chinese suppliers.
The consensus in the chat rooms is that the best quality fakes that can be bought from websites come from Jacky, Catty and Joy -- all pseudonyms.
Joy, 30, started selling fake Louis Vuittons as a sideline. Having spent a couple of years overseas, she banters with potential customers on her website in flawless English. But behind the cheery facade is a troubled pirate.
"I am worried every day about being caught," Joy told Reuters in an email interview. "The old Chinese saying goes: It's a dagger hanging on top of my heart. I've been trying to get out of the business since day one. I have tried everything. I even started my own brand, but nothing sells like replicas," she said.
Catty, who has been in the business of making "mirror-image" Chanel bags for six years, sells 2,000 to 3,000 bags a month to customers all over the world, for about $100 each. Under Chinese law, that size of operation surpasses the threshold required to begin a criminal investigation, as opposed to a civil fine.
"Yes, I am so afraid of getting caught, but in China many, many people do this job. You can find many people doing my job on iOffer, Taobao and Ebay," Catty said in an email interview, referring to online auction sites.
The online merchandising trend, and shipping via small parcels, has made it increasingly hard for authorities to track the extent of the problem
"Traditionally, we'd find a few containers every year and they're nice figures to report," said John Taylor, an official with the European Union IPR enforcement unit. "But now there are less containers identified, and customs is working almost twice as hard to find as many products because of the growing trend for consumers to buy items over the Internet," he told Reuters.
Ebay, which has lost lawsuits in France to Louis Vutton for not policing the site for fakes actively enough, said the firm has made an increased effort of late.
"We're serious about it. We vet Chinese sellers. If China is going to connect with the rest of the world, China has to confront piracy and counterfeits themselves," Ebay's Chief Executive John Donahue told Reuters in an interview.
Jack Chang is a veteran campaigner against counterfeit goods. As chairman of China's leading intellectual property protection group, the Quality Brands Protection Committee, he has worked with the Chinese government to make enforcement a priority.
China's dual system for counterfeit goods enforcement, with duties shared between China's administrative authorities and its police, provides enforcement options for brand owners. But it also forms one of the biggest problems in cracking down on the illicit industry.
Under Chinese law, a counterfeit case is not subject to criminal investigation unless it surpasses a certain value or volume threshold. However, unless an investigation is made, it is nearly impossible to know the magnitude of the counterfeiting. Without evidence to prove that the threshold is met, the police cannot start the investigation. "It's a which came first situation: the chicken or the egg," Chang said.
Adding to the problem are the sheer numbers of Mom and Pop stores selling these goods.
"It's a never-ending story. Every time you hit one, another one pops up somewhere else, and you have to hit it again. So it's tough," Jean Cassegrain, chief executive of French luxury house Longchamp, told Reuters.
FRUSTRATION WITH CHINA
On Capitol Hill, frustration with China's pirates is adding to rising tensions with China over a range of issues, including the trade deficit and other unfair trade practices they say are taking away American jobs.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat from North Dakota, was conducting a recent hearing on pirated movies, as chairman of a watchdog panel set up after China and the United States normalized trade ties in 2000.
Many thought China's entry into the World Trade Organization would create a boom for U.S. exports. Instead, the trade gap has gotten worse year after year, with the deficit on track this year to reach about $250 billion.
Dorgan is grilling Greg Frazier, a vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, about how Washington ended up agreeing to limit the number of foreign films that can be shown in China to just 20 a year under the WTO pact.
The U.S. movie industry believes the quota has fueled the huge market for pirated DVDs and illegal Internet downloads. "Here is the paradox: there's an abundance of American movies in China but most of them are pirated," Frazier told the hearing.
China's policing of the Internet for pornography and political content raises questions why it can't do the same for sites that offer pirated or counterfeit goods, legislators say.
"We know the Chinese government could be doing far more -- far, far more -- to protect intellectual property rights," Rep. Sander Levin, a Democrat from Detroit, tells the hearing. "There's a widening chasm between what we hear from the Chinese government about IPR protection and what we know to be true."
Source: Reuters
Monday, October 25, 2010
Japan protests over boats
TOKYO - JAPAN said on Monday it had lodged a protest with China after spotting two of its fisheries patrol boats near a disputed island chain that is at the centre of a bitter row between the Asian giants.
'Last night around 9pm our coastguard sighted them and afterwards the two (ships) left there and sailed north toward China,' Japan's top government spokesman Yoshito Sengoku said on Monday.
'After the incident we launched a protest through diplomatic channels,' Mr Sengoku, the chief cabinet secretary, told a regular press conference. Beijing and Tokyo have been locked in their worst spat in years that started after Japan arrested a Chinese trawler captain on September 8 near the uninhabited island chain in the East China Sea.
Amid the row nationalist street demonstrations have been held in both countries, with protesters again rallying in China at the weekend, chanting anti-Japanese slogans and calling for boycotts of Japanese goods.
The row started when Japan arrested the Chinese captain near the Japan-administered islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, after his ship had collided with two of its coastguard vessels.
China reacted with a barrage of diplomatic protests and snubs and other punitive steps and first dispatched two of its own fisheries patrol boats on September 23 to waters near the islands. It withdrew the boats after Japan released the captain, but last week Japanese media reported that China had again dispatched boats on October 14, with the aim of 'protecting the legal rights of Chinese fishermen'.
Source: ST Online
'Last night around 9pm our coastguard sighted them and afterwards the two (ships) left there and sailed north toward China,' Japan's top government spokesman Yoshito Sengoku said on Monday.
'After the incident we launched a protest through diplomatic channels,' Mr Sengoku, the chief cabinet secretary, told a regular press conference. Beijing and Tokyo have been locked in their worst spat in years that started after Japan arrested a Chinese trawler captain on September 8 near the uninhabited island chain in the East China Sea.
Amid the row nationalist street demonstrations have been held in both countries, with protesters again rallying in China at the weekend, chanting anti-Japanese slogans and calling for boycotts of Japanese goods.
The row started when Japan arrested the Chinese captain near the Japan-administered islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, after his ship had collided with two of its coastguard vessels.
China reacted with a barrage of diplomatic protests and snubs and other punitive steps and first dispatched two of its own fisheries patrol boats on September 23 to waters near the islands. It withdrew the boats after Japan released the captain, but last week Japanese media reported that China had again dispatched boats on October 14, with the aim of 'protecting the legal rights of Chinese fishermen'.
Source: ST Online
China exits Tokyo film fest
BEIJING - CHINA has pulled out of the Tokyo International Film Festival, which started at the weekend, in a row over the official name of the Taiwan delegation, state media said on Monday.
The head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Ping, pulled the plug on Beijing's participation in protest after organisers refused to change the name of the island's contingent from 'Taiwan' to 'China's Taiwan' or 'Chinese Taipei'. He blamed the festival authorities for the flap.
But the dispute comes amid a simmering row between China and Japan over a contested island chain in the East China Sea, sparked more than six weeks ago when Tokyo arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain near the rocky islets. China and Taiwan split at the end of a civil war in 1949. Beijing still considers the self-ruled island part of its territory awaiting reunification.
'It is regretful that the Chinese delegation has decided to pull out of festival-related event because the organisers covertly violated the One-China Policy,' the Global Times quoted Mr Jiang as saying.
'It has nothing to do with our Taiwan compatriots. It is the fault of the Tokyo organisers,' said Mr Jiang, who is also a senior official in the film division of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Nine Chinese-language films that were to have been screened in a China-specific part of the festival have been pulled, the Global Times reported.
One of two Chinese films in competition, The Piano In A Factory, has also been withdrawn, but the other, Buddha Mountain, will be screened, the newspaper quoted a public relations officer linked to that movie as saying. In Taipei, government spokesman Johnny Chiang said the delegation from Beijing 'should not use politics to interfere in movie exchanges'. -- AFP
Source: ST Online
The head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Ping, pulled the plug on Beijing's participation in protest after organisers refused to change the name of the island's contingent from 'Taiwan' to 'China's Taiwan' or 'Chinese Taipei'. He blamed the festival authorities for the flap.
But the dispute comes amid a simmering row between China and Japan over a contested island chain in the East China Sea, sparked more than six weeks ago when Tokyo arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain near the rocky islets. China and Taiwan split at the end of a civil war in 1949. Beijing still considers the self-ruled island part of its territory awaiting reunification.
'It is regretful that the Chinese delegation has decided to pull out of festival-related event because the organisers covertly violated the One-China Policy,' the Global Times quoted Mr Jiang as saying.
'It has nothing to do with our Taiwan compatriots. It is the fault of the Tokyo organisers,' said Mr Jiang, who is also a senior official in the film division of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Nine Chinese-language films that were to have been screened in a China-specific part of the festival have been pulled, the Global Times reported.
One of two Chinese films in competition, The Piano In A Factory, has also been withdrawn, but the other, Buddha Mountain, will be screened, the newspaper quoted a public relations officer linked to that movie as saying. In Taipei, government spokesman Johnny Chiang said the delegation from Beijing 'should not use politics to interfere in movie exchanges'. -- AFP
Source: ST Online
Friday, October 22, 2010
Chinese police refuse to register human rights lawyer as missing
International concern for Gao Zhisheng, outspoken critic of state security, who has not been seen since April
Chinese police have refused to register an outspoken human rights lawyer who has not been seen since April as a missing person, his elder brother said today.
The disappearance of Gao Zhisheng has caused international concern, particularly because he had previously made detailed claims of torture at the hands of security officials during detentions.
Gao Zhiyi said he last saw his younger brother at their family home in the central province of Shaanxi in early April. "Our family is very worried about him so I came to Beijing to report the situation to police, but they will not register the case," he said.
"They told me: 'The situation occurred before, so just wait and you will find him again.'"
He added: "The last time I saw my brother he just said he would return to Beijing to 'spend some relaxing days'. After that we couldn't find him."
Human rights groups reported in February 2009 that security officers had taken the lawyer from his home overnight. He was not seen for more than a year and friends and human rights campaigners feared he might be dead.
Once lauded by the government, he angered authorities by taking on clients including members of banned spiritual movement Falun Gong.
As international concern about his case mounted, he suddenly re-emerged in March this year and gave several interviews. The committed Christian said he had been living at a sacred Buddhist site, miles away from his birthplace or Beijing home.
Friends who spoke to him said they did not believe he was speaking freely. Shortly afterwards he vanished again.
In a tweet, lawyer Teng Biao – who said he accompanied Gao Zhiyi to the police station – described Gao Zhisheng as China's bravest lawyer, citing his persistence in exposing the truth.
Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "Gao Zhisheng is definitely one of the most worrying cases.
"The authorities seem to be deliberately using criminal methods as a way of silencing a human rights defender and intimidating others."
Earlier this year, foreign minister Yang Jiechi said Gao's rights had been respected and that he had been convicted of incitement to subvert state power – apparently referring to the suspended sentence he received in 2006.
In a separate development, more activists and dissidents have complained of increased pressure following the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to jailed author Liu Xiaobo.
His wife remains under house arrest and his friend Yu Jie said in an email that police were now preventing him from leaving home, adding that he thought it might be linked to Liu's award or a Christian meeting.
Friends of Cui Weiping, a Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic, said she was detained at a police station after security guards stopped her attending an art exhibition and concert at the Czech embassy tonight. The event was non-political but may have been considered sensitive because Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and former president, nominated Liu for the Nobel prize.
Another dissident was prevented from attending and a third decided not to go after being warned to stay at home.
Cui later tweeted that she was back home from the police station after the "very strange" incident. An employee at the station said they had not dealt with anyone of that name.
Source: The Guardian
Chinese police have refused to register an outspoken human rights lawyer who has not been seen since April as a missing person, his elder brother said today.
The disappearance of Gao Zhisheng has caused international concern, particularly because he had previously made detailed claims of torture at the hands of security officials during detentions.
Gao Zhiyi said he last saw his younger brother at their family home in the central province of Shaanxi in early April. "Our family is very worried about him so I came to Beijing to report the situation to police, but they will not register the case," he said.
"They told me: 'The situation occurred before, so just wait and you will find him again.'"
He added: "The last time I saw my brother he just said he would return to Beijing to 'spend some relaxing days'. After that we couldn't find him."
Human rights groups reported in February 2009 that security officers had taken the lawyer from his home overnight. He was not seen for more than a year and friends and human rights campaigners feared he might be dead.
Once lauded by the government, he angered authorities by taking on clients including members of banned spiritual movement Falun Gong.
As international concern about his case mounted, he suddenly re-emerged in March this year and gave several interviews. The committed Christian said he had been living at a sacred Buddhist site, miles away from his birthplace or Beijing home.
Friends who spoke to him said they did not believe he was speaking freely. Shortly afterwards he vanished again.
In a tweet, lawyer Teng Biao – who said he accompanied Gao Zhiyi to the police station – described Gao Zhisheng as China's bravest lawyer, citing his persistence in exposing the truth.
Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "Gao Zhisheng is definitely one of the most worrying cases.
"The authorities seem to be deliberately using criminal methods as a way of silencing a human rights defender and intimidating others."
Earlier this year, foreign minister Yang Jiechi said Gao's rights had been respected and that he had been convicted of incitement to subvert state power – apparently referring to the suspended sentence he received in 2006.
In a separate development, more activists and dissidents have complained of increased pressure following the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to jailed author Liu Xiaobo.
His wife remains under house arrest and his friend Yu Jie said in an email that police were now preventing him from leaving home, adding that he thought it might be linked to Liu's award or a Christian meeting.
Friends of Cui Weiping, a Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic, said she was detained at a police station after security guards stopped her attending an art exhibition and concert at the Czech embassy tonight. The event was non-political but may have been considered sensitive because Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and former president, nominated Liu for the Nobel prize.
Another dissident was prevented from attending and a third decided not to go after being warned to stay at home.
Cui later tweeted that she was back home from the police station after the "very strange" incident. An employee at the station said they had not dealt with anyone of that name.
Source: The Guardian
Chinese activists plan 'WikiLeaks'
HONG KONG - CHINESE activists are planning to launch a whistleblowing website modelled on WikiLeaks in a bid to expose state secrets and spur political reform, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
The activists, who are using social networking sites like Twitter to mobilise and call on people to upload classified information to their database, said it plans to launch 'Government Leaks' on June 1 next year, the daily said.
The site's founder - identified only as Deep Throat - said the website would go online just days ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the bloody June 4 crackdown on democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen square.
'I think that by making government secrets open we can promote democracy in China,' he told the English-language daily.
'This is a fight against the dictatorship, and to return the right to information to the people. I believe it will advance China's political reform.' Deep Throat said that he had originally wanted to team up with WikiLeaks, but that emails sent to the website had bounced back undelivered.
'Government Leaks has no relation with WikiLeaks, but you can call us the copycat version of WikiLeaks in China,' he told the paper, adding that the site would continue to approach WikiLeaks for help.
Source: ST Online/AFP
Chinese smelter leaks thallium
BEIJING - A MAJOR state-owned industrial conglomerate in China said on Friday it had been ordered to stop production at one of its smelters after it was found to be leaking highly toxic thallium into a river.
Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Nonfemet Co Ltd said in a statement that environmental authorities had found excess thallium in the middle and upper reaches of the Bei River in the southern province of Guangdong.
'It was determined through expert consultations, investigations and monitoring by environmental authorities that the excessive thallium was caused by sewage from the firm's smelter in Shaoguan city,' it said.
'The Shaoguan smelter completely stopped production on Oct 21 at the request of the provincial government, and is now actively coordinating with the government's investigations,' it added.
Thallium is a highly toxic metal that enters the environment mostly through coal-burning and smelting. It can affect the nervous system, lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys, and even cause death.
China suffers from widespread water pollution after years of unbridled economic growth. According to government data, more than 200 million Chinese currently do not have access to safe drinking water.
Source: Straitstimes Online
Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Nonfemet Co Ltd said in a statement that environmental authorities had found excess thallium in the middle and upper reaches of the Bei River in the southern province of Guangdong.
'It was determined through expert consultations, investigations and monitoring by environmental authorities that the excessive thallium was caused by sewage from the firm's smelter in Shaoguan city,' it said.
'The Shaoguan smelter completely stopped production on Oct 21 at the request of the provincial government, and is now actively coordinating with the government's investigations,' it added.
Thallium is a highly toxic metal that enters the environment mostly through coal-burning and smelting. It can affect the nervous system, lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys, and even cause death.
China suffers from widespread water pollution after years of unbridled economic growth. According to government data, more than 200 million Chinese currently do not have access to safe drinking water.
Source: Straitstimes Online
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