IN BRIEF
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10/26/2001
APEC financial project The APEC Finance and Development Project was inaugurated by President Jiang Zemin at the Shanghai International Media Centre on Sunday. The three-year project was advocated by China and endorsed at the financial ministers' meeting before being submitted to the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. It aims to boost the institutional capacity of APEC member economies, developing member economies in particular, in the fields of finance and development, through seminars, subject studies and personnel training courses. It will become operational early next year. Busy foreign trade Foreign trade passing through Shanghai Customs in the first nine months of this year reached US$91 billion, an increase of 14.5 per cent over the same period last year. Of the figure, exports accounted for US$51.3 billion and imports US$39.7 billion. Car parts conglomerate The Shanghai Automobile Industry Group and German Pierburg AG have agreed to jointly finance a car parts company in Shanghai. With a total investment of US$51.1 million, the new company will be one of the largest car parts companies in the country. Its products will be mainly for Shanghai Volkswagen, Shanghai GM in Shanghai and FAW Volkswagen in Changchun, capital city of Northeast China's Jilin Province. The company has imported modern technologies and production equipment from the US, Germany and Italy. Chia Tai shopping mall The Super Brand Mall located at Pudong's Lujiazui Finance and Trade Centre opened this week amid the hubbub of APEC activities. Covering an area of 240,000 square metres, the mall was built at a cost of US$335 million. Funded by Thailand's Chia Tai Group, it blends occidental and oriental styles of architecture. Children's Corners Giada Fashion Company of Italy has decided to open its Children's Corners in Shanghai in March after completing a two-year market survey. As part of its strategy to expand the Chinese market, the company is launching a project to promote its children's clothes, said Keny Peng, marketing director. He said all the clothes will be imported, but later they will be made locally according to Italian design and quality standards. FedEx express Federal Express Corp has unveiled a 6,080-sq-metre FedEx-DTW Express Centre at Pudong International Airport. As the largest and most advanced of its kind in China, the centre is expected to handle 6,000 packages per hour, with the ability to double that to 12,000 packages per hour. Shanghai-Macao flight Shanghai Airlines will add one more flight to its daily air route from Shanghai to China's Macao Special Administrative Region on Sunday. It will also increase its flights bound for other cities in China. Five aircraft have been purchased to serve them. ASICON 2001 The Fourth International Conference on Application Specific Integrated-Circuit, which opened in Shanghai on Tuesday with more than 600 scientists and researchers attending, discussed IC design, software and hardware co-design, deeper sub-micron IC fabrication, semiconductor devices and micro-electronic materials. Forum on Infrastructure The third international forum on the reform of the infrastructure sector opened in Shanghai on Monday. More than 160 experts at home and abroad attended the forum. They discussed issues such as international experiences in opening up home markets - as China is going to join the World Trade Organization soon - anti-monopoly moves, ways to promote effective competition, and reform of governmental regulation. Bourses rebound Shanghai stock exchanges, one of the country's two bourses went sharply higher on Tuesday and hit their set limit. The rise was led by the government's recent decision to stop selling State-listed shares. It marked a reverse from a three-month plunge. Statistics show the A shares of Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges suffered a loss of US$217.3 billion since last June. Qiu Yanying, a researcher of the Huaxia Stock Research Institute, said the reduction of State-listed shares is a general trend.
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