CSG news update -- 2006-11-30

[China Study Group <chinastudygroup@gmail.com>]

China Study Group news update

China's pension fund awards first global mandates
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=fundsNews2&storyID=2006-11-29T115447Z_01_PEK145535_RTRIDST_0_CHINA-PENSIONS-MANDATES-UPDATE-2.XML
Reuters | 2006-11-29
Eadie Chen
BEIJING, Nov 29 - China's National Social Security Fund awarded 10 foreign fund managers on Wednesday the hotly contested mandates to plough more than $1 billion into overseas stocks and bonds as it ventures abroad for the first time.  The NSSF, a central-government safety net for China's ...

Job shortage to affect graduates
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-11/29/content_745409.htm
China Daily | 2006-11-29
Guan Xiaofeng and Wang Shanshan
China's university graduates are braced for gloomier employment prospects next year as the number of graduates will reach a record high of 4.95 million, the Ministry of Education said Tuesday.  An escalator was broken due to overcrowding during a job fair held in Zhengzhou on Sunday, November ...

Entrepreneurs, professionals make key part of CPC's united front in new era
http://english.people.com.cn/200611/29/eng20061129_326218.html
People's Daily | 2006-11-29
Private entrepreneurs and professionals in new social sectors have constituted a crucial part of the united front work of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in the new century.  Such a principle is enshrined in a document recently issued by the CPC Central Committee, which is entitled Opinions on ...

Charges of Bribery in a Chinese Bank Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/business/worldbusiness/29corrupt.html
New York Times | 2006-11-29
David Barboza
SHANGHAI, Nov. 28 — The American company says it was a legitimate cost of doing business in China, the price it had to pay to help secure a large software contract with one of China's biggest banks.  But a Chinese company that says it got pushed out of the deal has a different version: e...

An American who lived the history of Mao's rise and fall
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1129/p01s04-woap.html
Christian Science Monitor | 2006-11-29
Robert Marquand
"I never meant to stay in China.... I never even meant to go to China."  The contradiction defines Sidney Rittenberg's life and world. Mr. Rittenberg knows China's epic Communist revolution intimately, not as a witness, but a participant - often on the wrong side of history.  Not many pe...

China woos India to parry US containment strategy
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/chin-n28.shtml
World Socialist Web Site | 2006-11-28
Keith Jones
Chinese President Hu Jintao made a four-day visit to India last week, then spent three days in Pakistan.  Sino-Indian relations have long been strained. In 1962 the two countries fought a brief war over a border dispute that still remains unresolved. In June 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the...

Gov't set to tackle pension fund woes
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-11/28/content_744322.htm
China Daily | 2006-11-28
Yidi Zhao and Joshua Fellman
The government is studying the feasibility of raising the mandatory retirement age to plug the huge deficit in the pension fund, the China Economic Weekly reports.  The social security fund was 800 billion yuan (US$102 billion) in the red at the end of last year, compared to 36 billion yuan (US$4....

Working up the value chain
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HK23Cb01.html
Asia Times | 2006-11-23
Tom Miller
This year it was cheap shoes; last year it was "bra wars". Media reports on China's export economy focus on its competitive advantage in churning out millions of low-value goods. But as China pulls its way up the value chain, the real threat to developed manufacturing economies will come not fro...

Manufacturing that doesn't compute
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HK22Cb01.html
Asia Times | 2006-11-22
Tom Miller
BEIJING - Who has the biggest shopping bags in China? Wal-Mart, America's largest chain retailer, is well known for its voracity, sourcing US$18 billion of merchandise from the country in 2004. Less well known and more telling is that Dell, the world's biggest personal-computer (PC) maker by...