China and Indonesia have banned pork imports from South Korea and the Philippines and increased quarantine inspections of imported swine, while there were fresh runs on anti-flu medication such as Tamiflu and Relenza

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China and Taiwan signed new agreements, taking a big step towards opening up their financial services industries to each other

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China revealed that it had quietly raised its gold reserves by three-quarters since 2003, increasing its holdings to 1,054 tonnes and confirming years of speculation it had been buying.

China has quietly almost doubled its gold reserves to become the world’s fifth-biggest holder of the precious metal, it emerged on Friday, in a move that signals the revival of bullion after years of fading importance.

Gold rose to a three-week high of more than $910 an ounce after Hu Xiaolian, head of the secretive State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages the country’s $1,954bn in foreign exchange reserves, revealed China had 1,054 tonnes of gold, up from 600 tonnes in 2003.

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China has paraded its growing naval power, including previously unseen nuclear-powered submarines, in a military demonstration seen as a challenge to the US, the world's leading maritime nation

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China slammed Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso for his offering to the Yasukuni shrine for war dead, warning of damage to ties while the two Asian powerhouses grapple with financial woes and North Korea.

China has threatened Japan with a “grave and negative impact” on bilateral relations after Taro Aso, Japan’s prime minister, sent a potted plant as a spring offering to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing had indicated “grave concern and dissatisfaction” through diplomatic channels, and warned that “any erroneous moves by Japan will produce grave and negative impact on bilateral relations.”

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China Cosco the world's largest dry bulk shipper, posted a bigger-than-expected second-half loss and said it was in talks to delay or cancel some new ship orders to help weather the market downturn

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Richard Li has thrown in the towel on a proposed $2bn buyout of PCCW, his Hong Kong telecommunications company after a protracted legal battle, saying the saga has been 'unnecessarily divisive to society'.

Mr Li and state-owned China Unicom, PCCW’s second-largest shareholder, said they would let the controversial HK$4.50 per share offer lapse and pay investors a special HK$1.30 per share dividend.

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Viewed from Brussels, China's importance to the world's security and economic systems has never been greater. Viewed from Beijing, the EU's importance has rarely been smaller.

This imbalance will be on display in Prague on May 20, when EU and Chinese leaders get together for a summit. The meeting should have been held last December, but in an imperious gesture the Chinese cancelled it after Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, showed “disrespect” by arranging talks with the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

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Beijing faces rising criticism of its use of the nation's foreign exchange wealth by bodies such as CIC and Safe, with the exact composition of their holdings not clear.

China Investment Corporation, the fledgling $200bn sovereign wealth fund, has been savaged domestically for losing more than $4bn with misjudged investments in Blackstone and Morgan Stanley.

Meanwhile, China’s secretive State Administration of Foreign Exchange is estimated to have lost 20 times more than CIC through a poorly timed diversification into global equities but has not faced any criticism.

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Chinese companies are falling victim to Chinese trademark pirates in a twist to the intellectual property problems suffered by foreign companies in China.

In one of the most dramatic cases, two Chinese individuals have applied for trademark registration in Canada for the names and logos of more than 60 Chinese companies.

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A top adviser to the Chinese government warned the US that a proposed border tax on carbon sensitive materials "smells of protectionism" and could spark retaliation from developing countries.

During a speech at New York University about how the US and China can forge a closer partnership, Tung Chee-hwa, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Chinese government’s official advisory, said that a proposed “border adjustment” programme could be challenged through the World Trade Organisation and that he was “distressed” by the new bill introduced to Congress.

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China's most successful tabloid has launched an English-language newspaper, the first concrete step in a global media push aimed at improving China's image abroad.

The English edition of Global Times, an affiliate of People’s Daily, the Communist party’s mouthpiece, is set to become a test case for whether Chinese media can win the trust of a foreign audience.

Beijing is pushing its main state-owned media including Xinhua, the official news agency, and China Central Television, to set up English-language news channels to bypass western media, which are perceived as being biased against China. But media experts have cautioned that propaganda mouthpieces will struggle to appeal to western audiences.

Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Global Times, claimed that was not true for his newspaper. In contrast to China Daily, the existing nationwide English-language daily which reflected the government’s views, the English Global Times would be “the voice of the people”, he said in an interview.


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China has said it will not join the growing trend of outsourcing food production by investing in overseas farmland, particularly in Africa, expressing doubts that such deals could improve its food security.

Niu Dun, China’s deputy agriculture minister, said on Monday that Beijing preferred to depend on its own land to maintain self-sufficiency in grain, distancing the country from nations such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea, which are investing in land overseas.

“We cannot rely on [investments in] other countries for our own food security,” Mr Niu told the Financial Times in an interview at the Group of Eight’s first meeting on agriculture. “We have to depend on ourselves,” he said in the first comments on the subject by a senior Chinese policymaker.

As the world’s biggest agricultural economy and its largest consumer and producer of cereals, any decision by China to invest in African arable land would have large implications. But Mr Niu rejected any move in that direction. “We are in a different situation to other countries, for example South Korea,” he said.

The pursuit of foreign farmland signals how countries are seeking to boost their food security after last year’s spike in agricultural commodities prices and trade restrictions led them to believe they could not rely on the global food market.

China’s comments were made as the World Bank told the FT on the sidelines of the conference that it plan*ned to publish a code of conduct for investing in overseas farmland as soon as next month. It wants to “avoid pitfalls” in what a senior bank official described as a “quite significant” new investment trend.

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The head of China's flagship sovereign wealth fund is looking to invest in Europe after expressing relief that snubs from the continent saved Beijing from embarrassing investment losses last year.

Lou Jiwei, head of China Investment Corp, said he was pleased he did not make a single trip to Europe in 2008 after EU officials expressed concerns about his fund’s transparency and intentions.

But speaking at the Boao Forum for Asia, China’s riposte to the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, he said he was considering investing on the continent again, now that European officials have been humbled by the global financial crisis. “I have to thank these European officials,” Mr Lou said. “They saved me a lot of money. Now they come to me without conditions and I am beginning to consider making investments in Europe again.”

Mr Lou did not mention CIC’s experience in the US, where the fund made controversial – and costly – investments in Blackstone, the private equity group, and Morgan Stanley on the eve of the crisis.

His comments, made at the forum on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, reflect how China’s leaders are emboldened by their country’s stature as a rock of relative economic stability able to weather the global financial storm.

Topping a list of senior Chinese government officials and leaders speaking at the forum, premier Wen Jiabao was confident that the country’s economy was turning a corner, despite first-quarter growth of 6.1 per cent – the lowest since quarterly reporting started 17 years ago.

“China’s [stimulus] package is already paying off,” Mr Wen said at the forum’s main event. “The situation is better than expected.”

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, added: “My view on the existing situation is cautious optimism. The potential of Chinese domestic consumption has been triggered.”

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Soyabeans jumped into the spotlight for commodity investors this week with prices reaching their highest levels of the year amid voracious demand from China and rapidly declining global stocks.

Dealers note that open interest (active positions) has risen strongly as capital flows into the market in anticipation of further price gains. China, the world’s largest importer, is likely to extend a government buying programme for domestically produced soyabeans for two months from April as it remains about 1m tonnes short of its 6m-tonne target.

Chinese traders have been active in both the Brazilian and US markets this week as imported soyabean costs remain lower than the government’s buying price for domestic soyabeans.

In Argentina, the soyabean crop is forecast to fall almost 20 per cent this year owing to drought and pests, raising pressure on US supplies. US stocks are expected to fall below 1m bushels by the end of the current crop year and some traders see further price increases as inevitable to ration demand.

Over the week, CBOT May corn lost 2.1 per cent to $3.82 a bushel while CBOT May wheat added 1 per cent to $5.27 a bushel.

CBOT May soyabeans rose 5.3 per cent to $10.60 a bushel this week after reaching a six-month high of $10.73 during Friday’s session.

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China's annual GDP growth slowed to 6.1 per cent in the first quarter from 6.8 percent in the final three months of last year, marking the weakest expansion since quarterly records began in 1992

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With China showing tentative signs of an economic rebound, the theory that the world's recently crowned third-largest economy could detach itself from the US economy – an idea that looked foolish during the autumn global slump – is being dusted off again

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The Obama administration rowed back from claims that China is manipulating its currency, declining to cite Beijing in a closely watched report to Congress

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North Korea responded to UN action against its long-range rocket launch by saying it would expand its atomic weapons programme, resuming work at plutonium-producing facilities that were mothballed as part of a diplomatic rapprochement in 2007.

Pyongyang also said it would pull out of six-party talks, the stalled diplomatic framework aimed at getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arms. The six parties are Russia, China, the US, Japan and the two Koreas.

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China's real estate investment grew 4.1% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said, suggesting a significant pickup in capital spending in the sector in March.

Property prices in China are likely to halve over the next two years, a top government researcher has predicted in a powerful signal that the country’s economic downturn faces further challenges despite recent positive data.

The property market, along with exports, were leading drivers of the booming Chinese economy over the past decade and the slumps in both have taken a heavy toll.

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