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The number of China's internet users has crossed 500 million people, including 340 million mobile internet users, says Gao Xinmin, the vice president of the Internet Society of China.
Revenue from internet marketing reached 155.5 billion yuan (US$24.6 billion), while the total e-commerce revenue reached 6 trillion yuan (US$947.4 billion) in 2011, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.
Chen Yunhong, an analyst at Sinolink Securities, said that the current state of China's internet market is only at the beginning stage of a ten-year boom. In the short term, the market will be full of lots of different people and companies entering the market, but the pie will be spilt between brand operators and content operators in the long term, said Chen.
Internet usage reached 37.7% of China's population in 2011, up 3.4 % from a year earlier. Broadband users increased 18.6%, to 150 million people and mobile internet users reached 340 million people.
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China's medical instrument industry is expected to generate up to 200 billion yuan (US$31.6 billion) during the country's 12th five-year plan from 2011-2015, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Government support for major medical instrument companies will be the key program in the plan, including helping develop around 10 medical instrument companies. Medical treatment is also expected to improve as a part of the plan.
Growth in the medical instrument industry has outpaced the average growth of the national economy in recent years. The demand for medical instruments is expected to surge even further due to the country's aging society.
The sales revenue from medical instruments was 72.79 billion yuan (US$11.5 billion) between January and November in 2011, up 38.74% from a year earlier, according to Shanghai Security.
Most high-level medical instruments are currently imported, but the ministry hopes to change that, as the expensive tools have become a burden for the country's hospitals.
The plan to further develop the industry will focus on supporting the domestic medical system with new research funds for the innovation of high-tech instruments, according to the ministry.
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China's retail sales during the week-long Spring Festival holiday rose 16.2% year-on-year, the Ministry of Commerce said Saturday.
Shops and restaurants across the country pocketed 470 billion yuan (US$74.4 billion) in sales volume, with revenues from clothes, jewelry and food up 18.7%, 16.4% and 16.2% respectively, the ministry said.
The increases came as businesses rushed to take advantage of the nationwide shopping spree by launching promotional events featuring the Year of the Dragon.
The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, which fell on Jan. 23 this year, is traditionally a time for family reunions, and businesses boom as people swarm to restaurants and shops to buy gifts.
Sales of festival-related goods saw double-digit growth in most regions, with the volume in Beijing, Jilin, Qingdao, Dalian up 15.5%, 17.9%, 18.1% and 14.2%, respectively.
New Year gold bars, gold ingots and other dragon-themed jewelry were favorite items this year. Sales of gold, silver and jewelry rose 57.6% during the week-long holiday at Beijing's Caibai store, a gold seller. Other jewelry stores across the country also saw sales surge, according to official data.
Electronics and home appliances were also well-received by consumers. Digital Single Lens Reflex, 3D TVs and the newly released iPhone 4S were among the hot sellers.
The spending spree, a sign of the country's buying potential, comes amid persistently high inflation in the country.
The country's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 5.4% in 2011 from the previous year, above the government's full-year control target of 4%, official data showed.
Though many have complained about inflation chipping away their earnings, their shrinking pockets did not spoil their appetite for shopping, giving hopes that domestic spending can help shore up the economy as exports and investments wane amid global economic problems.
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The amazing capacity for spending displayed by Chinese tourists has not gone unnoticed in the international luxury market. Swarms of tourists from China visited the United Kingdom during the New Year shopping season and each on average spent more than 2,500 pounds (around US$4,000) in London's famous Harrods department store, reports our sister newspaper China Times.
Entering Selfridges department store in London, young Chinese shoppers seemed to be all around. Most of them crowded around designer brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada and snapped up luxury items without a second thought.
Many Chinese shoppers bought lunar new year's gifts for family and friends during the annual discount sales in London. One shopper bought 12 Hermes scarves.
Spotting a sea change in their international clientele, many high-end department stores in London have replaced their Japanese-speaking sales staff with Chinese-speaking assistants.
Michael Ward, managing director at Harrods, told the newspaper that each Chinese shopper on average spent 2,520 pounds (US$4,000) in their store.
"A Chinese shopper only spent about 30% of an American shopper's expenditure four or five years ago, and they have largely overtaken their American counterparts now," Ward was quoted as saying.
Figures from shopping information provider Global Blue also revealed that a Chinese shopper on average spent 1,058 pounds (US$1,664) at each store in London, far more than the average spend of visitors from the Middle East and Russia, who spent 851 pounds (US$1,339) and 696 pounds (US$1,095), respectively.
Bicester Village, a shopping center in Oxfordshire, has been another shopping paradise for Chinese shoppers, taking in 4,500 tour buses full of Chinese shoppers every year.
According to an online survey by Harrods, 79% of Chinese tourists enjoy shopping and 92% of them prefer luxury brands, figures much higher than local shoppers. A British shopper on average only spent 10% of what their Chinese counterpart forked out.
The British tourism board said a total of 110,000 Chinese nationals visited the UK in 2011, an increase of 23% compared with 2010. The number is expected to reach 300,000 per year by 2020.
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As debt sparks fear of a second recession in the United States and Europe, China is set to face a possible debt crisis of its own in the next few years. A total of 1.84 trillion yuan (US$290 billion) of local government debt is due to be repaid in 2012, and debt risk prevention has become the most critical task for Beijing this year.
According to a report on local debt issued by the Chinese government's audit commission in June 2011, local governments across the country owned 10.7 trillion yuan (US$1.69 trillion) as of the end of 2010, of which the portion due to be repaid in 2012 accounted for 17.7%. The portion due from 2013 to 2015 accounts for 11.37%, 9.28% and 7.48%, respectively, while 30.21% is due after 2016.
Zhao Xijun, vice president of the finance department of Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the official news agency Xinhua that local governments borrowed money three years ago to ease the effects of the global financial crisis and now is the time for the money to be repaid.
The central government began to cut interest rates and increase new loans from the fourth quarter of 2008 to deal with the financial crisis. A variety of financing platforms for companies constituted of majority of borrowers in 2009.
Based on local debt data released by the audit commission, by the end of 2010 financing platforms and government departments or agencies had borrowed 4.97 trillion (US$785 billion) and 2.5 trillion (US$395 billion), respectively, accounting for the 70% of the total of local government debt.
More than 6,000 financing platforms become the focus of attention for Beijing on account of the uncertainty of their solvency and over-borrowing. The regulatory authorities had enhanced risk management to deal with the hidden risk in the past one to two years.
Although the repayment pressure has increased, many experts are still positive about the local debt issue in China. "Local governments can deal the issue with special measures and cover it with economic growth," He Zhicheng, senior economist with Agricultural Bank of China was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
In November last year, Shanghai became the first local government in China to directly issue its own bonds in nearly two decades, a reform Beijing permitted in order to clean up the troubled finances of its cities and provinces and also granting local governments greater autonomy.
Zhao told Xinhua that the issue of local bonds is the first step to achieve greater transparency in local finance. "Local governments should think carefully before the issue to avoid the chronic poisoning by excessive debt that happened in the US and European countries," Zhao added
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Bilateral trade between China and Singapore rose by 6.4% year on year to S$101.4 billion (US$80.5 billion) in 2011, a senior Singaporean official has said.
Minister of State for Trade and Development Lee Yi Shyan said that the bilateral exchanges have been vibrant and that he saw chances of cooperation between Chinese and Singapore enterprises not just in China, local daily Lianhe Zaobao reported on Thursday.
The bilateral growth could actually be higher in US dollar terms, as the Singapore dollar has strengthened against the US dollar over the past year.
Lee was speaking at a reception of business organizations in Singapore. He also encouraged Singapore companies to expand their business by tapping the Chinese market, which boasts great potential as China tries to upgrade its economy by boosting domestic demand.
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Companies in eastern China are relocating in large numbers to Anhui, the province to the west of the more developed coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, according to the Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald.
Citing government statistics, the newspaper said nine major cities along the Yangtze that flows through the province had attracted 490.28 billion yuan (US$77.8 billion) in investment from outside, with more than half coming from the Yangtze River delta to its east, one of the country's main industrial centers.
The figure greatly outstrips the 170 billion yuan (US$26.97 billion) in investment in 2010 attracted by Hubei province, and the 120 billion yuan (US$19.19 billion) attracted by Hunan province, both in central China. The newspaper quoted a source from the provincial government as saying Anhui would continue attracting more external investment than other central Chinese provinces in 2011.
Investments in Anhui from other provinces have prompted the rapid growth of its industry, which expanded by 20.7% in the first three quarters of this year, the highest growth rate among central Chinese provinces.
Zhang Qingjun, mayor of the provincial capital of Hefei, said the city's GDP grew 16% to 360 billion yuan (US$57.13 billion) in 2011, outperforming almost every other provincial capital in the country.
Anhui's success in attracting investment from outside has been attributed to its cooperation with cities from other provinces in building industrial parks, according to the 21st Century Business Herald.
For example, the prefecture-level city of Chuzhou teamed up with CCSP Group, the developer of the Suzhou Industrial Park in neighboring Jiangsu province, to build a 36-square-km industrial park in Chuzhou at a cost of 10 billion yuan (US$1.58 billion).
Chuzhou also built the Ningchu Industrial Park in cooperation with the Jiangsu capital Nanjing, while Xuancheng, another prefecture-level city, has built nine industrial parks in cooperation with investors from other provinces.
Wang Yijun, an economic official from Tongling in central Anhui, told the 21st Century Business Herald, "The business groups in coastal areas have funds and technology, while we have land. Their cooperation with us will serve the interests of both sides."
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China's rapid economic expansion, to the point where it is now the second-largest economy in the world, has earned the country a more prominent role on the international stage. But its policy of primarily pursuing high GDP growth has also alienated the government from the public.
Increasing numbers of members of the general public now disregard and even sneer at the enviable GDP growth data of their provinces and regions, feeling that these figures have achieved little of significance with regard to their daily lives or improving social welfare.
Before the release of official GDP statistics for 2011, provincial administrators have again started making their forecasts. Many of them are confident of presenting excellent report cards, with six provinces expected to join the exclusive "trillionaires club" by boosting the provincial GDP value for the year to the level of one trillion yuan (US$158 billion).
Of mainland China's 31 provincial-level regions, the southern province of Guangdong has long been in the country's economic vanguard. It is expected to emerge as the first province to generate GDP in excess of 5 trillion yuan (US$790 billion) in a year.
It is followed by Jiangsu province in the Yangtze River Delta region and eastern Shandong that may have created GDP of over 4 trillion yuan (US$632 billion) in the past year.
Many provincial governments have announced ambitious goals of doubling per capita income in the next five years. Other specific targets include Hainan's aim to triple local income levels and Shaanxi's goal of doubling the per capita income of all residents in cities and townships.
Yet the impressive economic expansion figures have also often covered up the daily problems faced by the general public, who feel local governments and their senior administrators are the major beneficiaries of the high GDP growth. They themselves are disillusioned because they feel that they have received no fair share of the fruits of economic growth.
Most local officials have been pursuing ever higher economic growth to beat their rivals or extend their lead over other areas. Officials in less developed areas are particularly prone to this temptation because they risk being placed at the bottom of the list ranking their performance in terms of economic growth rate.
Such a mentality is reflected in the allocation of economic resources. For the sake of generating overall production value, local governments tend to stick to industries that require high input of resources while creating problems like environmental pollution. Local governments can easily brush aside public needs and may even sacrifice their interests for the sake of spurring GDP growth.
The media in China have in recent years been casting doubt on the idea of pursuing "great leaps" in GDP as critics have come forward to point out that large amounts of capital and energy have been wasted by industries such as textiles, steel, automobiles and cement that are now facing overproduction.
People no longer feel comforted or they should take pride in strings of attractive but cold economic figures that seem to bring them only a rising cost of living. Figures showing the doubling of incomes will be meaningless if they cannot raise the public "happiness index" measuring people's overall level of satisfaction.
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Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor will open on February 21 a plant in Bulgaria, producing the first Chinese cars assembled in Europe, its local partner Litex Motors said Thursday.
The plant in the northern village of Bahovitsa near Lovech has been test-producing since mid-November. It has a planned annual capacity of 50,000 cars for the Bulgarian and European market and will employ up to 2,000 people.
The company also launched already its official advertising campaign in European Union member Bulgaria for the three models to be made here -- the Hover H5 SUV, the Steed 5 pick-up and the Voleex C10 city car.
Litex Motors and Great Wall Motor, one of China's leading maker of sports utility vehicles, signed the contract for the plant in 2009.
It will first assemble cars from Chinese-imported parts but Litex Motors said recently it was in talks with different subcontractors to gradually organise the production of some parts in Bulgaria.
Expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer from the Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, Germany, said Great Wall had every chance to sell well in eastern Europe.
"Within five-six years, they will reach five-percent market shares in eastern European countries," Dudenhoeffer told AFP, adding that Great Wall would open the way for other Chinese carmakers to come to Europe.
"This will be a new competitor on the Bulgarian market... But it is not bad to have a carmaker in Bulgaria," Renault-Nissan's Bulgaria CEO Bernard Neuviale also told AFP at the launch of their new Renault Twingo here Wednesday.
Great Wall cars would not directly threaten the sales of Renault's Romania-made Dacia, he predicted.
"Great Wall will first have to prove many things -- in the first place that it can produce here a car of good quality and then we'll see. Their prices are also not so good," Neuviale said.
The Voleex C10 currently has a starting price of 16,000 leva (8,200 euros, $10,800), with the Steed 5 pick-up and the Hover H5 SUV at 24,500 and 28,700 leva respectively.
Renault's new Twingo has a start price of 18,000 leva.
