The government will issue third-generation (3G) mobile phone licenses this month or early in 2009, a long-awaited move that will generate billions of yuan of investment in network upgrading and expansion next year, the country’s top telecom regulator said on Friday.

?Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology, made the announcement at a press conference, without giving a definite timetable. “The three carriers have prepared well for 3G licensing,” he said.

?Under the plan, China Mobile, the country’s biggest mobile carrier, will be awarded the license to operate TD-SCDMA, a system based on homegrown technology.

?China Unicom, the smaller of the country’s two mobile carriers that took over fixed-line carrier China Netcom in May, will get the license for the WCDMA system.

China Telecom, until now a fixed-line telecom operator, will be awarded the license for CDMA 2000 technology.

?”The issuance of the licenses will trigger at least 200 billion yuan of investment in network infrastructure next year, which can help stimulate domestic demand,” Li said.

?The minister said the government will support TD-SCDMA and would take measures to prevent overlapping and duplicated investment in network infrastructures.

?The three telecom operators reached an agreement on Wednesday to share their networks, Li’s ministry said on Thursday.

?The deal, which specified how the telecom carriers would share their existing networks, jointly build new facilities and allocate interests, will be implemented next week.

?China Mobile, which provided a 3G service during the Beijing Olympic Games, started to offer the service in April in its pre-commercial TD-SCDMA network in eight cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

HONG Kong’s exports fell for the first time in five months in November, worsening the outlook for an economy already in a recession.

Overseas sales declined 5.3 percent from a year earlier to HK$231 billion (US$29.8 billion), the government said yesterday on its Website, after gaining 9.4 percent in October.

Asia’s export-dependent economies are being battered by falling demand for electronics and textiles amid recessions in the United States, Europe and Japan. China mainland plans to promote trade with Hong Kong by stepping up road and rail links with the mainland, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang said this month.

The outlook for the global economy and Hong Kong exports is “poor,” Irina Fan and Joanne Yim, economists at Hang Seng Bank Ltd, said in a report. Hong Kong’s domestic market may be aided by government measures to stimulate the economy and its ties with the Chinese mainland, they said.

Imports fell 7.9 percent to HK$239 billion, leaving a trade gap of HK$8.2 billion, Bloomberg News said.

“As the synchronized global economic downturn is beginning to take its toll on world trade, the near-term outlook for Hong Kong’s exports is bound to be negatively affected,” the government said in a statement. “The government will monitor the situation closely.”

Reports showed trade within the region is worsening. Taiwan’s exports sank 23.3 percent in November, the biggest drop in seven years.

Managers of more than 200 enterprises in Shanghai, China’s business hub, promised Saturday they would not cut jobs or salaries in the wake of global financial crisis.

“Enterprises should face up to the serious economic situation and take courage to fulfill social responsibilities,” said a declaration by managers attending the activity of offering help and service to the local workers.

The activity was held by Shanghai Municipal Trade Union Council (SMTUC).

“We would not lay off workers to increase the pressure of the society,” the declaration said.

Jiang Xiaoming, general manager of Shanghai Xiangsa Property Management Co. Ltd, said senior workers would see their monthly wages rise by 50 yuan (7.3 U.S. dollars) to several hundred yuan.

“Despite the difficulties, we decide to raise the wages so that workers can enjoy a happy Spring Festival, the most important holiday for the Chinese.”

More than 280 enterprises held job fairs Saturday to offer about 2,200 posts, mostly to job-hunters in the service industry, migrant workers, senior labors or those who wanted to start businesses.

Trade unions of all levels in Shanghai are expected to raise more than 140 million yuan before the Spring Festival to help more than 300,000 workers living hard life, said a SMTUC official.

China’s outstanding foreign debt was 441.95 billion U.S. dollars through September, up about 18.3 percent from the end of 2007, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said on Friday.

The figure excluded Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Medium- and long-term foreign debt was 161.9 billion U.S. dollars, up 5.45 percent from the end of 2007, accounting for 36.63 percent of the total foreign debt.

Short-term debt was 280 billion U.S. dollars, up 27.24 percent from the end of last year.

SAFE figures showed the country’s registered foreign debt had reached 288.15 billion U.S. dollars by the end of September.

Of the total, sovereign debt accounted for nearly 12 percent. Debt owed by Chinese financial institutions was 108.22 billion U.S. dollars, or 37.56 percent of the total. Debt of foreign-invested enterprises was 93.21 billion U.S. dollars, or 32.35 percent.

SAFE said new debt reached 27.38 billion U.S. dollars, including medium- and long-term foreign debt, in the first nine months, up 7.49 percent year-on-year.

China repaid 13.78 billion U.S. dollars of principal on medium- and long-term debt in the first nine months, down 6.62 percent year-on-year.

It also repaid 2.96 billion U.S. dollars in interest on medium- and long-term debt, up 10.88 percent year-on-year.

Yi Gang, a senior official of China’s central bank, said Friday that the nation’s economic fundamentals are “in good shape” and urged people to have faith in the country’s growth.

Yi, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said his assessment is based on the balance sheets of residents, enterprises, the financial sector and the government, which are all in a “healthy” state.

Bank savings of residents have exceeded 20 trillion yuan (2.9 trillion U.S. dollars), while their loans, including those for cars and housing, added up to merely 3.7 trillion yuan, Yi told a financial forum here.

Deposits of Chinese residents stood at 20.8 trillion yuan at the end of September.

“This indicates that the debt level of Chinese households is quite low and such balance sheets are very healthy, compared with those for U.S. and European households, making it possible to create room for development,” he said.

Zhou Xiaochuan, PBOC governor, who also attended the China Finance Forum 2008, said the country needs to expand domestic consumption at the same time as it increases investment, to achieve the goal of spurring domestic demand.

Yi said corporate finances are also relatively healthy.

“The average debt to assets ratio of 5,000 non-financial enterprises monitored by the central bank is 55 percent,” which is below previous figures, he said.

Yi added the country’s lenders as a whole have a very high capital adequacy ratio with a low non-performing loan ratio, and he stressed that the financial sector is capable of supporting the economy.

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, told the forum that the total assets of the banking sector stood at 61.1 trillion yuan as of the end of November.

He said that 193 banks, which hold 99.5 percent of the sector’s total assets, have met the required capital adequacy ratio.

The financial condition of the Chinese government is also “within the healthy range,” Yi added, citing national debt and the fiscal deficit.

National debt accounted for about 22 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of last year, compared with 71 percent for the United States, 67 percent for the Euro zone and 163 percent for Japan, he said.

The fiscal deficit stood at a smaller proportion of GDP than in other countries, he said.

“The figure next year will remain relatively lower than other countries despite a possible increase,” he said.

“Both are good for the implementation of an active fiscal policy,” he told the forum.

China’s economy grew 9 percent in the third quarter, the slowest pace in five years, as the global financial crisis sapped demand for Chinese goods and domestic industrial production waned in response to weak demand and rising raw material costs.

The government announced a huge 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package in November and switched to “active” fiscal and “moderately loose” monetary policies in order to boost the economy.

The central bank has cut interest rates five times since September, and the government is striving to achieve 8 percent economic growth to create enough new jobs and ensure social stability amid the turmoil of the global crisis.

However, economic data released since last week showed further risks of a slowdown. November exports declined year-on-year by 2.2 percent, the first monthly decline since June 2001.

Yi maintained, however, that GDP growth would be about 8 percent next year.

The global financial crisis would make it difficult for the country to achieve its economic targets for 2006-10, which were set when the world economy had a positive outlook, a senior official said Wednesday.

Zhang Ping, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said the global economic downturn posed a “serious challenge” to the country, especially its efforts to realize the social and economic goals set in the 11th Five-Year (2006-10) Plan.

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“We have done a good job in 2006 and 2007 but the worsening global financial crisis poses a serious challenge to us in achieving our goals,” Zhang said.

He made the remarks while reporting to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee how the State Council would fight the financial crisis to realize “stable and relatively fast” economic growth.

In 2006-07, the economy grew at an average rate of 11.8 percent. But the economy slowed down to 9.9 percent in the first three quarters of this year, and from July to September it grew only 9 percent.

Earlier this month, Zhang had said that the country faced “worse-than-expected” risks of an economic slowdown because of the global downturn, and it was “still very hard” to say when the worst would be over.

Since global economic woes have taken a heavy toll on the country the government has lowered its annual economic growth for next year to 8 percent.

But mid-term assessment shows the government has fulfilled most of the Five-Year Plan targets, Zhang said.

The government has basically met the annual targets of employment, trade and urbanization during the mid-term assessment.

But, he said, the country had failed to realize the goals of energy saving, emission control and economic restructuring in the past two years.

The government has set a goal to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010. But it could cut only 1.79 percent and 3.66 percent in 2006 and 2007.

China’s currency, Renminbi, is likely to join other international currencies to be used for forex reserves by other economies, according to Wu Xiaoling, former vice governor of the country’s central bank and now the deputy head of the financial and economic committee under the top legislature.

Wu made the remarks in her article carried by the latest annual issue of the leading business magazine Caijing.

Wu wrote that China should make preparations in its economic structure and its financial regime for its currency to be internationalized.

Prior to making the Renminbi, also called yuan, a currency used for forex reserves by other economies, it may be allowed to be used for trade settlements between China and some other countries and regions, according to Wu.

In China’s neighboring countries, there were calls for the yuan to be used to settle bilateral trade payments, she said. China has signed settlement agreements with eight neighboring countries, including Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Myanmar, assuming a voluntarily choice of settlement currency, she added.

Many were confident of the yuan and willing to settle trade payments in the Chinese currency, as it remained strong, Wu said.

“China should create conditions for the yuan to become an international settlement currency,” she stressed.

It is necessary to expand and deepen the yuan-denominated financial markets and step up the process to realize the full convertibility of the currency and provide investment channels for yuan holders, according to Wu.

Some believed the reason why China was able to remain untouched in the 1998 Asian financial woes was because of its lack of full convertibility under capital accounts. And this was also the factor behind the fact that China has not been so seriously affected by the current global financial crisis.

Wu said China should not become “self-complacent and close itself from the outside world” because of its lack of full convertibility, which was “not a good thing”. Otherwise, the country would be “at a disadvantage when the world economy stabilized and made a takeoff again,”she added.

The Chinese Government has decided to allow the yuan to be used for settlement between Guangdong Province and the Yangtze River Delta and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.

Meanwhile, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Yunnan Province will be allowed to use Renminbi to settle trade payments with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members, according to a government announcement on Wednesday evening.

But the Government did not give any details of how and when the pilot currency program would start.

“The move will mitigate the risk of exchange rate fluctuations for Chinese exporters and their trade partners,” Zhao Xijun, finance processor at Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying by Thursday’s China Daily.

Most of China’s external trade is settled in U.S. dollar or the euro at present. But, the paper said, many analysts predicted the dollar might depreciate substantially in the coming years because of the ailing U.S. economy.

“The move will also increase the yuan’s acceptance in Asia, which will help it become an international currency in the long run,” Zhao told the paper.

The yuan’s acceptance has been rising in recent years, thanks to the nation’s economic prowess and its 1.9 trillion reserves of foreign exchange, according to the paper.

BEIJING — Beijing reported 18.01 billion US dollars worth of imports and exports in November, down 5.4 percent from the same month last year.

The global financial crisis also pulled down the growth rate of foreign trade in Beijing by 51 percentage points compared to October.

Exports made up 4.88 billion US dollars, up 3.7 percent, and imports were 13.13 billion US dollars, down 8.4 percent.

According to the customs statistics, the global economic condition is starting to impact foreign trade.

Imports and exports by the processing trade in the Beijing region was 2.77 billion US dollars last month, down 6.5 percent from November of last year and down 9.1 percent from October this year.

Both foreign and domestic firms fared badly in foreign trade in the past month. Overseas-financed companies reported 4.23 billion US dollars of foreign trade last month, down by 18.7 percent from a year ago.

State-owned Chinese firms also saw a decrease of 2.4 percent to 12.6 billion US dollars in foreign trade.

Apart from the export of garment and apparel accessories, which rose by 1.5 percent to reach 1.77 billion US dollars in November, exports of cell phones, steel products, processed oils, coal and coke all fell, according to the customs statistics.

The yuan will be used in transactions with neighboring trade partners as part of a pilot project - in what could be the first step on the road to making it an international currency.

The yuan will be allowed to be used for settlement between the Pearl and Yangtze river delta regions and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, the State Council, or the Cabinet, said in a statement yesterday.

The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Yunnan province will be allowed to use the yuan to settle trade payments with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members.

The pilot program was announced with a raft of other measures designed to help bolster the nation’s export sector. The State Council did not give details of how and when the currency project would start.

“The move will mitigate the risk of exchange rate fluctuations for Chinese exporters and their trade partners,” said Zhao Xijun, finance professor at Renmin University of China.

The lion’s share of China’s foreign trade is currently settled in US dollars or the euro. But many analysts predict the greenback might depreciate substantially in the coming years because of the ailing US economy.

Earlier this month, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the central bank, said in Hong Kong that settlements using the US dollar would cause problems if the dollar’s value fluctuates drastically.

The mainland’s trade with Hong Kong, Macao and ASEAN nations has been rising rapidly over the past years to reach $402.7 billion last year, or 20 percent of the mainland’s total trade volume.

“The move will also increase the yuan’s acceptance in Asia, which will help it become an international currency in the long run,” said Zhao.

The yuan’s acceptance has been rising in recent years, thanks to the nation’s economic prowess and its $1.9 trillion reserves of foreign exchange. Over the past year, there has been a growing advocacy at home to make the yuan a global currency, since the weakening of the greenback has caused hefty losses to China’s forex reserves.

But the government has been cautious about moving in that direction, which would also require the yuan to be freely convertible. Analysts say it will take time for policymakers to make the shift as they try to maintain the stability of the currency regime.

The government has made a series of moves in recent months to expand the use of the yuan beyond its borders, which some say would benefit its slowing export sector.

The mainland signed a currency swap deal with Hong Kong on Nov 20. Earlier this year, the government also gave the go-ahead to let Chinese banks issue yuan-denominated bonds in Hong Kong.

Drop shipping Defination
According to wikipedia, drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to wholesalers, who then ship the goods directly to the customer. The retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.
In a nutshell, you market and sell a product online at a price you choose. After your customer purchases the item, and you receive payment for it, you place an order for the product you just sold with a “drop-shipper.” The drop shipper charges you a wholesale price and ships the product directly to your customer. You pocket the difference between the wholesale (or near wholesale) and retail prices. The best part is that you have no inventory to hold or finance, and no shipping hassles.