Beijing

According to the recent stats the slowdown in China’s economy was less sharp than predicted and Beijing reports that corralling inflation remained its top priority even though a "complex and volatile" global economy clouded the outlook.

Wednesday China reported that second-quarter gross domestic product increased by 9.5% rate from the same period a year ago, outdoing the forecast 9.4% growth. However, it is still considered a slow pace since the Q3 of 2009.

Inflation in China increased in May to reach a 34-month high of 5.5 percent which spurs the government to tighten its monetary policy as the economic growth is slowing down. It is now a top priority for Beijing to taken control of the inflation.

The conclusion of the economist who analyzed Tuesday data says the world's second-biggest economy is slowing down, but not too quickly.

Cisco is sued for supporting the Chinese government in prosecuting the members of the Falun Group, a religious group banned in China. The lawsuit alleges that members of the Falun Group found that Cisco knew that Internet technology it supplied to China would be used to crack down on the religious movement in the country.

According to the reports by Chinese official news agency Xinhua, Culture Ministry of China will punish Baidu for allowing illegal music downloads.

An official said that the government will punish 14 websites including Baidu, a top search engine in China, for continued illegal music downloads in spite of many warnings not to do it.

Baidu could not be immediately reached for comment.
 

In February the trade deficit posted by China was the largest in seven years as the Lunar New Year holiday dealt a sharper blow to export activity than expected. The reading was China’s first trade deficit since last March and the biggest since February 2004.

"Both imports and exports are lower than expected, and seasonal factors alone can't explain the sharp monthly drop," said Xu Biao, economist with China Merchants Bank in Shenzhen.

Beijing is introducing one more tool to surveil Chinese people via their mobile phones. According to the report by the Next Web the government plans to establish a program to track the movement of citizens using their cell phones.

The program literally translated as the “Platform for Citizen Movement Information” will be used to monitor traffic flow so as to improve Beijing’s public travel and reduce traffic congestion.

Deputy governor of Chinese central bank Yi Gang said in remarks published on Thursday that the yuan could potentially become a world reserve currency as the country gears up to boost its global presence.

"Why do global investors like to hold a certain currency and make investments in a market? They mainly consider its safety, returns and depth, and the liquidity of the market. China's market and the yuan have full potential," Yi said in an article published in the official Financial News.

WikiLeaks began releasing the cache of over 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables on Sunday which includes a document that proves China’s involvement into the December 2009 hack of Google's computer systems.

The New York Times was among a number of other media sources who was given early access to the documents. The paper reported that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was told by an unidentified Chinese contact that China's Politburo "directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems.”

China as usual expressed its disagreement and indignation over another criticism thrown into its face as the European Commission is investigating the allegations of hardware dumping on the territory of the EU.

An edict to ban 2.3 million army from using web blogs or creating personal homepages or websites was issued in China and came into effect June 15 this year. Associated Press reported that the new rules were included into a People's Liberation Army Internal Affairs Regulation.

Wan Long, a PLA political commissar, told Xinhua news agency: "Soldiers cannot open blogs on the internet no matter [whether] he or she does it in the capacity of a soldier or not."

On Monday after the announcement that China let the yuan rise to the highest since July 2005 stocks and commodities jumped while US Treasuries fell which eased tension between Beijing and Western economies.

The reports revealed that European stock futures increased by 2.2% and US stock futures were also near highs for the day. The move resulted in higher confidence on the part of investors in global recovery.

Thus, the yuan was increased to as high as 6.8015 against the dollar, or up 0.38%, the highest since it revaluation five years ago.

On Tuesday this week a white paper released by the Chinese government stated that Beijing won’t weaken its control over what can and cannot be said or posted online and no foreign criticism is ever capable to stop it.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu reported strong quarter results boosted in part by the quit of Google from the country. The first quarter total revenues made up $189.6 million, a 59.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Net income in the first quarter of 2010 was $70.4 million, a 165.3% increase from the first quarter of 2009.

Baidu gained thanks to stronger paid search revenue as Google’s censorship issues with China escalated.

According to the 21st Century Business Herald China is testing the country's labor-intensive export sectors to see how much yuan appreciation firms can withstand. The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are conjointly performing “stress tests” to use the results as a reference for the government's future yuan policy.