December 11, 2012, 9:31 pmChina Woos Overseas Companies, Looking for Deals By KEITH BRADSHER and MICHAEL J.

DE LA MERCEDStephen McGee for The New York TimesWanxiang Group of China has agreed to buy A123 Systems, a bankrupt manufacturer of high tech batteries.

HONG KONG — Even as Wall Street deal makers await a revival of the moribund merger market, Chinese companies are shopping abroad with their wallets out.

Yet they are also facing scrutiny, particularly in Washington, as Chinese corporate buying trips coincide with a growing assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy, including the deployment in recent months of surveillance vessels and even naval destroyers and frigates in a series of territorial confrontations with American allies like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

So far this year, the dollar volume of Chinese acquisitions overseas is up 28 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data.

That compares with a 2.8 percent slump in global merger and acquisition volume over all.

Article ToolsRelated Links Government Backed BuyersChinese international acquisitions are ahead for the year despite a slump during the third quarter, as state owned enterprises, which are the main Chinese buyers, and some private enterprises waited for a change in the country’s political leadership at the Communist Party Congress in mid November.

Two deals by Chinese companies were announced this week, and bankers and lawyers say that discussions are starting or are already under way on numerous other transactions.

Wessel, a Democratic appointee to the United States China Economic and Security Review Commission, said that bipartisan concern was growing in Congress about the first of the Chinese deals to be announced this autumn, a $117.6 million acquisition of Complete Genomics, a company in Mountain View, Calif.

Many of those, however, may take as long as a year to complete given China’s bureaucratic approval processes.

Dave Olecko/Nexen, via European Pressphoto AgencyAn oil drilling site belonging to Nexen, a Canadian company that is the subject of a takeover bid from the Chinese group Cnooc.

You will see an acceleration — you see it now,” although it would not amount to an immediate flood of transactions, said André Loesekrug Pietri, the chairman and managing partner of A Capital, a Hong Kong based private equity fund.Indeed, Beijing is pushing for additional deals, and has encouraged the state controlled banking sector to finance them.An increase in overseas investment by Chinese companies is an inevitable trend,” the commerce minister, Chen Deming, said at a conference two weeks ago, adding that China did not want to remain overwhelmingly invested in fixed income securities.

With foreign reserves of $3 trillion in hand,” he added, “we will not sit back and watch the assets depreciate with the third round of quantitative easing.

Wanxiang Group agreed on Sunday to pay $256 million to buy most of A123 Systems, a bankrupt manufacturer of high tech batteries.

And a consortium of Chinese investors agreed on the same day to pay $4.2 billion for a controlling stake in the American International Group’s aircraft leasing business.

On Friday, Canada approved the $15 billion acquisition of Nexen, an energy company, by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc.

That deal is still pending approval by the American committee that reviews foreign investments on national security grounds, commonly known as Cfius.

A few deals may be completed this winter, but the real surge is likely to happen by next summer, bankers and lawyers said.

State owned enterprises account for as much as four fifths of China’s overseas acquisitions by value and many of their top executives are expected to change jobs this winter as the country’s new leaders start promoting their followers.

While the Communist Party Congress in November produced a new Politburo, a new slate of government ministers and vice premiers must still be selected at the National People’s Congress in March, a process that could also slow down deals.

Chinese regulations further require that at least three different agencies approve each overseas acquisition — the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Administration of Exchange Control.

The assent of a fourth, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is needed to qualify for extra financing and faster approval in certain sectors deemed strategic, like clean energy, said Mao Tong, a partner at the law firm Squire Sanders.

But despite the long lead time for Chinese deals, bankers say the process is clearly starting.

Two of the biggest deals by Chinese companies this year were for control of North American companies.

Is the biggest takeover by Chinese entities on record, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Members of China’s new government wanted to show the country’s seriousness in pursuing investments outside of China, and spent time assembling the most fitting consortium to pursue a deal for the business.

The government chose as the face of the deal Weng Xianding, a veteran of China’s financial regulatory agencies who has turned to investing.

His company, New China Trust, is essentially a major Chinese commercial lender, counting Western firms like Barclays among its investors.

Once the preferred consortium was formed around September, it began talking with A.

A goal for the Chinese, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, was to conduct the talks in a “Western way,” using Western advisers and not getting bogged down in traditional bureaucratic mire.

The talks were completed in just over three months, and the buyers successfully negotiated a discount of nearly half of we.

Two evolving trends are apparent in Chinese international deal making, Chinese government officials, bankers, lawyers and trade experts said in interviews.

The government is putting heavy pressure on Chinese companies to seek minority stakes, and not to automatically seek full control, so as to tap foreign management expertise, two officials said.

At the same time, Chinese companies are broadening their range of acquisition targets to include more industrial manufacturers and consumer brand companies, even as they maintain their interest in natural resources and financial services.

We wouldn’t say there’s a desire to buy minority stakes, but we think there’s a greater acceptance that’s an appropriate thing to do,” said Michael S. Weiss, the head of China mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley.Other bankers said that one big obstacle to the purchase of minority stakes lay in the wariness of many foreign companies in accepting a Chinese partner — particularly since nearly four fifths of Chinese acquirers are state owned enterprises, and most of the rest tend to have Chinese government links.Many of today’s buyers have drawn lessons from past failures and moved to assuage government regulators before striking deals. Cnooc, in particular, learned from its failed bid to buy the oil company Unocal seven years ago, and tried to apply those lessons in its pursuit of Nexen.The Chinese company considered the deal in part because it believed that a takeover could win approval, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. While a big player in Canada’s energy community, Nexen was not one of the country’s iconic companies, heading off the sort of brutal fight that surrounded a takeover battle for Potash, the producer of an important fertilizing ingredient.Cnooc hired an army of advisers, including lobbyists and public relations specialists, to press the point that a deal would only strengthen the Canadian energy company. And Cnooc was open about much of its financing, aiming to halt concerns that it was being financed cheaply by state run banks.Still, national security concerns could also slow some deals. Bankers and lawyers say that Cfius, which stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, can sometimes prove frustrating to would be buyers. The group scrutinizes deals to ensure that they do not harm the country’s national security interests.Unlike the process in Canada, where negotiations with the foreign investment watchdog are public, the Cfius review takes place largely behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why deals are rejected.A Treasury spokeswoman, Natalie Earnest, said in a statement: As we consider foreign investments in the United States, of course, we have an obligation — like any country — to protect our national security, and that is the exclusive focus of Cfius.Michael R. Wessel, a Democratic appointee to the United States China Economic and Security Review Commission, said that bipartisan concern was growing in Congress about the first of the Chinese deals to be announced this autumn, a $117.6 million acquisition of Complete Genomics, a company in Mountain View, Calif., that does DNA sequencing.Mr Wessel, who also advises the United Steelworkers union on trade issues, was also critical of the A.we.G. deal. He said that the Chinese government could pressure airlines to buy Chinese made parts for their leases, and could eventually urge airlines to lease Chinese made civilian airliners now being developed.A spokesman for the buyers’ group said in a statement that we.L.F.C. already had one of the largest aircraft order books in aviation, with a commitment to purchase up to 279 Boeing and Airbus aircraft between now and 2020. “We will continue to add to this order book as we see opportunities in the marketplace based on the market appeal of the aircraft and the economics offered by the manufacturers,” he added.Some would be Chinese buyers have not fully considered how much work is needed to ensure that their investments will go through, advisers say.we think many Chinese companies in particular have not taken into account the need to be in touch with Washington policy makers about their needs,” said Nancy L.

McLernon, the chief executive of the Organization for International Investment, a group that represents domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies.

December 11, 2012, 9:31 pmChina Woos Overseas Companies, Looking for Deals By KEITH BRADSHER and MICHAEL J.

DE LA MERCEDStephen McGee for The New York TimesWanxiang Group of China has agreed to buy A123 Systems, a bankrupt manufacturer of high tech batteries.

HONG KONG — Even as Wall Street deal makers await a revival of the moribund merger market, Chinese companies are shopping abroad with their wallets out.

Yet they are also facing scrutiny, particularly in Washington, as Chinese corporate buying trips coincide with a growing assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy, including the deployment in recent months of surveillance vessels and even naval destroyers and frigates in a series of territorial confrontations with American allies like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

So far this year, the dollar volume of Chinese acquisitions overseas is up 28 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data.

That compares with a 2.8 percent slump in global merger and acquisition volume over all.

Article ToolsRelated Links Government Backed BuyersChinese international acquisitions are ahead for the year despite a slump during the third quarter, as state owned enterprises, which are the main Chinese buyers, and some private enterprises waited for a change in the country’s political leadership at the Communist Party Congress in mid November.

Two deals by Chinese companies were announced this week, and bankers and lawyers say that discussions are starting or are already under way on numerous other transactions.

Wessel, a Democratic appointee to the United States China Economic and Security Review Commission, said that bipartisan concern was growing in Congress about the first of the Chinese deals to be announced this autumn, a $117.6 million acquisition of Complete Genomics, a company in Mountain View, Calif.

Many of those, however, may take as long as a year to complete given China’s bureaucratic approval processes.

Dave Olecko/Nexen, via European Pressphoto AgencyAn oil drilling site belonging to Nexen, a Canadian company that is the subject of a takeover bid from the Chinese group Cnooc.

You will see an acceleration — you see it now,” although it would not amount to an immediate flood of transactions, said André Loesekrug Pietri, the chairman and managing partner of A Capital, a Hong Kong based private equity fund.Indeed, Beijing is pushing for additional deals, and has encouraged the state controlled banking sector to finance them.An increase in overseas investment by Chinese companies is an inevitable trend,” the commerce minister, Chen Deming, said at a conference two weeks ago, adding that China did not want to remain overwhelmingly invested in fixed income securities.

With foreign reserves of $3 trillion in hand,” he added, “we will not sit back and watch the assets depreciate with the third round of quantitative easing.

Wanxiang Group agreed on Sunday to pay $256 million to buy most of A123 Systems, a bankrupt manufacturer of high tech batteries.

And a consortium of Chinese investors agreed on the same day to pay $4.2 billion for a controlling stake in the American International Group’s aircraft leasing business.

On Friday, Canada approved the $15 billion acquisition of Nexen, an energy company, by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc.

That deal is still pending approval by the American committee that reviews foreign investments on national security grounds, commonly known as Cfius.

A few deals may be completed this winter, but the real surge is likely to happen by next summer, bankers and lawyers said.

State owned enterprises account for as much as four fifths of China’s overseas acquisitions by value and many of their top executives are expected to change jobs this winter as the country’s new leaders start promoting their followers.

While the Communist Party Congress in November produced a new Politburo, a new slate of government ministers and vice premiers must still be selected at the National People’s Congress in March, a process that could also slow down deals.

Chinese regulations further require that at least three different agencies approve each overseas acquisition — the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Administration of Exchange Control.

The assent of a fourth, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is needed to qualify for extra financing and faster approval in certain sectors deemed strategic, like clean energy, said Mao Tong, a partner at the law firm Squire Sanders.

But despite the long lead time for Chinese deals, bankers say the process is clearly starting.

Two of the biggest deals by Chinese companies this year were for control of North American companies.

Is the biggest takeover by Chinese entities on record, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Members of China’s new government wanted to show the country’s seriousness in pursuing investments outside of China, and spent time assembling the most fitting consortium to pursue a deal for the business.

The government chose as the face of the deal Weng Xianding, a veteran of China’s financial regulatory agencies who has turned to investing.

His company, New China Trust, is essentially a major Chinese commercial lender, counting Western firms like Barclays among its investors.

Once the preferred consortium was formed around September, it began talking with A.

A goal for the Chinese, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, was to conduct the talks in a “Western way,” using Western advisers and not getting bogged down in traditional bureaucratic mire.

The talks were completed in just over three months, and the buyers successfully negotiated a discount of nearly half of we.

Two evolving trends are apparent in Chinese international deal making, Chinese government officials, bankers, lawyers and trade experts said in interviews.

The government is putting heavy pressure on Chinese companies to seek minority stakes, and not to automatically seek full control, so as to tap foreign management expertise, two officials said.

At the same time, Chinese companies are broadening their range of acquisition targets to include more industrial manufacturers and consumer brand companies, even as they maintain their interest in natural resources and financial services.

We wouldn’t say there’s a desire to buy minority stakes, but we think there’s a greater acceptance that’s an appropriate thing to do,” said Michael S. Weiss, the head of China mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley.Other bankers said that one big obstacle to the purchase of minority stakes lay in the wariness of many foreign companies in accepting a Chinese partner — particularly since nearly four fifths of Chinese acquirers are state owned enterprises, and most of the rest tend to have Chinese government links.Many of today’s buyers have drawn lessons from past failures and moved to assuage government regulators before striking deals. Cnooc, in particular, learned from its failed bid to buy the oil company Unocal seven years ago, and tried to apply those lessons in its pursuit of Nexen.The Chinese company considered the deal in part because it believed that a takeover could win approval, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. While a big player in Canada’s energy community, Nexen was not one of the country’s iconic companies, heading off the sort of brutal fight that surrounded a takeover battle for Potash, the producer of an important fertilizing ingredient.Cnooc hired an army of advisers, including lobbyists and public relations specialists, to press the point that a deal would only strengthen the Canadian energy company. And Cnooc was open about much of its financing, aiming to halt concerns that it was being financed cheaply by state run banks.Still, national security concerns could also slow some deals. Bankers and lawyers say that Cfius, which stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, can sometimes prove frustrating to would be buyers. The group scrutinizes deals to ensure that they do not harm the country’s national security interests.Unlike the process in Canada, where negotiations with the foreign investment watchdog are public, the Cfius review takes place largely behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why deals are rejected.A Treasury spokeswoman, Natalie Earnest, said in a statement: As we consider foreign investments in the United States, of course, we have an obligation — like any country — to protect our national security, and that is the exclusive focus of Cfius.Michael R. Wessel, a Democratic appointee to the United States China Economic and Security Review Commission, said that bipartisan concern was growing in Congress about the first of the Chinese deals to be announced this autumn, a $117.6 million acquisition of Complete Genomics, a company in Mountain View, Calif., that does DNA sequencing.Mr Wessel, who also advises the United Steelworkers union on trade issues, was also critical of the A.we.G. deal. He said that the Chinese government could pressure airlines to buy Chinese made parts for their leases, and could eventually urge airlines to lease Chinese made civilian airliners now being developed.A spokesman for the buyers’ group said in a statement that we.L.F.C. already had one of the largest aircraft order books in aviation, with a commitment to purchase up to 279 Boeing and Airbus aircraft between now and 2020. “We will continue to add to this order book as we see opportunities in the marketplace based on the market appeal of the aircraft and the economics offered by the manufacturers,” he added.Some would be Chinese buyers have not fully considered how much work is needed to ensure that their investments will go through, advisers say.we think many Chinese companies in particular have not taken into account the need to be in touch with Washington policy makers about their needs,” said Nancy L.

McLernon, the chief executive of the Organization for International Investment, a group that represents domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies.

The paper is published by satellite in the United States, Hong Kong, and Europe.

The South Korean businessman supplied components to American automakers for a decade.

But this year, he uprooted his family from Detroit and moved home to focus on selling to the new economic superpower: China.

In just five years, China has surpassed the United States as a trading partner for much of the world, including US allies such as South Korea and Australia, according to an Associated Press analysis of trade data.

As recently as 2006, the US was the larger trading partner for 127 countries, versus just 70 for China.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first installment in "China’s Reach," a project that will analyze China’s influence with its trading partners over three decades, and explore how that is changing business, politics and daily life.

___
In the most abrupt global shift of its kind since World War II, the trend is changing the way people live and do business from Africa to Arizona, as farmers plant more soybeans to sell to China and students sign up to learn Mandarin.

The findings show how fast China has ascended to challenge America’s century old status as the globe’s dominant trader, a change that is gradually translating into political influence.

They highlight how pervasive China’s impact has been, spreading from neighboring Asia to Africa and now emerging in Latin America, the traditional US backyard.

Despite China’s now slowing economy, its share of world output and trade is expected to keep rising, with growth forecast at up to 8 percent a year over the next decade, far above US and European levels.

This growth could strengthen the hand of a new generation of just named Chinese leaders, even as it fuels strain with other nations.

But his plans call for China, which overtook the United States as the biggest auto market in 2009, to rise fivefold to 30 percent of his total by 2015.

“The United States is a tiger with no power,” Shin said in his office, where three walls are lined with books, many about China.

Trade is a bit like football — the balance of exports and imports, like the game score, is a neat snapshot of a jumble of moves that make up the economy, and both sides are apt to accuse each other of cheating from time to time.

Also, the US and China are both rivals and partners who can’t have a match without each other, and a strong performance from both is good for the entire league.

Trade may get less publicity than military affairs or diplomacy, yet it is commerce that generates jobs and raises living standards.

As shopkeepers say, the customer is always right: Governments listen to countries that buy their goods, and the threat to stop buying is one of the most potent diplomatic weapons.

China has been slow to flex its political muscle on a large scale but is starting to push back in disputes over trade, exchange rates and climate change.

“When a German chancellor or French president goes to China, right at the top of the list, he’s trying to sell Airbuses and other products and is being sensitive to China’s political concerns, like on human rights,” said C.

Fred Bergsten, a former US Treasury Department official who heads the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The United States is still the world’s biggest importer, but China is gaining.

It was a bigger market than the United States for 77 countries in 2011, up from 20 in 2000, according to the AP analysis.

The AP is using International Monetary Fund data to measure the importance of trade with China for some 180 countries and track how it changes over time.

The analysis divides a nation’s trade with China by its gross domestic product.

In 2002, trade with China was 3 percent of a country’s GDP on average, compared with 8.7 percent with the US But China caught up, and surged ahead in 2008.

In fact, since 2008, more than 40 percent of trade protection measures have been aimed against China, according to data from the Center for Economic Policy Research, an economic research network based in England.

Last year, trade with China averaged 12.4 percent of GDP for other countries, higher than that with America at any time in the last 30 years.

Unfortunately for countries like China, which depend on exports for their own economic growth, it’s often hard to distinguish blatant acts of protectionism from legitimate defenses against unfair trade practices.

The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services.

Also, even though Chinese companies invest abroad and employ thousands of foreign workers, they lag behind American industry in building global alliances and in innovation, which is still rewarded in the marketplace.

China’s competitive edge remains low labor and other costs, while the US is the world’s center for innovation in autos, aerospace, computers, medicine, munitions, finance and pharmaceuticals.

The Chinese have yet to build a car that will pass US or European emission standards.

If the trend continues, China will push past the US this year, a remarkable feat for a country so poor 30 years ago that the average person had never talked on a telephone.

“The center of gravity of the world economy has moved to the east,” said Mauricio Cardenas, the finance minister in Colombia.

Like most of Latin America, his country is still more closely tied to the US, but its trade with China has risen from virtually nothing to 2.5 percent of GDP, a more than tenfold increase since 2001.

In one sense, China’s growing presence in trade is just restoring the Middle Kingdom to its historic dominance.

China was the biggest economy for centuries until about 1800, when the industrial revolution propelled first Europe and then the US into the lead.

China began its return to the global stage in the 1990s as a manufacturer of low priced goods, from T shirts to toys.

Factories in other countries slashed costs to meet the “China price” or were pushed out of the market.

As the new millennium dawned, the US remained by far the world’s dominant trader, rivaled collectively by Europe but no single nation.

However, from 2000 to 2008, China’s imports grew 403 percent and exports 474 percent, driven in part by its entrance into the World Trade Organization and its move to higher value production.

The judgment immediately caused more fluorspar to be exported from China, although it is not clear if higher levels of fluorspar exports will be maintained in the future.

China’s imports of oil and raw materials for its factories propelled resource booms in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

China’s demand for steel for manufacturing and construction grew so fast that its mills now consume half the world’s output of iron ore.

Meanwhile, exports surged as Apple, Samsung, Nokia and other electronics giants shifted final assembly to China.

Shipments of mobile phones, flat screen TVs and personal computers have jumped sevenfold over the past decade to nearly $500 billion.

That made China a major customer for high tech components supplied by countries such as South Korea, which swung into China’s column in 2003, followed by Malaysia in 2007.

Started exporting capacitors — energy storage devices used in computers, hybrid cars and wind turbines — in 2006.

The company now gets 15 to 20 percent of its revenue from China, and has hired 10 employees there.

Chinese ate more pork, fried chicken and hamburgers, rapidly sending up the demand for soybeans to make cooking oil and feed for pigs and cows.

Some cattle ranchers in Latin America turned grazing land into fields of soy, a crop few in their region consume.

Soybean exports helped push Brazil into the China column in 2010, and put China neck and neck with the US as Argentina’s top trading partner.

In the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, some 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers) from Beijing, farmer Agenor Vicente Pelissa and his family raise cattle and soy on 54,300 acres, a farm twice the size of Manhattan.

“We’ve invested more in technology and in better machines and equipment to meet this rising demand,” Pelissa said.

The United States is the largest exporter of soybeans to China, followed by Brazil and Argentina.

China’s purchases of American soybeans have risen from almost nothing 20 years ago to a quarter of the crop: 24 million tons worth $12.1 billion, America’s largest export to China.

The boom is having a profound effect on farming communities, said Grant Kimberley, whose family farm near Des Moines, Iowa, now grows 4,000 acres of soybeans, up from 3,500 eight years ago.

“It’s provided more revenue for these farmers than they’ve ever seen in their lives,” said Kimberley, who is also director of market development at the Iowa Soybean Association.

___
It was the 2008 global crisis that showed the resilience of China’s exporters.

Since the start of the global financial crisis, China has frequently come under fire from trade officials and politicians abroad.

The recession set everyone back, but China less so than the US or other major traders such as Germany.

Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade.

China does a bigger share of its trade with developing countries that suffered less and rebounded faster, while the United States sells to rich economies that are struggling.

Chinese companies have boosted exports by 7 percent this year despite anemic global demand.

Chinese planners should also accelerate the transition of the domestic economy to make local growth less dependent on exports.

During the recession, Shin, the South Korean auto parts manufacturer, saw his sales fall 50 percent.

He shut one of three production lines, and banks stopped lending him money.

So Shin hired an employee in China, and is now making plans for his first factory there.

On a business trip to Germany, clients told him their Chinese factories would be larger than those at home.

Parents like Shin, who work at companies doing business with China, in turn fed enrollment growth at schools such as Teacher Ching, a Chinese language kindergarten in Seoul.

Nancy Ching, the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, opened the school with 15 students in 2004, the year after South Korea first moved from the US column to the China column.

“Mothers who send their kids here believe our children’s generation is the China generation,” she said in Chinese accented Korean.

Even with key Western markets in a slump, exports are up 58 percent since 2009.

Rising incomes have driven demand for wine and other luxury goods, making China a lifeline for European and American vineyards when the global crisis battered traditional markets.

The Chinese have “helped Bordeaux a lot these past three years,” said Florence Cathiard, owner of Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte in the Pessac Leognan area of France’s southwest, home of high end Bordeaux wine.

France’s wine exports to China first surged in 2009, and by last year, China had surpassed the US as a customer by volume.

As its economy vertically integrated, China started adding value to its domestic fluorspar production and restricted its exports.

But China is developing a taste for grand cru wine, the “great growths” that are considered exceptional and command higher prices.

Cathiard acknowledged that she was initially wary of China as a reliable market for her high end wines.

But the turning point for her came around 2008, when she was blown away by the number of people showing up for a master class by her chateau at a wine expo in Hong Kong.

China now accounts for 25 percent of Cathiard’s sales, making it her largest market.

The owners of Chateau Haut Bailly, also in Pessac Leognan, first traveled to China to test the waters in 2000, and it was too early.

“At the time, they didn’t know what a cork or a corkscrew was,” said Veronique Sanders, the chateau’s general manager.

“The difference with other emerging markets we’ve gone into in the past is the size of the country, which means it has an absolutely incredible potential.”.

The next step in China’s trade evolution is to move beyond exporting TVs and lawn furniture to selling services and investing abroad.

The investment trend started with state owned companies that bought stakes in foreign mines and oil fields.

Smaller and private Chinese companies followed, acquiring foreign enterprises to gain a bigger foothold in overseas markets, more access to resources and better technology for their own development.

At the same time, the sheer breadth of Chinese made goods – ranging from household goods and furniture to shoes and toys – flooding into overseas markets has created the impression that local manufacturers of the same products are being crowded out of their home turf.

China is now pushing into construction and engineering, where US and European companies have long dominated.

In Algeria, Chinese state owned companies pushed aside established French and German rivals to win contracts to build a $12 billion cross country highway and the $1.3 billion Great Mosque of Algeria.

The Chinese have also built highways, dams and other projects in developing countries and are starting to win contracts in the US and Europe.

On a new 50 kilometer (30 mile) highway leading north of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, dark asphalt stretches across six to eight lanes.

The $300 million road was built by three Chinese companies and financed by the African Development Bank and the Export Import Bank of China.

It has cut a trip that took several hours 18 months ago to 10 minutes, said Joseph Makori, a professional driver.

“When we see the people from America, they say, ‘We want to assist Kenya’,” said Makori as he looked for work at an interchange about 10 kilometers from downtown.

Chinese companies are starting to win government contracts in Kenya, which has ports that offer access to landlocked Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda.

Governments in Africa are keen to work with China because it does not tie development to human rights or democracy, said Stephen Mutoro, secretary general of the Consumer Federation of Kenya.

“China appears to have a long term plan based on increasing its commercial interests where governance issues are given a back burner,” Mutoro said.

The experience of Congo might foreshadow a more complex approach that Beijing envisages for other African nations.

In 2008, the two governments signed a $9 billion deal for Chinese companies to build 177 hospitals and health centers, two hydroelectric dams and thousands of miles of railways and roads.

In exchange, Congo was to provide 10.6 million tons of copper and 600,000 tons of cobalt.

The deal has since been scaled back to $6 billion under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which felt Congo was taking on too much debt.

China’s outbound investment totaled $67.6 billion last year — just one sixth of America’s nearly $400 billion — but it could reach $2 trillion by 2020, according to a forecast by Rhodium Group, a research firm in New York City.

The editorial office is in the Chaoyang District of Beijing, and the newspaper has branch offices in most major cities of China as well as several major foreign cities including New York City, Washington, D.

Employees at Volvo Cars worried after Chinese automaker Geely Holdings bought the money losing Swedish brand from Ford Motor Co.

But two years later, instead of moving jobs to China, Geely has expanded Volvo’s European workforce of 19,500 to about 21,500.

Majority owned US affiliates of Chinese companies support about 27,000 American jobs, up from fewer than 10,000 five years ago, according to Rhodium.

In Goodyear, Arizona, Stacey Rassas was laid off in May 2010 after a 16 year career in quality control for aerospace and aluminum manufacturers.

She finally landed a job that December at a new factory that makes solar panels for one of the world’s biggest solar manufacturers.

AP Business Writers Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris and Jonathan Fahey and Scott Mayerowitz in New York and AP writers Michelle Faul in Johannesburg; Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm; Luis Andres Henao in Santiago, Chile; Cesar Garcia in Bogota, Colombia; Paul Schemm in Algiers, Algeria; Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo; Troy Thibodeaux in New Orleans; and Jason Straziuso and Tom Odula in Nairobi, Kenya; and AP interactive producer Pailin Wedel in Bangkok contributed.

T) is still struggling to revive sales in China, part of a broader slump Japanese car firms are suffering as a result of a diplomatic row between the countries.

TOKYOJapanese car makers reported a far steeper drop in production in China in October than in the preceding month, hit by the full impact of anti Japanese sentiment amid the continuing territorial spat between the two countries.

Toyota’s sales in China totaled roughly 60,000 vehicles last month, a senior company executive said, compared with 81,800 cars the company and its Chinese partners sold in November last year.

Toyota recently said it will introduce two brands that will be sold exclusively in China next year, and Shen said Nissan also plans to sell models tailored to the Chinese market.

The pace of the last month’s decline – roughly 25 percent from a year earlier – eased from the previous two months but was still “far off from our more normalized and targeted sales pace,” said the Toyota executive who declined to be named because the information had not yet been made public.

Toyota’s numbers indicate that sales in China by other Japanese carmakers are also likely to be down.

For most of those firms, sales are still falling at double digit rates from 2011 levels, though the pace of decline has slackened recently.

Toyota is expected to announce its China sales data for November on Monday, according to a Beijing based company spokesman.

As a result, BMWs China sales increased by 55 percent in September, Audis by 20 percent and Hyundai Motor Cos by 15 percent.

“It probably won’t be until March or April when we see sales return to a pre September pace,” the senior executive said, echoing a consensus expressed by officials from other Japanese brands.

Demand for leading Japanese car brands in China virtually halved in September and October.

After falling from a 36 percent market share in January, to a low of 26 percent in August, the market share of the local car companies has recovered to 33 percent in the month of October.

Whatever one thinks about the relative merits of each country’s position with respect to the Senkaku Islands, there is no question that the dispute between China and Japan is taken seriously on the mainland, and consumer sentiment against all Japanese products, including cars, has been strong and marked by sometimes violent protests.

In a widely reported incident during the height of anti Japanese sentiment, a Chinese man was attacked by angry protesters for driving a Toyota Corolla.

According to internal documents, Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE:TM) believes that Japanese automakers are unlikely to fully restore Chinese production before July of next year.

At the start of the year, Toyota said it aimed to sell 1 million cars annually in China.

T) is still struggling to revive sales in China, part of a broader slump Japanese car firms are suffering as a result of a diplomatic row between the countries.

TOKYOJapanese car makers reported a far steeper drop in production in China in October than in the preceding month, hit by the full impact of anti Japanese sentiment amid the continuing territorial spat between the two countries.

Toyota’s sales in China totaled roughly 60,000 vehicles last month, a senior company executive said, compared with 81,800 cars the company and its Chinese partners sold in November last year.

Toyota recently said it will introduce two brands that will be sold exclusively in China next year, and Shen said Nissan also plans to sell models tailored to the Chinese market.

The pace of the last month’s decline – roughly 25 percent from a year earlier – eased from the previous two months but was still “far off from our more normalized and targeted sales pace,” said the Toyota executive who declined to be named because the information had not yet been made public.

Toyota’s numbers indicate that sales in China by other Japanese carmakers are also likely to be down.

For most of those firms, sales are still falling at double digit rates from 2011 levels, though the pace of decline has slackened recently.

Toyota is expected to announce its China sales data for November on Monday, according to a Beijing based company spokesman.

As a result, BMWs China sales increased by 55 percent in September, Audis by 20 percent and Hyundai Motor Cos by 15 percent.

“It probably won’t be until March or April when we see sales return to a pre September pace,” the senior executive said, echoing a consensus expressed by officials from other Japanese brands.

Demand for leading Japanese car brands in China virtually halved in September and October.

After falling from a 36 percent market share in January, to a low of 26 percent in August, the market share of the local car companies has recovered to 33 percent in the month of October.

Whatever one thinks about the relative merits of each country’s position with respect to the Senkaku Islands, there is no question that the dispute between China and Japan is taken seriously on the mainland, and consumer sentiment against all Japanese products, including cars, has been strong and marked by sometimes violent protests.

In a widely reported incident during the height of anti Japanese sentiment, a Chinese man was attacked by angry protesters for driving a Toyota Corolla.

According to internal documents, Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE:TM) believes that Japanese automakers are unlikely to fully restore Chinese production before July of next year.

At the start of the year, Toyota said it aimed to sell 1 million cars annually in China.

BMW said today that it expects further growth in sales in the fourth quarter.

It also repeated its call for 2012 earningsper share growth of at least 13 percent, or $3.24 per share,excluding special items.

Last year, the company posted net income of $1.32 billion, or $2.74 per share, on revenue of $12.63 billion.

Nov 29 (Reuters) – Yum Brands Inc said on Thursdaythat it expects a decline in fourth quarter sales at establishedrestaurants in China, where a cooling economy is making itdifficult to exceed the 21 percent gain it had there a yearearlier.

The top end of the forecast range represents year on year sales (BIDU) growth of 42 percent, the slowest pace since thefourth quarter of 2009.

For all of 2012, Yum expects same store sales growth in China to be 6 percent.

Yum’s same store sales growth in China slowed to 6 percent in the third quarter.

China’s e commerce industry saw growth of 45 percentyear on year in the second quarter to reach 278.8 billion yuan($44.8 billion).

During the same period a year earlier, sales at restaurants open at least a year had risen 19 percent.

The concern over Yum’s continued slow growth in China was noticed by investors.

Andrew Robinson covers these beats: Restaurants, retail, attorneys, human resources, technology, K 12 education, automotive (dealers, services), media/marketing/printing, young professionals, West End, East End and Oldham County.

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Some forecasts show China will be the world’s number one movie market by 2020.

The report suggests the media and entertainment industry in the world’s most populous nation is due to grow by 17% a year until 2015.

China is also building 25,000 cinema screens over the next five years, to cope with demand from an increasingly wealthy population.

Growth will also be helped by the government’s recent decision to relax the number of foreign movies allowed to screen each year from 20 to 34.

China relaxed some restrictions on imported films this year, allowing 14 additional foreign 3 D or large format movies and raising the share of profits to overseas studios to 25% from 13%.

“The challenges for media and entertainment companies to penetrate China are still considerable; however, the vast potential of the market makes it impossible to ignore,” said Ernst & Young’s John Nendick.

The Chinese movie market, worth more than $2 billion last year, is seen as increasingly vital for Hollywood filmmakers,” the Tribune reports. “One film industry expert said Chinese movie goers can bump a film’s box office receipts by as much as $50 million.

Disney subsidiary Marvel recently co produced forthcoming superhero sequel Iron Man 3 alongside Chinese company DMG Entertainment, while Looper director Rian Johnson agreed to transplant the plot of his sci fi blockbuster from Paris to Shanghai, in order to gain Chinese funding.

The key is operating within the Chinese studio environment where at least 50% of box office cinemas are vertically integrated with film studios and production companies.

Working in China has its drawbacks, however: Men in Black III, starring Will Smith, had a scene removed from the local cut of the movie after censors objected to the fact that the villains were Chinese.

Wen told Asian leaders that China does not want to“overemphasize” territorial disputes at internationalmeetings, according to Fu Ying, deputy foreign minister.

Territorial tensions between China and Japan were also closely watched at the summit.

Obama’s first foreign trip after his reelection saw some surface compromise on the issues, while a new trade bloc looks set to form without the participation of the US.

With China’s Wen Jiabao soon to step down as prime minister, the summit likely marked the last official meeting between Wen and Obama.

The US and China do not appear willing to risk superpower tension at this time over the resource rich areas around the contested islets and shoals,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, head of the Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok.QUIZ How much do you know about Asia? Take this quiz."It is very important that as two of the largest economies in the world, that we work to establish clear rules of the road internationally for trade and investment, which can increase prosperity and global growth," said Obama after meeting China’s Wen.Obama and China play nice?With a focus on economics, the US appeared to hold a noncommittal line on security issues during the talks, though it has spoken strongly on the South China Sea in the past, citing the need for dialogue while negotiating with Vietnam and the Philippines about supplying military hardware.Now, however, “President Obama’s message is there needs to be a reduction of the tensions,” US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said after Tuesday’s meetings. “There is no reason to risk any potential escalation, particularly when you have two of the world’s largest economies – China and Japan – associated with some of those disputes.

China Eastern Airlines is China’s second largest carrier by passenger numbers and the world’s third biggest carrier by market value. On 16 April 2010, China Eastern Airlines announced an initial agreement to join SkyTeam, and along with subsidiary Shanghai Airlines, became the 14th member on 21 June 2011.. Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office.. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000.. The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African American president of the United States, as well as the first born in Hawaii.. His policy decisions have addressed a global financial crisis and have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives and the phasing out of detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He attended the G 20 London summit and later visited US troops in Iraq. On the tour of various European countries following the G 20 summit, he announced in Prague that he intended to negotiate substantial reduction in the world’s nuclear arsenals, en route to their eventual extinction. In October 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

“We do not want to bring the disputes to an occasion like this,” Wen told the summit, according to Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying, who briefed media on Tuesday evening.

It seemed China’s apparent effort to have host Cambodia play bad cop, however, may have backfired: Phnom Penh was forced to backtrack on assertions that southeast Asian countries reached a “consensus” that they would not “internationalize” the South China Sea issue – seen as code for Chinese requests that nonclaimant powers such the US and Japan steer clear of the dispute.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia President Barack Obama closed his Asian tour in diplomatic talks with leaders of Japan and China, their economic message overshadowed by security tensions over disputed waters and territories.

Closing the summit, Cambodia’s usually voluble Prime Minister Hun Sen refused to take questions during a press conference, saying "we are exhausted after these three days.

Two other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Brunei and Malaysia, also have been embroiled in South China Sea rifts.

Cooperating with China is more urgent than guarding against any `China threat’, as there are more practical national interests attached to the former,” it added.. The daily said: “Obama’s tour seemingly has a menacing manner, but it cannot change the reality that Southeast Asia is economically tied to China.

The fast changing situation emanating from an assertive China and the “rebalancing” by the US of its foreign policy to the Asia Pacific, especially dynamic Southeast Asia, needs urgent enhanced action from both Indonesia and ASEAN.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a geo political and economic organization of ten countries located in Southeast Asia, which was formed on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The article observed that increased US engagement in East Asia will certainly bring China more trouble.

China hopes the summits can help sustain dynamic development in East Asia, which is the engine of the world economy, Fu said.

The friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation between China and ASEAN have not only brought about economic and social development in our own countries and delivered enormous benefits to our peoples, but also contributed significantly to steady economic development and stability in East Asia and Asia as a whole.

IANS

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First Published: Monday, November 19, 2012, 11:30.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has also thrown its lot in with Android for its MIUI ROM and Mi One and Mi Two smartphones.

By the end of the third quarter, Android’s market share was 90.1 percent, up from 82.8 percent quarter on quarter while iOS had 4.2 percent and Symbian 2.4 percent, according to Analysys International.

Apple’s iPhone market share dropped from 6.0 percent to 4.2 percent in the quarter due to a lack of new models.

Symbian dropped to 2.4 percent market ownership, according to Analysys.

China Mobile is in need of a flagship smartphone that it can actively market in order to promote its 3G network, an area where it has lagged its competitors.

Back in August, another research firm, Canalys, reported that over 42 million smartphones shipped to China during the second quarter.

Recent third quarter data from app analytics firm Umeng put Apples smartphone distribution on its platform at 33 percent.

But over the past year it has failed to compete with several larger rivals, most notably Samsung, that have rolled out an increasing number of middle- and high end smartphones.

Apple was far behind, with shipments dropping 37 percent compared with the first quarter.

In fact, as Tech In Asia points out, the iPhone’s average cost is 3.25 times higher than that of the average Android smartphone.

The company’siPhone 5 is reportedly launching by the end of this year on both China Telecom and China Unicom networks.