More anti-monopoly guidelines published

The Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) has published four draft documents clarifying the handling of concentrations and suspected concentrations.

The documents listed below appeared on Mofcom’s website on January 19 and 20, and had previously been circulated to a small group of stakeholders for comment.

Tentative Measures for the Investigation and Handling of Concentrations of Business Operators that have not been Reported in accordance with the Law (Draft);
Tentative Measures for the Collection of Evidence for Suspected Monopolies of Concentrations of Business Operators that have not reached the Reporting Threshold (Draft);
Tentative Measures for the Reporting of Concentrations of Business Operators (Draft for Comments); and
Tentative Measures on Reviews for Concentrations of Business Operators (Draft for Comments)

Specialists reviewing the draft Measures say they should help settle various contentious issues. One involves the factors that Mofcom will take into account when deciding whether one business has acquired control over another.

For the first time, an exact share ratio has been specified. If an acquiring party exceeds this ratio, they can be said to have acquired control. The new documents also seem to confirm that joint ventures will qualify as concentrations (although the position with so-called greenfield ventures is unsure), and explain how to calculate business turnover. This will help companies to apply the long-debated threshold tests contained in the 2008 Anti-monopoly Law, including one which sets a threshold of Rmb10 billion for the aggregate global turnover of all parties involved

For Francois Renard, competition specialist with Allen & Overy, the draft covering “Suspected Monopolies of Concentrations of Business Operators that have not reached the Reporting Threshold” is intriguing.

“Mofcom seems to give a lot of weight to the review of concentration below thresholds,” he says.

This could be interpreted in two ways: as an indication that Mofcom intends to review many below-threshold operations, or simply as a response to previous concerns over the Ministry’s scrutiny of such deals.

Since the promulgation of the Anti-monopoly Law in 2008, many lawyers have commented that supporting guidelines would benefit from external input. It seems the Ministry has been listening, as it has opened the new draft Measures for public comment until February 16.

Although the latest drafts have been generally welcomed, they leave some existing uncertainties unresolved and raise further uncertainties themselves. One lawyer has reported some “very bizarre drafting” in some of the Measures. There is certain to be considerable debate in the weeks ahead.

Chinese New Year - Spring Festival

Chinese New Year (Chinese: 春節, 春节, Chūnjíe; 農曆新年, 农历新年, Nónglì Xīnnián; or 過年, 过年, Guònián), also known as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It consists of a period of celebrations, starting on New Year's Day, celebrated on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, i.e. the day of the second new moon after the day on which the winter solstice occurs, unless there is an intercalary eleventh or twelfth month in the lead-up to the New Year—in such a case, the New Year falls on the day of the third new moon after the solstice. (The next time this occurs is in 2033.) The Chinese New Year period ends with the Lantern Festival, the fifteenth day of the month.

Some Chinese believe that Nian ("Nyehn") was a reptilian predator that could infiltrate houses silently like the infamous man-eating leopards of India. The Chinese soon learned that Nian was sensitive to loud noises, and they scared it away with explosions and fireworks.

Origin
The origin of the Lunar New Year Festival can be traced back thousands of years, involving a series of colorful legends and traditions. One of the most famous legends is Nian, an extremely cruel and ferocious beast that the ancients believed would devour people on New Year's Eve. To keep Nian away, red-paper couplets are pasted on doors, torches are lit, and firecrackers are set off throughout the night, because Nian is said to fear the color red, the light of fire, and loud noises. Early the next morning, as feelings of triumph and renewal fill the air at successfully keeping Nian away for another year, the most popular greeting heard is "gong xi fa cai", or "congratulations."

To ensure good luck in the coming year, the Taiwanese always give every dish a special name. This dish is called the "Five Blessings for the New Year" and represents longevity, wealth, peace, wisdom, and righteousness. (Photo by Su-ching Chang) Even though Lunar New Year celebrations generally last for only several days, starting on New Year's Eve, the festival itself is actually about three weeks long. It begins on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, the day, it is believed, when various gods ascend to heaven to pay their respects and report on household affairs to the Jade Emperor, the supreme Taoist deity. According to tradition, households busily honor these gods by burning ritualistic paper money to provide for their traveling expenses. Another ritual is to smear malt sugar on the lips of the Kitchen God, one of the traveling deities, to ensure that he either submits a favorable report to the Jade Emperor or keeps silent.

Celebration
The Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade.

10 Days before the New Year Day - Sweeping of the Grounds
Preparations for the Chinese New Year in old China started well in advance of the New Year's Day. The 20th of the Twelfth Moon was set aside for the annual housecleaning, or the "sweeping of the grounds". Every corner of the house must be swept and cleaned in preparation for the new year. SpringCouplets, written in black ink on large vertical scrolls of red paper, were put on the walls or on the sides of the gate-ways. These couplets, short poems written in Classical Chinese, were expressions of good wishes for the family in the coming year. In addition, symbolic flowers and fruits were used to decorate the house, and colorful new year pictures (NIAN HUA) were placed on the walls (for more descriptions of the symbolism of the flowers and fruits.

New Year Paintings - During the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), it is traditional to decorate the homes with new year paintings. The most popular paintings are Door Gods pasted on the front doors to keep ghosts and monsters away.

Spring Couplets - Spring couplets are traditionally written with black ink on red paper. They are hung in storefronts in the month before the New Year’s Day, and often stay up for two months. They express best wishes and fortune for the coming year. There is a great variety in the writing of these poetic couplets to fit the situation. A store would generally use couplets hat make references to their line of trade. Couplets that say "Happy New Year" and " Continuing Advancement in Education" are apprpriate for a school.

The New Year's Eve - Reunion DinnerA reunion dinner is held on New Year's Eve where members of the family, near and far, get together for celebration. The New Year's Eve dinner is very large and traditionally includes chicken. Fish is included, but not eaten up completely (and the remaining stored overnight), as the Chinese phrase "nian nian you yu", or "every year there is fish/leftover", is a homophone for phrases which could mean "be blessed every year" or "have profit every year", since "yu" is also the pronunciation for "profit".

The New Year's Eve celebration was traditionally highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household and the family ancestors.

First Day of the New Year

New Year's day is also celebrated within the family. Usually family members gather on the morning of New Year's Day. It is at this gathering that red packets are given to unmarried members of the family. The age of the recipient is not material to receiving the packets. Married couples usually give out two red packets on the first new year after being married. This is because the wife presents one and the husband presents one. In subsequent years they may give one as a couple.
Red packets traditionally consisted of amounts which were considered multiples. Amounts like $2 (two piece of $1), or $20 were acceptable. Similarly "multiples" such as $1.10 and $2.20 were also acceptable. However, this is not strictly adhered to. The gift was originally a token amount but these days it is not uncommon to receive large sums in affluent families. In some families this tradition has evolved into the practice to substituting money-like instruments (stocks, bonds, unit trust) in place of large sums of cash.

Red packets are also given to unmarried visitors but the sums are often smaller than the packets given to family members or close friends.

Second Day of the New Year
The second day of the new year is usually for visiting the family of the wife if a couple is married. A large feast is also typically held on the second day of the new year.

Seventh Day of the New YearThe seventh day traditionally is known as the common man's birthday, the day when everyone grows one year older. It is also the day when tossed fish salad, yusheng, is eaten. People get together to toss the colourful salad and make wishes for continued wealth and prosperity. This is only celebrated amongst the Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore.

15th Day of the New Year - Lantern Festival
The New Year celebrations ended on the 15th of the First Moon with the Lantern Festival. On the evening of that day, people carried lanterns into the streets to take part in a great parade. Young men would highlight the parade with a dragon dance. The dragon was made of bamboo, silk, and paper, and might stretch for more than hundred feet in length. The bobbing and weaving of the dragon was an impressive sight, and formed a fitting finish to the New Year festival.

Food
There are many foods in Chinese culture associated with the Chinese New Year. Although preferences vary from region to region, some examples include the following:

Niangao (粘糕) The Chinese word 粘, meaning "sticky", is identical in sound to 年, meaning "year", and the word 糕, meaning "cake" is identical in sound to 高, meaning "high". As such, eating niangao has the symbolism of raising oneself higher in each coming year (年年高升 niánnián gāoshēng). Chinese families who practice Chinese traditional religion also offer niangao to the kitchen god, Zao Jun. It is believed that all the household gods go off to heaven to report on a family during the new year. Serving niangao to the kitchen god is believed to help him provide a sweet report on the family because he will be satisfied and not inclined to deliver criticism — or that his lips are so sticky from the cakes that he is unable to make too much of a report.

Fagao Literally translated as "Prosperity Cake", fagao is made with wheat flour, water, sugar and leavened with either yeast or baking powder. Fagao batter is steamed until it rises and splits open at the top. The sound "fa" means either "to raise/generate" or "be prosperous", hence its well intending secondary meaning.

Jiaozi Dumplings, are small or large mounds of dough that are usually dropped into a liquid mixture (such as soup or stew) and cooked until done, some are stuffed with meat and/or vegetables.

Yusheng, a salad of raw fish and shredded crunchy vegetables (such as carrots, jicama, pickled ginger and pomelo) in a plum sauce dressing. Although commonly served in China throughout the year, it was popularised as a Chinese New Year dish in Singapore and Malaysia, a practise which has since spread to other Chinese communities. Originally served only on the seventh day of the new year, it is now eaten on any day, sometimes as early as two weeks prior to the commencement of the new year.

Mandarin oranges (a symbol of wealth and good fortune). The Cantonese word for these oranges is a homonym for gold.

Red Jujubes symbolizes the gaining of prosperity
Whole steamed fish (a symbol of long life and good fortune). This can be seen in wall decorations of fish themes. The word 魚 (yú), meaning "fish", shares the same pronunciation with the word 餘, meaning "surplus" (e.g. having money left over from covering expenses). The common greeting for the new year "niannian you yu" can mean to enjoy a surplus, i.e. financial security, year after year.

Sacred animal recalls Beijing's turbulent past

In Beijing's Summer Palace, a life-sized bronze ox lies on its belly on the eastern bank of Lake Kunming near the bridge with 17 arches. With both its ears pricked up, the elegant animal seems to be admiring the mountains and lake in the imperial garden.

As a symbol of the Summer Palace, the statue, known as the Golden Ox, has witnessed many memorable events.

It was cast in 1755 on the order of Emperor Qianlong at the height of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). An inscription in the emperor's handwriting reads: "This sacred ox is made with gold to keep peace forever and bring good luck."

In ancient China, people often called bronze "gold" but the nickname Golden Ox nearly brought it disaster.

In 1900, when the Eight Allied Forces invaded Beijing, they looted most of the portable valuables in the Forbidden City and other imperial compounds before setting fire to the buildings.

The prospect of getting a golden ox led the troops one dark night to the Summer Palace. Finding it impossible to move the ox even an inch, the soldiers decided to cut off its head instead.

A soldier tried to deal the fatal blow with his bayonet but only left a slight mark on the animal's back, revealing bronze below the gilded surface. The disappointed looters left to seek other valuables.

There are many explanations about why the bronze ox was placed by the lake.

A popular story goes that the bronze ox was the Cowherd who married the Girl Weaver from the Western Heavens. They had two children and lived peacefully, until the Queen Mother of the Western Heavens separated them with the Milky Way. They reunite once every year on the night of Qixi (the 7th day of the 7th lunar month).

Legends say the Milky Way is Lake Kunming and the Girl Weaver can be found at a scenic spot, called the Painting of Plowing and Weaving, opposite the ox across the lake.

The site was burned down in 1860 by British and French troops, who also destroyed the imperial Yuanmingyuan and Qingyiyuan gardens.

In 1888, Empress Dowager Cixi built the Summer Palace on the ruins of the Qingyiyuan. She built a wall on the western bank of the lake and kept the site of the fire outside the Summer Palace.

Some people say she hated seeing the Cowherd find the Girl Weaver, in the same way that she tried to control Emperor Guangxu's marriage.

During a Qixi festival, Cixi is said to have woken up after dreaming that the bronze ox leapt into the lake and swam toward the Girl Weaver. She immediately set out from the Forbidden City toward the Summer Palace to find the bronze ox still there. But she had the ox chained with a long, thick iron chain. The story goes on saying that the ox struggled so hard to get loose that it broke its tail.

In 2004, the Painting of Plowing and Weaving was rebuilt at its original site. The legendary Cowherd and the Girl Weaver can now look at each other across the lake.

There is another, more likely explanation. When China was plagued by rampant floods in ancient times, legendary leader Da Yu led people to fight the floods. He would cast a bronze ox and sink it into the river after diverting the floods. Chinese believe that oxen know water well and can control water demons. Later, people stopped putting statues of oxen on riverbanks.

Two centuries ago, the Summer Palace was built on a network of rivers and lakes. In summer, heavy rain would easily lead to floods. The eastern dike of Kunming Lake is just 10 m higher than the Forbidden City, meaning that any serious flood could bring devastating results to the imperial palace.

Every summer, special officials were dispatched to guard the bronze ox and check the water level. If the water got too near, the officials were under orders to immediately report to the Forbidden City, so measures could be taken in time.

Still bearing the mark left by the bayonet, the bronze ox has been guarding the Summer Palace for 250 years. It is a national treasure testifying to a time when China was too weak to defend its own people.

Chinese New Year

When is Chinese New Year 2009?
Chinese New Year falls on Monday, January 26th 2009.

The Chinese New Year that is celebrated for about fifteen days is one moment in the year when the whole nation feels united as they can imagine each other's enjoyment. The Chinese New Year gets determined by the chinese new year calendar and therefore it is sometimes called the Lunar New Year. In 2009, the Chinese Lunar Year Festival would start from 26 th of January. As every one is aware of its significance, the working people in china can take weeks of holidays so that they can join the company of their near and dear ones and a feast with their family members on the chinese new year eve or Lunar New Year's Eve. Although with the changing times and increasing mobility of the people the celebration of Chinese New Year Festival has undergone some changes, everybody still very fervently follow all the customs that their elders have taught them.
Chinese have a unique way of representing the New Year through animals. They have 12 different animals to represent each year of the 12 year -cycle and the order remains the same throughout with the year of the rat beginning the cycle and the year of the boar/ pig ending the same. As the Chinese year 2008 was signified as the year of the rat, the following year, 2009, is going to be the year of the ox. Chinese New Year of OX, 2009 will fall on January 26th and will mark the 15 day long festivities beginning on the said date and going on till the 9th February.

Chinese New Year Animal 2009- Ox
Preparations for the Chinese New Year of Ox, 2009 will begin months in advance so that the celebrations be observed in the highest magnitude and splendor. As the different years of the 12 year cycle are characterized by different animals, people born on the different years also feature different traits and characters and most often then not, they are believed to be influenced and inspired by the animals of the particular year they are born in. Chinese new year sales is expected to be very slow this year as people are in the mood of saving money due to the concerns of economy. But still chinese new year eve will be much more colorful and full of excitement.

BEST WISHES FOR 2009

Business in China wish you all the best for 2009

A great year to go forward, to develop your business and to catch opportunities in China.

Deng Xiaoping : the pragmatic

The Maoist who reinvented himself, transformed a nation, and changed the world

Though the name of Mao Zedong still has resonance around the world, the man who has inherited the mantle of Chinese hero is Deng Xiaoping. While Mao is now mainly associated with the idea of revolutionary excess and periods of colossal suffering, Deng has come to be linked to China's astonishing economic development, and to the steering of China away from its Leninist and Maoist organizational straitjacket into a wider world of technological growth and international trade. When we think of Deng, it tends to be within a context where Mao's revolutionary legacy is seen as irrelevant. As Mao shrinks in the historical balance, Deng rises; it is Deng who is hailed as the pragmatist, as the man who introduced a new economic dynamism with his striking phrase that it did not matter whether a cat was black or white as long as it could catch mice.
pore's stern symbol

Deng is now thought of, both within China and in the world at large, as having been in some measure heroic. That is due almost entirely to the stances he adopted, and the policies he helped propel into motion, after he had survived two purges and was called back to power in 1977, at the age of 73. What Deng had the intelligence to see was that China would have to break out of its Maoist mold of state control—that the nation's long-dormant entrepreneurial spirit had to be encouraged, not inhibited, and that the capitalist nature of some of the needed changes had to be openly accepted, whatever the political fallout.
Yet Deng did not just focus on the economy. He identified other areas where changes had to be made for China to become a world power: there was the need to revamp the educational system, especially universities and research institutes; the military had to be streamlined and professionalized; lawyers had to be trained in the intricacies of commercial and corporate law, and be able to have cases heard in a viable and expanded judicial system; more Chinese had to be permitted to study overseas, and foreign students and tourists to come to China. As a complementary move, Deng ordered far-reaching reviews of the cases of hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, students and professionals who had been sent into internal exile in impoverished rural areas after the Hundred Flowers Movement in 1957, and later during the Cultural Revolution; under Deng, many were allowed to return to their homes and families.

Taking a broad view of the intellectual and creative worlds that had essentially been banned in the radical Maoist years, Deng authorized the loosening of controls over filmmaking, fashion, music and the visual arts. Investigative journalists were encouraged to lay bare local abuses, even if they might implicate members of the Communist Party. In late 1978 a stretch of blank wall not far from the headquarters of the Party was opened for the airing of political and cultural views in the form of written posters and poems; swiftly dubbed Democracy Wall, it became a focal point for tough-minded criticism of local and national government, a critique from which not even Deng or Mao were spared.
When Deng is described in heroic terms, it is largely because of the long-range effects of this remarkable torrent of change that he set in motion. Leading China down the capitalist path, Deng relaxed all manner of economic controls and launched Special Economic Zones—free-trade enclaves that demonstrated the prosperous potential of a liberalized economy. These initiatives helped transport millions of Chinese out of poverty in the space of just a few decades, a feat unprecedented in history; transformed China into the global manufacturing behemoth that it now is; and heralded the country's arrival on the world stage as a major geopolitical and financial player.


But the reforms Deng activated should not be allowed to expunge the ongoing effects of the changes he abandoned or chose not to make. Democracy Wall, for example, was closed down as a protest site early in 1979, and several of the most strident protestors were convicted of crimes against the state and given lengthy prison sentences. Many of the underground journals were banned, and the poets were silenced. Even as Deng visited the U.S. in 1979, a journey in which he charmed Americans with his apparently folksy ways and made major deals with Boeing and Coca-Cola, Chinese troops invaded Vietnam in an attempt to undercut Russian power in the region. University leaders were removed if their demands for new freedoms were deemed to be too strenuous, and Deng purged his own protégé Hu Yaobang on the grounds that he was pursuing too much change too fast.
The intolerance reflected by the suppression of the Democracy Wall movement resurfaced during the massive demonstrations that began at Tiananmen Square in April 1989 with Hu's funeral and were so bloodily put down in June that year. In his use of the deadly force of the People's Liberation Army to clear Tiananmen Square, Deng showed how deep was his mingled contempt for and fear of the student and other leaders who, he believed, threatened to spread chaos across the country in the name of democracy. The Party's verdict on the Tiananmen protests—that they amounted to a counterrevolutionary act—was never reversed by Deng, and is also an indissoluble part of his legacy.

If Deng's actions were often cautious or even negative, it was because he had fought and lived a revolution for over 60 years, and he could not summon up the conviction that those years had been in vain. Deng could never forget that it was a Maoist vision, however flawed and ruthless, that had helped unite China after its decades of fragmentation. Mao might have pulled the nation together, but it was Deng who pushed it toward prosperity and modernity, and a future as one of the world's great powers.