China

November 10, 2009 -- Shanghai – General Motors Company announced that the automaker and its joint ventures in China today surpassed 1.5 million units in sales for 2009. With a strong October, the GM China family continued its string of record monthly sales that began at the start of the year.

“This has been a year of records for GM in China,” said Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of the GM China Group. “It is GM’s priority to put the customer at the center of everything we do. This is reflected in our vehicle design, engineering and production.”    » read more »

November 5, 2009 -- WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) released the following statement today after receiving news that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that China intends to re-open the Chinese market to United States pork products and live swine.    » read more »

Clean Energy Partnership, Export Opportunities

November 3, 2009 -- HONOLULU – Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle has concluded a successful round of meetings in Beijing as part of the Administration’s ongoing strategic effort to strengthen the state’s long-term economy by promoting Hawaii as a visitor destination to China’s growing outbound tourism market, developing export opportunities for Hawaii products and services and forming partnerships in clean energy.

Beijing was the first stop on the Governor’s six-city tour to promote economic development opportunities for Hawaii with one of the world’s most important emerging economies. Pictures are available at www.hawaii.gov/gov or by request.

Encouraging Chinese Tourism    » read more »

03 November 2009 -- BP, and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), announced today that they have signed a technical service contract with Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company (SOC) to expand production from the Rumaila oilfield, near Basra in southern Iraq

The signing follows BP's successful bid for the contract with CNPC in Baghdad in June.

The consortium led by BP (38 per cent) with partners CNPC (37 per cent) and the Iraq government's representative State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO - 25 per cent), has agreed to nearly triple the Rumaila field's output to almost 3 million barrels of oil a day (b/d), which would make it the world's second largest producing oilfield.    » read more »

Proposed Acquisition Of A Majority Stake In Zhejiang Tianyuan

November 04, 2009 -- Basel, November 4, 2009 - Novartis has reached an agreement to acquire an 85% stake in the Chinese vaccines company Zhejiang Tianyuan Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. as part of a strategic initiative to build a vaccines industry leader in this country and expand the Group's limited presence in this fast-growing market segment. This proposed acquisition will require government and regulatory approvals in China.    » read more »

Fact Sheet

October 29, 2009 -- U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, together with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, co-chaired the 20th JCCT in Hangzhou, China, on October 28-29, 2009. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack also participated. Other participants included U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) Acting Director Leocadia Zak, and representatives from the Treasury and State Departments.    » read more »

HANGZHOU, Oct. 29, 2009 - China agreed today to reopen its market to U.S. pork and live swine, remove barriers for American firms to China's growing clean energy market, and clamp down on Internet piracy at the 20th session of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) in Hangzhou, China, co-chaired by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk along with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack led the discussions on key agricultural issues.    » read more »

October 29, 2009 -- Washington -- The Honorable Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, today issued the following statement on China’s agreement to re-open the Chinese market to United States pork and live swine, consistent with science-based international standards.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the agreement at the conclusion of meetings with Chinese officials at the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.    » read more »

Move Will Deliver Needed Boost to North Dakota Producers, Senator says

October 29, 2009 -- Washington, DC – Senator Kent Conrad was joined by North Dakota’s pork producers in cheering a decision today that will allow U.S. pork products to re-enter the Chinese market.

“Pork producers in North Dakota and all across the country have been hurt by the baseless ban of their products in China,” Senators Conrad said. “The decision to reopen this market to trade will benefit pork producers in North Dakota and across the nation.”

Senator Conrad, along with 23 of his colleagues, sent a letter earlier this month calling on the Chinese government to end the ban on American pork and pork products.    » read more »

October 15, 2009 -- DETROIT—A federal indictment was unsealed late yesterday in Detroit charging Xiang Dong Yu, aka Mike Yu, 47, of Beijing, China, with theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets and unauthorized access to a protected computer, announced Terrence Berg, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Yu was arrested on Oct. 14, 2009 at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport upon entering the United States from China. Berg was joined in the announcement by Andrew G. Arena, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI.    » read more »

October 16, 2009 -- (Washington D.C.) - The Congressional-Executive Commission on China published its 2009 Annual Report on October 14. The Commission was created by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China. The full text of this year’s report is available at www.cecc.gov, along with a PDF containing case records of 1,279 political prisoners currently detained or imprisoned in China.    » read more »

Washington, DC (Oct. 15, 2009) – The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) began their investigation of the trade case filings by the United Steelworkers (USW) and three domestic companies against coated paper imports from China and Indonesia at a preliminary hearing yesterday.

“We have seen thousands of job losses by multiple plant shutdowns in coated paper manufacturing caused by imports since the period examined in the last petition to enforce fair trade rules against the flood of subsidized imports from Asia,” said Leo W. Gerard, USW international president.    » read more »

Report Fails to Indicate Chinese Currency Manipulation

October 15, 2009 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) issued the following statement in response to today’s release of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s semiannual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies:

“China’s unfair currency manipulation hurts Ohio manufacturers and workers. For the better part of this decade, the federal government has ignored this unfair advantage while our trade deficit with China has grown from $85 billion in 1999 to $268 billion in 2008. As a result, we have lost more than four million manufacturing jobs. Best estimates show that currency manipulation amounts to a 40 percent subsidy for Chinese products.    » read more »

Call for Stricter Guidelines

14 October 2009 -- In October 2006, the military affairs journal Jane's Intelligence Weekly reported that U.S. Army officials detected a “sudden decline” in the effectiveness of some its spy satellites throughout the fall as they passed over China.

Before receiving an explanation from the Chinese military, initial fears were that the country had intentionally aimed ground-based lasers at the U.S. satellites to temporally disrupt their ability to collect information, or worse, materially damage them.

Was this a hostile attempt by the Chinese to test its laser anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, obstructing U.S. military reconnaissance missions in Low Earth Orbit?    » read more »

Ford Motor Company's joint-ventures and wholly-owned entities in China delivered record sales of 119,338 units in the third quarter, an increase of 79 percent from a year ago

SHANGHAI, Oct. 13, 2009 – Ford Motor Company continued its record growth in China in the third quarter, with sales of its joint-ventures and wholly-owned entities increasing 79 percent over the same period last year, to 119,338 units. Through the first nine months of the year, its sales rose 32 percent to 316,639 units.    » read more »