Economy/Resources - 161. page

According to the periodical Qiushi, China’s economy faces three major risks. Therefore, it is important for China to “guard against deflation, the flight of venture capital, and debt default. It must prevent them from resonating together which would amplify their negative impact on the economy.” 

Qiushi published a commentary on the Chinese economy titled, “Have Confidence, Patience and Determination.” 

Well-known Chinese news site Sohu recently reported that the top management at Wal-Mart China met recently with officials from the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). The management called for the scope of government monitoring of food labeling to be extended. Currently the CFDA only regulates retailers on food labeling but not manufacturers. In the past few years, a number of retailers have run into trouble because they were held responsible for the unsafe food that suppliers had provided. The best effort retailers can make for now is to ensure that the government correctly licenses these suppliers. The food quality is largely dependent on the supplier’s honesty. Retailers have been inspecting a certain number of samples of the food that the manufacturers supply, but this by no means covers the full range of the products they offer in stores. It is widely believed that end-to-end food safety control is required, especially on the source side, which includes suppliers. The cost for retailers to do a full-scale food inspection would be too high and unreasonable.

Source: Sohu.com, April 17, 2014
http://business.sohu.com/20140417/n398411268.shtml

BBC Chinese reported that the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection recently released a research report which indicated that 16.1 percent of China’s land and 19.4 percent of China’s arable land are polluted. The scope of the research on which the report was based was sizeable, covering two thirds of all land in Mainland China. The research showed that the three heavy metals of cadmium, nickel, and arsenic are the primary pollutants in China’s soil. The Ministry said in an announcement that it is very hard to remain optimistic about the quality of China’s soil. Both the government and the Chinese people are worried about the irreparable damage brought about by China’s rapid industrialization process. The government is in the process of coming up with more comprehensive environmental protection laws. The research report also concluded that there are three primary heavy industry regions that have suffered the most severe damage from pollution. They are the Yangtze River Delta Area on the east coast, the Zhujiang Delta Area in the south, and the traditional heavy industry base in Northeastern China.

Source: BBC Chinese, April 18, 2014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/science/2014/04/140418_china_soil_contaminated.shtml

According to Securities Daily, as a result of China’s economic downturn and the severe drop in the demand for coal, coal prices have continued to fall. This factor, along with an increase in coal imports, has resulted in a decline in the price of domestic coal and a serious excessive capacity. In Erdos, Inner Mongolia which is highly dependent on the development of coal resources, the daily sales of coal from some coal mines is less than one-tenth of the normal amount of sales. The slump in the coal industry is seriously affecting the revenue from real estate and hotels, as well as tax revenue. The tax revenue from one coal district declined from 200 million yuan per month to 20 million per month. 

During the economic downturn in China, stores for sporting goods with brand names faced their second round of closures in two years. In 2013, six well-known brand name sporting goods closed over 3,000 of their stores; inventories reached 3.1 billion yuan in 2013.