Content about China

Trade probes targeting China are becoming more frequent and complicated, and dealing with trade frictions will be a long-term and challenging task, the Ministry of Commerce warned on Monday.

"The outlook of trade-remedy investigations targeting China is, on the whole, challenging this year, and exporters are facing a very complex trade environment," Song Heping, an official at the ministry's Bureau of Fair Trade for Imports and Exports, told a news briefing.

China will grow relatively quickly for a long time, and its market will be open and fair, President Xi Jinping said on Monday, soothing fears over the Chinese economy.

Meeting more than 30 foreign and domestic business leaders at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2013, Xi said China's market potential is huge thanks to the country's rapid agricultural modernization, industrialization and urbanization.

"China's economy will go upwards instead of downwards for a long time," Xi said.

The new fashion for an artistic portrait photo: Take it underwater. Zhang Xiaomei, a 20-something Shanghai native who works in the media industry, tried it out twice.

"It was a completely different experience," says Zhang of her first such experience last May. "You get the feeling that you're cut off from the rest of the world. But also it's romantic and like a fairy tale."

Even though only a few customers go to Xiao Huang-biao's food stand each day, the Taiwan native does not regret coming to the Chinese mainland to seek his fortune.

Xiao, 52, arrived on the mainland from his hometown of Kaohsiung five years ago. In 2012, he opened a snack stand selling southern Taiwan food in Pingtan county, Fujian province, where his wife comes from.

Information technology (IT) is all about innovation. Vish Iyer can’t agree more.

Mobility, social media and big data are all hot-button topics. Cloud computing frees up people from the desk, so an IT system can be managed even on the road. “For a bank, it could be payment via Internet banking or mobile phone,” says the high-flying corporate executive, dapper in a light purple shirt.

Will Europe’s debt problems continue to weigh on Asia’s growth prospects?

The European sovereign debt crisis will continue in 2013, albeit less intensely, and austerity policies have to be pursued.

As the EU27 represents broadly 30 percent of global trade, export-based economies in Asia will suffer.

Commodity prices will remain stable with global demand affected by the persisting effects of a negative shock in Europe. As a result, inflationary pressures should remain muted in Asia.

The reason why Adi Godrej’s current favorite in his stable of cars is an Audi is because his own business empire, the Godrej Group, doesn’t manufacture cars, yet.

The Indian billionaire — Forbes magazine estimates his net worth to be $9.24 billion, making him the 6th richest man in India — makes it a point to personally use all the consumer goods his 115-year-old conglomerate makes: From the locks that laid the foundation of the group’s fortunes in the 19th century, to fridges, washing machines and even the Godrej hair colors.

Despite a late-afternoon rally, Chinese stocks slumped to their lowest level in 2013 on Monday, with sectors such as aviation and hospitality hit hardest by the bird flu scare.

The market opened after the three-day holiday break down 1.31 percent on the previous close. Prices stabilized somewhat after the lunch break, with the Shanghai Composite Index closing at 2,211.59, down 0.62 percent from 2,225.30 on the last trading day before the holiday. Daily turnover reached 73.7 billion yuan ($11.9 billion), up from 68.8 billion yuan previously.

Xu Niansha submitted a simple but highly focused proposal in March as a new member of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top political advisory body.

He said the central government should help and support State-owned enterprises buy high technology from abroad.

A look at what Xu and his company, China National Machinery Industry Corp (Sinomach), is all about shows that his proposal is more than reasonable.

Trading of live poultry suspended following deaths, report Shan Juan and He Na in Beijing, and Wang Hongyi in Shanghai.

Few stalls were open on Sunday in Shanghai's Wanshang flower and bird market in the wake of deaths from the H7N9 strain of bird flu. Sunday is usually the busiest day of the week as bird lovers of all ages wander around and listen to the chorus of thousands of birds.

On April 6, the local government ordered the suspension of all trading in live poultry and pet birds, but so far there has been no official directive to close the market.

Despite the massive purchasing power Chinese tourists have shown overseas, a recent survey found travelers from China paid less than those from elsewhere for their hotel rooms in more than half of the countries contacted.

The report, conducted by hotels.com, a leading online accommodation booking website with almost 200,000 properties around the world, found most of the discounts in Europe, triggered by the troubled situation in the eurozone, according to Jessica Chuang, its senior marketing manager for Greater China.

The Confucius Institute of Kabul University reopened on Sunday after being closed for 18 months, marking the enhanced Sino-Afghan cultural exchanges.

Addressing the reopening ceremony, Xu Feihong, Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, congratulated the Confucius Institute on its comeback to this war-hit nation, saying it marks significant progress in relations between the two nations.