China yesterday said industrial output is expected to rise 8 percent in the second quarter and exceed 10 percent in the second half of the year as stimulus measures kick in.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology forecast the second quarter would post a jump from the 15-year low of 5.1 percent growth seen in the first three months of the year.
“The overall situation in both heavy and light industries is turning positive,” the ministry said in a report on its Web site. “The rapid pace of decline in production in some regions and industries has already slowed, while companies become more adaptable to the economic downturn and market fluctuations.”
China’s eastern coastal regions, the powerhouse of the country’s economy, recorded 6.7 percent growth in industrial output last month, 3 percentage points higher than the first quarter, the report said.
“Reversing the downturn in industrial output growth should be placed as the top priority in economic plans ... [We] should continue to boost domestic demand to promote industrial output growth,” the report said.
Chinese officials are also bidding for a five-fold increase in the size of the Shenzhen economic zone, which helped set off the nation’s boom nearly three decades ago, state media reported yesterday.
The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) desperately needs more space to allow high-technology enterprises to develop, the China Daily reported, citing local officials.
“Legislators are working on the proposal to expand the scope of Shenzhen SEZ to the whole city, but it needs the approval of the State Council [Cabinet],” an unnamed official at the Shenzhen legislature told the paper.
If the plan is approved, it will allow an increase in the size of the zone from its current 396km² to just short of 2,000km², nearly the size of Luxembourg, the paper said.
Shenzhen authorities need to find space not just for businesses, but also for residential areas and therefore the area’s flagship enterprises are being seriously squeezed, the paper reported.
For example, telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies has decided to move its production base out of the zone to neighboring Longgang district, the paper said.
The Shenzhen SEZ was set up in 1980 along with three other zones that all offered lower taxes and less cumbersome bureaucratic procedures in order to attract foreign investors.
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Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Ministry of National Defense said today. Speaking in Taipei, ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections. China's military has yet to comment and has not confirmed it is carrying out any exercises. "The current scale is
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