China's middle class is projected to reach 40% of the population in 2020, twice the proportion at the turn of the century, according to the International City Development Report released jointly by the Social Sciences Academic Press and Shanghai Academy of Social Science more ›

We heard the bad news yesterday -- Weibo users on Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent have until March 16th to register with their real names and identities, failing which they will no longer be able to post or retweet updates. Sina Weibo, the market leader in the microblogging segment, appears to be already feeling the heat. more ›

Shanghai's dishonest internet users may be punished with restrictions on certain business activities in real life, a senior official announced on Wednesday. more ›

Chinese nationals accounted for the largest share of luxury goods sales in overseas markets during the month of January, with total sales of approximately $7.2 billion USD recently. The amount sees the a nearly 30 percent increase from the same period last year, when Chinese on vacation spent $5.6 billion USD on luxury items. more ›

Shanghai will become the world center of yuan trading, clearing and pricing by 2015, according to a new plan published by the National Development and Reform Commission. The plan will see the total value of financial market transactions nearly tripling to 1,000 trillion yuan (US$158 trillion). more ›

Shanghai has topped the Brookings Institution's list of the world's 200 largest metropolitan areas who collectively comprise almost half the world's economic activity. more ›

The time isn't ripe for Shanghai's financial hub to allow foreign companies into its equity market, according to Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng. The statement marks a delay of two months in China's aspirations to become a global financial powerhouse by 2020. more ›

China has taken over the United States as Brazil's largest trading partner, but not everyone in the South American country is happy. Brazilian fishing companies are feeling the heat from cheap Chinese imports and some of them have gone under. more ›

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BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries have contributed to almost half of global growth in the past decade, but their high times may be over as they face an aging labor market. The major effects in demographics are already beginning to be seen in China, where its one child policy is holding itself back from growing a strong young labor force, thus raising doubts on how to fund its growing pension bill. more ›

Mr Shangguan Junle, the chairman of Haomen Jipin Restaurants, wrote on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo last week that he had decided to stop serving shark's fin from the beginning of this year to 'protect sharks and the environment'. But the 34-year-old entrepreneur felt it would be too wasteful to throw away his remaining stock. more ›

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“Youku think they can live on free traffic without paying for the content,” said Tudou CEO Gary Wang in a statement, “and they are trying to hide the fact that they are actually not as competitive as they pretend to be.” more ›

Here's more on the DaVinci media extortion case to which real estate mogul Pan Shiyi recently alluded to. The Singapore-based furniture company has accused a CCTV journalist by the name of Li Wenxue (李文学) of fabricating his reports and extorting 1 million yuan from the firm. Ho Aili, Beijing correspondent of the Straits Times, writes: more ›

India has summoned China's deputy chief of mission in New Delhi to lodge its protest over the courtroom manhandling of a diabetic Indian diplomat S Balachandran in Yiwu which resulted in his fainting more ›

"I look at the DaVinci case and I'm reminded of something that happened over a decade ago. At that time, we were often extorted by the media. They'd often say to us: The negative reports we have prepared for you have all been typeset and are ready for print. Bring your ad dollars in exchange for them. We were miserable. Eventually we published two books in which we detailed all our mistakes, customer complaints and criticisms from other industry insiders -- and the extorting journalists stopped appearing." more ›

James T. Areddy of the Wall Street Journal paid a visit to some of Shanghai's most popular North Korean restaurants following news of the demise of the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. Here's what he found more ›

Most of you will probably have never heard of Hong Kong jeweller Chow Tai Fook, but the reality is that this little known company (outside of China anyway) is about twice as big as Tiffany. The company has raised some $2 billion in its IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange. more ›

"For an explosion scene today, we laid over a kilometre of explosives and called up more than a thousand extras, as well as a Chinese aerial video company. The result was a catastrophe as they couldn't even maintain a steady hover height. This has taught me a lesson -- you may want to give domestic companies a platform, but they won't give you face, and eventually you'll still have to do a u-turn and get the laowais in. If you don't have the right techniques, you can practise, but what's frightening is that these guys will tell you they can do anything, and then mess it up when the big moment comes. Right, I'll just suck it up. Next time, I won't believe anyone again." more ›

iPad news-reading application Flipboard is partnering with Sina Weibo and Renren for its debut in China, its first overseas destination. Here's why more ›

DaVinci, the furniture chain that was accused of labelling its locally sourced products as being "Made in Italy" and which later ran one nightmare of a press conference, has closed all four of its outlets in Shanghai. more ›

Phil Inman argues on The Guardian: "China is a one-trick pony. Without the US and Europe to soak up its factory output, it doesn't have a growth plan. Except that isn't quite true. Like Japan in the 1980s and the UK in the decade before the boom, it has a liking for property investment. As a sideline to its enormous manufacturing sector, there is an ever-expanding apartment and office-building craze." more ›

The current wave of strikes and demonstrations continued this week, as more than 100 workers blocking a Tesco store in the city of Jinhua in Zhejiang province. Shoppers were prevented from entering the shop by the staff, who boldly blocked and barricaded the entrances and exits, while holding up banners with messages, including ''We want to protect our rights...Return our blood and sweat money.'' more ›

Chinese automaker Chery has entered a 50-50 joint venture with investment firm Israel Corp to launch Qoros, a new made-in-China car brand which aims to “combine German design quality and craftsmanship with Japanese convenience and functionality”. Former Volkswagen AG executive Volker Steinwascher will serve as vice chairman of the new brand which aims to generate annual sales of about 150,000 vehicles a year by 2016, half of which will be exported to Europe. more ›

"I wake up this morning and find the radio, TV and print media all going on and on about how the property market is entering a winter season as real estate prices tumble. I don't understand -- are these macroeconomic adjustments here to help stabilise economic development, or are they here just to make property prices fall? Is there any country in history that has managed to grow its economy stably after a property bust?" more ›

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The number of weibo users has now reached 300mln, according to the 11th China Cybermedia Forum. more ›