And here it finally is -- the video that Warren Buffett sent in to CCTV to be played at the spring festival gala -- in all its 45-second glory! To send his new year's greetings to 1.3 billion Chinese, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman strummed on his ukulele and sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in front of a room-sized model railroad. more ›

What the what?! Apparently Warrent Buffet has already sent in a video of himself singing and playing guitar for this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala, to be aired on a special web broadcast on New Year's Day (January 23.) more ›

It looks as if the dream of a Chinese-made electric car savior is in jeopardy. Responding to a poor showing in the first half of 2011, the Shenzhen-based BYD Automobile Co Ltd will reportedly lay-off up to 70 percent of its automotive sales division. Anonymous sources claim BYD will eventually reduce its sales workforce from its current 2600 to 800, with the first round of layoff claiming 1000 jobs. The Warren Buffett-backed automaker reported an 88.6 percent year-on-year profit decrease in the first half, with revenue falling 10.77 in the same period. Total sales for BYD during the first six months dropped by 23 percent to 220,000 units, leading to a market share decrease from 6.34 percent in 2010 to 4.69 percent. The number is a far cry from meeting the 800,000 units BYD was hoping to sell in 2011. more ›

• After reporting that The Office was on its way to China, we offered you an insight on what you could expect.
• We were rather surprised that the Henan Airline investigation revealed that some 200 airline pilots have fake resumes and flying histories. We were even more surprised that these pilots have been allowed back on the flight deck! No matter, we always preferred trains anyway...
• A rather LARGE can of worms was opened when we featured Morrissey in our ‘Quote of the Day’. He referred to Chinese being a ‘subspecies’, see what fellow readers thought here.

Perhaps even more interesting than the fact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the richest people in the world, were coming to China as part of their Billionaire's Pledge program was the reaction of the Chinese to their call: silence and suspicion. Invitations to join a Sept 29 banquet in Beijing for China's super-rich have gone largely unanswered. more ›

• A crowd-sourced translation of The Lost Symbol: is this copyright infringement? [Danwei] "His last book, The Da Vinci Code, was wildly popular in China and propelled translations of his earlier novels onto bestseller lists as well. The latest thriller, which follows the further adventures of intrepid symbologist Robert Langdon, should sell well over here too. Once it's translated, that is. People's Literature Publishing House expects a Chinese edition to be on shelves sometime in 2010. Chinese Internet users can't wait that long, so Yeeyan, a collaborative translation website, has launched a project to crowd-source the translation of The Lost Symbol into Chinese. They've already posted the prologue and the first two chapters."
• Baidu CEO touts growth of China's search engine [Cnet News] "Baidu CEO Robin Li, on a rare visit to Silicon Valley Wednesday, explained the rise of his company's search engine in China before a group of students more interested in entrepreneurial tips than censorship. Li ended a trip to the U.S. Wednesday at Stanford University, speaking to a crowd of several hundred students about the lessons he learned shepherding Baidu through the first dot-com bust and growing it into the Google of China. Baidu has 76 percent of the Chinese search market, he said, which consists of 338 million Internet users: larger than the entire population of the U.S."
• 11 indicted over factory brawl in S China [Xinhua] "Eleven people involved in a toy factory brawl on June 26 that left two employees dead in south China's Guangdong Province have been indicted for intentional injury and group affray, procurators said Wednesday. Xiao Jianhua and four other suspects were indicted for intentionally assaulting people during the Xuri Toy Factory brawl, the Shaoguan Municipal People's Procuratorate said."

Hong Kong investment fund manager Zhao Danyang (赵丹阳) made the winning bid of $2.11 million in a charity auction on Friday for the privilege of having lunch with Warren Buffett. Zhao, the general manager of Pureheart Asset Management, won the right to dine with Buffett, now chairman of conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway, on a day of his choosing at the famous Manhattan steakhouse Smith & Wollensky. Just who is this Zhao Danyang? An interview with Zhao conducted by Euromoney in 2006 describes him as "a refreshingly frank and down-to-earth figure in an industry still dominated by overseas-educated princelings and the politically connected elite." Tariq Ali of Street Capitalist reports that Zhao is a former factory owner who began his investing career in 1996. Ali points out that the philosophy of Zhao's first fund, the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, shows similarity to the ideas expressed by Buffett and Charlie Munger, vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Just how much knowledge will Zhao gain from his meal with Buffett, ranked the world's #1 billionaire by Forbes? Last year lunch with Buffett, which is an annual offering at the charity auction for the Glide Foundation, went for $650,000 to value investors Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier. Pabrai said it was "worth every penny." more ›