by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang
By Gaurav Sharma,
Beijing : Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang on Sunday was re-elected for his second five-year term at the ongoing parliament session.
Li is the second ranking leader in China after President Xi Jinping who has emerged as the most powerful leader after Mao Zedong.
Li was nominated for the premiership by Xi.
Li, who became premier in 2013, heads the State Council, China’s Cabinet.
The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress — China’s ceremonial parliament – is on during which a major reshuffle in the government was announced.
Besides Li, Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia were elected as the Vice Chairmen of the Central Military Commission headed by Xi. The body controls the Chinese Army.
Yang Xiaodu was appointed as the chief of new and super powerful anti-graft body, the National Supervisory Commission.
The body was set up by merging the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and various other government anti-corruption units.
Until last year, CCDI was headed by Wang Qishan, trusted aide of Xi.
Wang arguably became the most feared man in China due to the massive crackdown by the agency.
Over 1.5 million including top politicians and generals have been punished in the drive launched by Xi in 2013.
On Saturday, Wang was appointed the Vice President while Xi was re-elected President.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Pakistan is in talks with a Chinese financial institution to obtain $1 billion as a foreign commercial loan, a media report said on Tuesday.
The report in the Express Tribune said that amid declining foreign exchange reserves, the Pakistan government was in the process of scrutinising the loan term sheets and the agreement between the two nations was expected to be reached in March.
Pakistan has already obtained $1 billion as foreign commercial loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in the past three months.
During the last fiscal year, the Pakistan government had borrowed $2.3 billion from three Chinese financial institutions, according to the Finance Ministry publication.
In addition to the borrowing, Pakistan was also expecting to receive $200 million from a Chinese bank immediately to support foreign currency reserves, the daily reported citing sources.
The report said that the Pakistan government had shifted its focus towards easy but relatively expensive sources of financing.
The decision to get $1 billion was taken after the government in February called off the $1-billion Eurobond. The government was ready to float the bond but reversed the decision after financial advisers informed it that the 10-year bond may cost it 7.3 per cent, the sources told the daily.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, World
By Gaurav Sharma,
Beijing : China on Monday hiked its defence spending to 8.1 per cent of its GDP, pegging its economic growth at 6.5 per cent in 2018.
China’s defence budget in 2017 was 7 per cent of the country’s GDP and has been in single digit since 2013, but this year’s military spending is the highest in three years. The budget of $175 billion is three times higher than India’s defence spending.
China’s economy, which grew in double-digit for three-decades, has slowed down over the years.
The economic target was announced by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang when he delivered the work report to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s Parliament which opened on Monday.
China has the world’s largest standing Army and spends the most on defence after the US in the world. President Xi Jinping has vowed to make the Chinese Army a modern force by cutting down its troops.
This was mentioned by Li while delivering the work report at the Great Hall where nearly 3,000 Chinese lawmakers had gathered.
“We have completed the task of reducing the armed by 300,000 troops,” Li said at the opening session of the NPC.
The two-week Parliament session will be a historic one as the rubber-stamp legislature will remove the two-term cap on the Chinese presidency, giving Xi unfettered power and license to rule until he retires or dies.
The party’s powerful Central Committee in February passed a proposal to remove the two-term cap on Chinese presidency — a move that has startled the world.
China’s revered leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980s had restricted the presidential five-year tenure to two to avoid the perils which the cult around Mao Zedong had brought.
In 2017, at the Communist Party’s once in a five-year meet, Xi began his second five-term without announcing his successors, a convention his predecessor Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin had followed.
The move was widely speculated as Xi’s desire to rule the country of 1.4 billion beyond the customary 10 years.
Xi is China’s most powerful leader since Mao. He has been conferred with the status of “core”, an honorific given only to Mao and Deng.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Investing, Property, Venture Capital, World
Beijing : China has restricted the investments its companies can make overseas in several sectors including property, hotels and equity investment funds while easing curbs in sectors like electricity and telecoms, it was reported on Monday.
The National Development and Reform Commission has updated its list of “sensitive sectors” in which investment in other countries will be restricted. The new list will be effective from March 1, the People’s Daily reported.
Under the new regulation, Chinese companies wanting to invest overseas in projects concerning telecom, large-scale land development, electric mains and power grids will only need to complete record filings with the authorities like other common sectors without the need for special official approval.
These sectors have been removed from the “sensitive sectors” list for the first time since 2014.
Among the sectors added to the list by the Commission were the arms industry, investment in property, hotels, cinemas, entertainment, sports clubs and equity investment funds, Efe news cited the daily as saying.
Cross-border water resource development and news media were retained on the list. The decision was part of the government’s desire to reduce “irrational investment” overseas.
China’s non-financial outbound direct investment in 2017 fell 29.4 per cent year-on-year to $120.08 billion.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Beijing : Eighty-five persons were jailed for upto 13 years for a telecom fraud using fake medical advertisements to collect contact details in China’s Mongolia region, a court said on Friday.
The case surfaced after a resident in Ordos reported to police that he was cheated out of $5,560 in the suspected fraud in July 2016.
Following a probe, the police arrested the suspects in November 2016, Xinhua news agency reported.
The criminals had published fake medical advertisements to collect contact information of the victims.
They contacted them by mobile or social networking platforms, pretending to be relatives or students of medical workers, and convinced them to buy false healthcare or food products.
From mid-June to November 2016, more than 8,900 victims were cheated out of over $1.6 million.
Three of the accused were sentenced to 11 to 13 years in prison, while another 82 were given prison terms of between one and six years.
—IANS
