China Economic News

A uniqueness of China...  

China punishes 249 "lazy" officials for unspent funds
29 Sep 2015 16:41
[BEIJING] China has punished 249 officials for laziness, exemplified by failure to spend government funds, delays to projects and sitting on land earmarked for development, as the government wages war on graft, state news agency Xinhua said.

Spooked by China's biggest-ever crackdown on corruption, many officials have preferred in the past 18 months to dither over approvals for major projects, so as to avoid drawing the scrutiny of anti-graft officials.

That has annoyed Beijing, which has scolded procrastinating local governments for their laziness and repeatedly threatened to punish them by recalling their untouched budgets.

Xinhua said the 249 officials in 24 provinces, regions or cities had been sacked, or given administrative demotions or warnings after an investigation running from the end of May until the middle of June.
...
REUTERS

Source: Business Times Breaking News

(29-09-2015, 08:36 PM)CityFarmer Wrote: A uniqueness of China...  

China punishes 249 "lazy" officials for unspent funds
29 Sep 2015 16:41
[BEIJING] China has punished 249 officials for laziness, exemplified by failure to spend government funds, delays to projects and sitting on land earmarked for development, as the government wages war on graft, state news agency Xinhua said.

Spooked by China's biggest-ever crackdown on corruption, many officials have preferred in the past 18 months to dither over approvals for major projects, so as to avoid drawing the scrutiny of anti-graft officials.

That has annoyed Beijing, which has scolded procrastinating local governments for their laziness and repeatedly threatened to punish them by recalling their untouched budgets.

Xinhua said the 249 officials in 24 provinces, regions or cities had been sacked, or given administrative demotions or warnings after an investigation running from the end of May until the middle of June.
...
REUTERS

Source: Business Times Breaking News

better to punished for not using funds than get "head chop" or "gun shot" for corruption.

(29-09-2015, 08:36 PM)CityFarmer Wrote: A uniqueness of China...  

China punishes 249 "lazy" officials for unspent funds
29 Sep 2015 16:41
[BEIJING] China has punished 249 officials for laziness, exemplified by failure to spend government funds, delays to projects and sitting on land earmarked for development, as the government wages war on graft, state news agency Xinhua said.

Spooked by China's biggest-ever crackdown on corruption, many officials have preferred in the past 18 months to dither over approvals for major projects, so as to avoid drawing the scrutiny of anti-graft officials.

That has annoyed Beijing, which has scolded procrastinating local governments for their laziness and repeatedly threatened to punish them by recalling their untouched budgets.

Xinhua said the 249 officials in 24 provinces, regions or cities had been sacked, or given administrative demotions or warnings after an investigation running from the end of May until the middle of June.
...
REUTERS

Source: Business Times Breaking News

I don't think this is unique to China. Poor forecasting skill will surely have an impact on any Perm Sec's performance appraisal.

(29-09-2015, 10:56 PM)touzi Wrote:

(29-09-2015, 08:36 PM)CityFarmer Wrote: A uniqueness of China...  

China punishes 249 "lazy" officials for unspent funds
29 Sep 2015 16:41
[BEIJING] China has punished 249 officials for laziness, exemplified by failure to spend government funds, delays to projects and sitting on land earmarked for development, as the government wages war on graft, state news agency Xinhua said.

Spooked by China's biggest-ever crackdown on corruption, many officials have preferred in the past 18 months to dither over approvals for major projects, so as to avoid drawing the scrutiny of anti-graft officials.

That has annoyed Beijing, which has scolded procrastinating local governments for their laziness and repeatedly threatened to punish them by recalling their untouched budgets.

Xinhua said the 249 officials in 24 provinces, regions or cities had been sacked, or given administrative demotions or warnings after an investigation running from the end of May until the middle of June.
...
REUTERS

Source: Business Times Breaking News

I don't think this is unique to China. Poor forecasting skill will surely have an impact on any Perm Sec's performance appraisal.

I reckon, it is not poor forecasting skill or execution performance, but a way to "protest" to Beijing gov. I believe Singapore Perm Secs, should have better means to "protest" than doing nothing...

2015.09.27文茜的世界財經周報／習近平訪美　尋求中美關係鬥而不破的軟著陸
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Eh8vZhfdms

China state company research head eyes Temasek model, not Russia

BEIJING (Oct 2): China’s latest plan to shake up the nation’s bloated state-owned enterprises has drawn inspiration from a familiar role model: Singapore.

The Beijing-based State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission has maintained "close contacts" with Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and developed an "exchange mechanism" to learn from the government-owned investment company, Chu Xuping, the head of SASAC’s research center, said in a written interview with Bloomberg.

Singapore’s model is alluring to President Xi Jinping’s government, which wants to increase private ownership while avoiding the kind of mass privatisation rapidly rolled out by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The Russian sell-off in the 1990s saw state-owned enterprises end up in the hands of a small group of oligarchs.
...
http://www.theedgemarkets.com/sg/article...not-russia

(02-10-2015, 09:55 AM)CityFarmer Wrote: China state company research head eyes Temasek model, not Russia

BEIJING (Oct 2): China’s latest plan to shake up the nation’s bloated state-owned enterprises has drawn inspiration from a familiar role model: Singapore.

The Beijing-based State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission has maintained "close contacts" with Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and developed an "exchange mechanism" to learn from the government-owned investment company, Chu Xuping, the head of SASAC’s research center, said in a written interview with Bloomberg.

Singapore’s model is alluring to President Xi Jinping’s government, which wants to increase private ownership while avoiding the kind of mass privatisation rapidly rolled out by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The Russian sell-off in the 1990s saw state-owned enterprises end up in the hands of a small group of oligarchs.
...
http://www.theedgemarkets.com/sg/article...not-russia

Beijing looks at Temasek model in privatisation drive

   A pumpjack at a PetroChina oil field in Panjin, Liaoning province. Reform guidelines dictate that the Chinese Communist Party will strengthen its "leadership role" over state companies, which include oil giants PetroChina and Sinopec Group. PHOTO: REUTERS
Published
2 hours ago

It has developed an 'exchange mechanism' to learn from S'pore company, says official
BEIJING • China's latest plan to shake up the nation's bloated state- owned enterprises has drawn inspiration from a familiar role model: Singapore.
The Beijing-based State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac) has maintained "close contacts" with Singapore's Temasek Holdings and developed an "exchange mechanism" to learn from the investment company, Mr Chu Xuping, the head of SASAC's research centre, said in a written interview with Bloomberg.
Singapore's model is alluring to President Xi Jinping's government, which wants to increase private ownership while avoiding the kind of mass privatisation rapidly rolled out by former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. The Russian sell-off in the 1990s saw state- owned enterprises end up in the hands of a small group of oligarchs.

"China views the Russian experience as a case study of how not to do SOE reform," said Australian National University's Mr Paul Hubbard, who studies Chinese state firms. "China's leaders want the market to make SOEs a bigger, better and stronger foundation of China's socialist market economy."
China said last month it aims to categorise state-owned enterprises into commercial and public interest organisations, strengthen management and take a more hands- off approach to operations. The plan calls for selling shares of some assets and consolidating others, reforming unproductive "zombie enterprises" and encouraging a "blending" between state-owned capital and private investments.
At the same time, the reform guidelines dictate that the Communist Party of China will strengthen its "leadership role" over state companies, which range from oil giants PetroChina and Sinopec Group to nuclear power plants and the maker of Great Wall Wine.
"The party's organ has an irreplaceable role in corporate governance," wrote Mr Chu, who heads a research group of about 40 people to give policy advice to Sasac's leadership. "This is the key advantage of our state-owned enterprises that distinguish them from other types of enterprises."
Even as some state companies will introduce private capital, there's no contradiction between Communist Party leadership and "mixed ownership", Mr Chu said.
China has been reforming its inefficient state sector for more than three decades. In the late 1990s, then premier Zhu Rongji fired millions of state employees in a strategy known as "grabbing the big ones and letting go the small".
As part of that process, Sasac was created in 2003 to look after the biggest state-owned conglomerates. Bloomberg economist Fielding Chen estimates that if SOEs - with assets of 109 trillion yuan (S$24.5 trillion) - had expanded at the same pace as private firms in the first half, industrial production growth would have been 8.5 per cent year-on-year rather than 6.3 per cent, taking GDP growth to 8.2 per cent from 7 per cent.
Temasek, with assets of S$266 billion as of March 31, has Singa- pore's Finance Ministry as sole shareholder. It originally owned shares in former state- owned companies and began buying foreign equities in 2002. It is the biggest shareholder in about a third of the 30 members in the Straits Times Index, including Singapore Telecommunications, DBS Group Holdings and Singapore Airlines.
While Temasek offers China a useful model, it remains to be seen whether officials in Beijing will fully embrace it, said Mr Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
"Sasac has a penchant for intervention in firm decision making that is the opposite of the Temasek model," said Mr Lardy.
BLOOMBERG

• Oct 2 2015 at 10:45 AM 
   
  
  
•  Updated Oct 2 2015 at 5:57 PM 
  

Australian companies lead China's next boom: the grey market

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Concierges, indoor swimming pools, a golf simulator and restaurant strip. This is what China's next boom looks like and Australian companies are at the front door, writes Angus Grigg.

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[img=620x0]http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/j/z/o/i/v/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gjyyc1.png/1443772643312.jpg[/img]Julie Jackson, general manager of Aveo China at high-end retirement village Tide and Health Campus. Dave Tacon
by Angus Grigg
It's China's national day and on the outskirts of Shanghai, a group of senior citizens are wearing yellow cardboard crowns and singing happy birthday to their country.
There's cake and green tea on offer, as an elderly gentleman donates a jade-embossed Mahjong set to his new community.
The only thing breaking the cultural stereotype, among the sea of Chinese flags and quick-fire Mandarin being spoken, are pictures of kangaroos and koalas.
In addition, a raven-haired woman is attempting to speak Chinese with a distinctly Australian accent, before reverting to English and welcoming residents to their new home come late December. 
[img=620x0]http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/j/z/o/h/v/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1443746577526.jpg[/img]The ASX listed, Aveo Group, has a 30 per cent stake in the joint-venture company which owns the village and will operate the facility when it opens at the end of the year. Dave Tacon
"Our community is getting bigger every day," says Julie Jackson, the general manager of Aveo China. 
The community she refers to is the awkwardly translated "Tide and Health Campus", Shanghai's newest and arguably most sophisticated retirement village.
The presence of Jackson and Australia's most famous marsupials is no marketing gimmick, as this 1.5 billion yuan ($326 million) development is very much an Australian concept. 
The ASX-listed Aveo Group has a 30 per cent stake in the joint-venture company which owns the village and will operate the facility when it opens at the end of the year. 
[img=620x0]http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/j/z/o/i/d/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1443746549589.jpg[/img]A prospective buyer of a retirement village package is shown a model of Tide and Health Campus by a salesman. Dave Tacon


Aveo is among a host of Australian companies looking to profit from the rapidly ageing population in China, where a staggering 440 million people are forecast to be aged over 60 by the middle of this century. 
And while this giant elderly population will place huge burdens on the government and society, it is also being seen as one of the biggest opportunities for foreign companies in China since the construction boom ended nearly three years ago. 
Such is the optimism for the sector, business leaders now talk about China's health and aged care market the way they once did about iron ore and urbanisation. 
It's being labelled China's grey boom and for Australian companies there are opportunities in hospitals, aged-care facilities, vitamins, medical equipment and for the architectural firms required to build the new facilities. 

"The rhetoric of a decade ago is being replaced by the action of today," says Chris Straw, managing director of architectural firm ThomsonAdsett, which expects to have seven projects under way shortly in the country's health and ageing sector. 
For Aveo's Jackson, it's the combination of demographics, discretionary spending and accumulated household savings which makes China such an attractive proposition. 
"These are the indicators that have historically driven senior housing as an industry in other countries," she says. 
NOUVEAU RICHE

The great irony of this latest China boom is that few believed it would ever materialise. 
As the established Western powers contemplated the rise of China a decade ago, its rapidly ageing population was considered a major liability, rather than an opportunity to profit. 
Indeed, it was Australia's former prime minister John Howard who often proclaimed "China will get old before it gets rich". 
Howard was right about China getting old, but in the years since he left power it has become sufficiently rich to start paying for Western standard medical and aged care.
But while China may now have the money to pay for such services, it does not have the expertise, as ageing and, to a lesser extent, health were largely ignored in the rush to build roads, rail lines and apartments over the last decade. 
So China needs help and has turned to Australian expertise for guidance on how best to deal with its ageing population. In August, the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing described Australia as the "model" China should follow on aged-care.
"China's senior care sector has developed rapidly in recent years but products and services are in short supply," it said. 
The endorsement came after a concerted campaign by successive federal governments to sell Australia's aged-care offerings to China. 
Bureaucrats from the federal Department of Health and their counterparts in Social Services have hosted no less than five Chinese government delegations since the middle of last year, with a further visit planned in November.
And this traffic between Beijing and Canberra does not include the many Chinese government delegations which have called on state health departments, including the top Communist Party official from Shandong Province, Jiang Yikang, who visited last month.
It was no accident that he spent part of his day in Sydney at an aged-care home and in Adelaide inspected the state's Medical Research Institute, known affectionately as the "cheese grater" due to its futuristic design.
The intense interest in health and ageing from Chinese government officials is due to the sheer scale of the demographic challenge. 
China's National Bureau of Statistics forecasts the population aged over 60 will double over the next 35 years from 220 million today. That will be roughly 30 per cent of the population.
"This will impose a severe challenge to the country's economic structure, medical system and social services," the Ministry of Commerce says. 
The response to this challenge has been rapid and even generated a mini-building boom.
As the construction market slowed rapidly over the first eight months of the year, investment in social infrastructure, which includes aged-care facilities and hospitals, rose by 57 per cent to $15 billion. 
This rush is part of government efforts to increase the number of senior care beds from 4.9 million in 2013 to 9 million by the end of this year.
"Health and aged-care demand is exploding in China," ThomsonAdsett's Straw says. 
"And that demand is not going away."
SMART SOLUTIONS
Straw should know, as his Brisbane-based firm is the world's second largest when it comes to designing senior care facilities.
It is currently working on an aged-care centre in Beijing and dementia facility in Shanghai, and expects to be awarded at least five more jobs across China over the coming weeks.
The largest, according to Straw, is a 7000-person integrated retirement village in Wuhan, the central Chinese city which hugs the Yangtze River.
"It's far more than bricks and mortar," he says. "It's about smart solutions and design more than anything."
Among those also hoping to capitalise on this aged-care building boom is Melbourne-based Sapphire Care.
"We have been looking at China for some time because the numbers are just so compelling," says chairman Tony Battle, a former Credit Lyonnais banker turned aged-care entrepreneur. Sapphire, an unlisted public company, signed a heads of agreement with Chinese property developer Hsin Chong last week to see how aged-care facilities could be incorporated into its future projects.
"We are looking at how we might work together to develop an aged-care model suitable for China," Battle says.
"We are at the start of what will be a very long and detailed process."
Macquarie Capital is also playing in the space, having made an $US11 million ($14.3 million) investment in a high-end senior care facility in the city of Hangzhou, outside Shanghai.
It has teamed up with American outfit, China Senior Care, which is set to open its first facility later this year or early in 2016. Once the model is bedded down, it will look at other opportunities in the country.
"We are really at the beginning of the industry [in China]," founder of China Senior Care Mark Spitalnik says.
"The ageing population and the introduction of the one-child policy in 1979 means there are more and more seniors with less and less people to look after them."
Ramsay Health Care has similar ambitions in China, albeit on a far larger scale. It is close to completing a deal announced in May to take a 25 per cent equity stake in five hospitals in the western city of Chengdu for close to $US70 million.
"China has a large and ageing population with a burgeoning middle class and more recently, has developed a positive outlook on healthcare reforms," managing director Christopher Rex said when announcing the deal.
CULTURAL SHIFT
This positive outlook on health reform, which has allowed foreign and private operators into the space, has been accompanied by a large cultural shift in attitudes towards aged-care facilities or "assisted living" as they are now known.
While it was once considered unthinkable for parents to live away from their children, there is no other option for many due to the one-child policy.
If the traditional structure was maintained, one couple could be looking after four elders, as well as working and raising their own children.
For Wan Juan, it was not a case of being unable to look after her mother in Wuhan. Rather, the 89 year old wanted to be near friends. 
"My mother wanted to go there [the aged-care facility] because lots of her friends, who were also teachers, had moved in," she says via phone.
"She's having a good time, reading the newspaper and playing Mahjong."
But the retired teacher is one of the few in China to have secured a government-subsided place, which costs her just $550 a month for a room shared with a friend.
"There's now a very long waiting list," Wan says.
Such waiting lists have given the likes of Aveo the confidence to invest in its Shanghai development.
When completed, it will dwarf anything in Australia, with 2500 residents and more than 600 staff spread across 76 low-rise buildings.
And while it is based on Australian best practice, it is an aged-care centre with Chinese characteristics and pitched very much at the city's wealthy.
Situated on 10 hectares, the development has its own hotel, concierges, three indoor swimming pools, a golf simulator, a restaurant strip and even a lawn bowling green.
"There is nothing like this in Australia," Jackson says. 
That is reflected in the price.
The upfront cost, while cheaper than high-end offerings in Australia, is still expensive for a development which is an hour outside Shanghai in a former industrial area.
A studio apartment sells for 1.1 million yuan ($240,000) plus an annual service fee of 72,000 yuan.
For the largest three-bedroom apartment the price is 2.4 million yuan plus the service fee.
"There's no doubt it's a high-end offering but the quality of service and staff reflects this," says Jackson.
She says 60 per cent of the apartments have been sold and has begun tentatively thinking about future developments.
"If I was thinking like a Chinese person, I would say we could have 10 facilities over the next five years. If I was thinking like an Australian, then one more," Jackson says.
"We certainly want to duplicate the model, but we have to be successful here first."

demographics looking more and more like Japan liao.

(03-10-2015, 06:17 PM)BlueKelah Wrote: demographics looking more and more like Japan liao.

Japan still plodding along as well... Singapore oso fast becoming like one as well