A worrisome trend is developing at China’s anti-monopoly regulator, which is showing a growing tendency to take far too long to make decisions on global M&A deals compared with regulators in other major markets. This time the Ministry of Commerce, which reviews all major global M&A under China’s anti-monopoly law, is creating delays for a Taiwanese deal that would see a merger between low-cost smartphone chip maker MediaTek (Taipei: 2454) and smaller rival MStar (Taipei: 3697). Read Full Post…

China has long been a favorite production base for toy makers like global leader Mattel (NYSE: MAT), which typically use the country to make products like Barbie dolls that they then export to their main western markets. But those same toy makers have traditionally ignored China as a market for their products, mostly because an older generation of Chinese parents saw no reason to pay a premium for such relatively expensive toys for their children.

But that reality is slowly changing as a younger generation grows up and doesn’t mind spending more money for quality toys bearing bigger, recognized brands names. That shifting situation has led a growing number of major global brands to enter the market, with Danish giant Lego becoming the latest with word that it plans to build its first Asia factory in China to support the rapidly growing market. (English article) Read Full Post…

I’d like to take a break from all the hard news stories out there to take a look at a softer piece of news that reflects the ever-changing landscape of China’s Internet sector. While smaller names like Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) and Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) have focused on maintaining their market values in the $1-$5 billion range, Internet search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) and online game leader Tencent (HKEx: 700) have been in the more enviable position of having valuations in the tens of billions of dollars, easily making them the biggest of China’s publicly traded web firms. Read Full Post…

We’ve been reading for quite a while about the growing rivalry between homegrown telecoms giants Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063), who are now taking their increasingly intense battle to Europe with a series of lawsuits. This latest development comes as both companies struggle with stagnating growth due a slowdown in the global telecoms equipment market over the last 2 years. Huawei’s rapid revenue growth has dropped sharply due to the slowdown, and ZTE fell into the red at the end of last year as many customers deferred their payments. Read Full Post…

After writing yesterday about CCTV’s recent series of exposes on big companies that deceive consumers, we’re getting an interesting postscript about the biggest of those attacks, which came against US electronics giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). The postscript involves an embarrassing revelation about CCTV itself, which apparently used its own deceptive tactics to give its expose more impact. The Apple attack was part of a bigger series of televised CCTV reports exposing deceptive business practices. The reports ran last week on March 15, which is Consumer Rights Day. Read Full Post…

China’s annual National People’s Congress has finally ended in Beijing after 2 weeks of nonstop meetings and appointments, the latest of which demonstrates the kind of musical chairs games that occur between government regulators and top executives of state-owned enterprises. The latest of those games took place over the weekend, when Bank of China (HKEx: 3988; Shanghai: 601988) announced that its chairman Xiao Gang had resigned for unexplained reasons. (company announcement) Simultaneously, Chinese media reported that Xiao had been named as the new head of China’s securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission or CSRC. (English article)

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