Stocks on the ChiNext Plunged

Stocks traded on the ChiNext startup board in Shenzhen yesterday plunged after surging heavily on their October 30th debut, challenging the ability of regulators to control volatility in the new bourse.

All but three of the 28 new stocks on ChiNext declined. Twenty scrips dropped to their daily limits of 10 percent yesterday, the second day of trading.

Huayi Brothers Media Corporation, backed by Alibaba Group Holdings' Chairman Ma Yun and director Feng Xiaogang, tumbled to the daily 10-percent limit, to 63.73 yuan after rallying 148 percent on Friday.

Beijing Toread Outdoor Products, a retailer of camping and outdoor equipment, slumped 10 percent to 45.06 yuan after jumping 153 percent on its debut day.

But health-related shares rose after Premier Wen Jiabao warned about the spread of H1N1 influenza.
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China has made remarkable achievements in the past decade thanks to its huge trade surplus and now it turns to gain momentum from domestic demand. That's according to Jim O'Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, speaking yesterday.

O'Neil, who first dubbed China, India, Russia and Brazil "Bric" in 2001, told Xinhua that China could be "the largest economy in the world" in 2027 with its GDP of 21 trillion U.S. dollars, and its consumption could be 10 trillion dollars, or nearly 50 percent of the whole GDP.

He said Goldman Sachs expects China's GDP to increase by 9.4 percent and its domestic demand up 13.3 percent this year, and in 2010 both figures could be even bigger.
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The receipts of Hong Kong's restaurants sector in the third quarter were worth 19.9 billion HK dollars – around 2.6 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.5 percent year on year, according to provisional statistics released yesterday.

The value of restaurant purchases also decreased by 2.6 percent to 6.9 billion HK dollars or 884.6 million U.S. dollars, according the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government announced.

After netting out the effect of price changes, total restaurant receipts fell by 1.2 percent year on year in volume in the third quarter.
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The China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group announced yesterday that it has signed contracts with 30 private enterprises to purchase 1 billion yuan or 146 million U.S. dollars worth of nuclear power equipment.

This is the first time that CGN, the only nuclear power enterprise in China with 129.8-billion-yuan gross asset, has purchased from domestic private sector, according to Huang Yicai, the manager of the CGN Zhejiang Province nuclear power project.

Most of the nuclear power equipment in China is manufactured by state-owned enterprises whose capacity has become inadequate with the rapid development of the clean energy industry.


China's Internet Industry Expected to Grow Despite Financial Crisis

The major question lingering over the opening of the 2009 China Internet Conference in Beijing is how China's internet industry has handled the economic crisis. While statistics show that China's online sector is continuing to grow at a rapid pace, officials are watching the industry closely to make sure its development remains stable.