After US$10 Usless Brick, India's US$35 Tablet is a Copy of Chinese product

Indians and Indian government are always ambitious even their capability is low. Many readers may still remember India's US$10 computer project turned out to be a useless brick in early 2009. Indian government anounced to the world loudly that India designed a tablet of a price tag of US$35 in July 2010. The tablet news made the world astonish about India's innovation since the Union Minister for Human Resource Development of India showed the world a real thing.

But the bubble did not last long. Now the world know that India's US$35 tablet is actually HiVision's Speedpad, or a copy of it. HiVision is a Chinese company that displayed the Speedpad in CeBIT, 2010. The Hivision SpeedPad has a 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution LCD touchscreen, Samsung ARM11 800MHz processor, 2GB of storage, 256 DDR2 RAM and runs Android. It has WiFi b/g, external 3G, Bluetooth and GPS dongle connectivity and also features a 4200mAh battery good for 6 hours of use between charges. Other goodies include web browser, email, webcam and a few other choice applications. HiVison's Speedpad has a sale tag of less than US$100.

Innovative: India's TATA Nano can set fire on itself

TATA auto is one of India's top auto makers. When it released the super-mini, scooter-sized Nano "car" in 2009, Indians and some western media cheered for its "innovation" and bragged for its quality and claimed it would go to US and EU market soon.



Nano is far more than innovative in calling a big scooter a car. Beyound many's imagination, Nano can creatively sets fires on itself even when it is still brand new and parked on parking lot.

In the year of its release in 2009, three of the Nano "cars" were caught in flames. More important is that all while the cars were parked when the accidents happened. Tata Motors said that the three incidents were the result of a faulty switch placed near the steering wheel, but that those problems have been fixed.

Even TATA claimed it fixed problem, A brand new Tata Nano went up in flames only minutes after it was delivered to a customer again on March 22, 2010. Satish Sawant, an insurance broker, has become the latest in a growing string of Tata Nano customers to see his new car burning in flames at the roadside, 45 minutes after he bought his "car".

So far Tata had sold 26,000 Nano "cars", but 4 of them was caught in fire! That's really a high ratio

As a main auto maker and the biggest industrial conglomerate in India, TATA's quality is still so miserable. The lesson here is: Remember that India cannot make quality products. If you want to BBQ yourself, go to buy a Nano "car".

Analysis: Demise of India's IC manufacturing dreams

When India government and media are still loudly shouting about semiconductor industry, such as India gets $7 bn for Fab City, Industrial analysis found everything is just illusion. Here is a report from EETimes.

One word: India's voice is always louder than its action.

India's chip manufacturing dreams appear to be doomed as SemIndia's $3 billion-fab project is likely to die a premature death as will another fab planned by India Electronics Manufacturing Corp. (IEMC). In addition, Korean investor June Min's plan to set up India's first fab in Hyderabad has been abandoned in favor of making photovoltaic products.

India had made major strides in the last year, announcing a chip manufacturing policy. The incentive policy was intended to help launch state-of-the-art fabs in the country over the next few years.

But the high expectations here for a domestic chip industry have faded as financial realities reemerge. Both SemIndia's fab, which would use technology from Advanced Micro Devices, and IEMC's fab with partner Infineon Technologies, appear to be dead in the water.

Venture capital firm Sandalwood Partners, Wall Street fund Empire Capital Partners and contract electronics manufacturer Flextronics, which together have pumped more than $30 million into the SemIndia venture, are uncertain about SemIndia's fab strategy, according to sources close to the project.

"There are many uncertainties in the Indian context," said one industry source. "In particular, since the semiconductor industry is a very dynamic and cyclic—with periodic downturns and a highly intensive capital industry—it becomes imperative that any company involved in this area has to be able to manage its investments, capacity allocation, new factories and phasing out of the old technologies in a shorter timeframe.

"This is crucial to the survival and growth of the semi industry. It is not clear that it is yet possible to manage this dynamics in India," the industry source added.

Shifting gears
Despite the uncertainty, SemIndia's Systems unit is emerging as the company's flagship, and its manufacturing capability has bolstered the company's financial performance. Similarly, IEMC outlined revised plans focusing on the photovoltaic market where CEO Rajendra Singh is an expert.

The $25-billion conglomerate Reliance or other deep- pocketed suitors may also be considering a buyout of ailing chip makers like AMD, say industry observers.

Its investors have a simple strategy for SemIndia: From the start, grow SemIndia Systems into a profitable venture. It is the first Indian manufacturer to ship over 1 million ADSL2+ broadband modems in its first year of production. Annual revenues surpassed $25 million in 2007, and its run rate for 2008 is an estimated $80 million.

The Indian manufacturer has overtaken established companies such as D-Link, Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies that have long supplied Indian companies.

SemIndia Systems has also recorded substantial growth in less than two years, and investors are forecasting as much as 50-fold growth within the next three to four years if it sticks with back-end manufacturing rather than chip making.

"It is precisely because of this that SemIndia is attracting the attention of many funding institutions, and is likely to announce a substantial additional funding from a handful of U.S. VCs and Wall Street funds," a source said.

New plans
India's electronics market is expected to reach $363 billion by 2015, and domestic demand for semiconductors alone is forecast to reach $36 billion, according to market researcher Frost & Sullivan.

"Sometimes when you are too close to the project you are not able to see where you are going," said one investor. "That was precisely the case with the SemIndia project. Now, we have realized that we were wrong, and to straighten things out we are requesting for the company to change the business model."

IEMC executives have also shelved its fab plans. "We are not planning to set up a fab in India for the time being. We have other plans," said an IEMC executive who asked not to be named.

A key reason is soaring fab costs. The $3-billion investment which SemIndia envisaged in October 2005 now stands at $7 billion. And the question now is, why spend $7 billion when a company could buy an existing chipmaker for the same amount?

According to industry analyst Y. Shashidar, "India has to take smaller steps and move in a right direction. If Indian companies can buyout fabs, they should check out the technology and see whether their business plans could integrate" a fab.

Industry analysts also blame the Indian government's delayed and murky chip policy for the failure to launch a fab here. Policy makers were offering a special incentive package scheme to encourage fab investments, including a 25-percent subsidy on capital expenditures for manufacturing outside special economic zones and 20 percent inside these zones. "However, the form in which the government will provide this subsidy is unclear," financial advisor Deloitte concluded in an internal note on semiconductor investments in India.

Industry experts also wonder what an India chipmaker could offer the global market that Chinese manufacturers can't. With Intel Corp. planning a 65nm fab in China, most observers here agree with an IEMC executive who said India's "big fab story is truly dead."

Another report also found that India's semiconductor revenues fall short of forecast.

The revenues for semiconductors in India during 2006 have fallen short of the forecast of India Semiconductor Association (ISA) ô Frost & Sullivan study by 41 per cent.

The ISA-Frost & Sullivan semiconductor market report had forecast the revenues in the Indian total market to touch $3.8 billion and the total available market (TAM) revenues to touch $1.62 billion. However, the report update in 2007 estimated the actual revenues at $2.69 billion (total market revenues) and $1.26 billion (TAM).

The report update, released at the ISA Vision Summit 2008 on Monday, attributes the shortfall in revenues to the sharp decline in various semiconductors Average Selling Price (ASPs) in different end-user product categories.

Textile sector fails to gain from quota removal

I bet many reader still remember India's tout about India would pass China in textile industry. But the fact hits back again. This following is the news from The Times of India. . More information can be found on that website.

The dismantling of the quota system failed to work wonders for textile and clothing (T&C) exports from India while neighbouring China marched ahead, despite restricitve quotas imposed by major importers like the US and EU.

Quota system was dismantled in 2005 and India was counted among key beneficiaries. However, the survey clearly shows that China beat India in major markets like the US and EU, leaving much to be desired.

"Though the growth in our T&C exports to the world accelerated sharply to 30% in 2005, it reverted back to the trend levels in 2006 with a disappointing 10.5%. China, in contrast, continued to raise its already high share of global T&C exports, with growth accelerating from 21% in 2005 to 25% in 2006, despite restrictive quotas by the US and EU," the survey said.

India's share in the global T&C exports grew by just 0.7% to 3.7% between 2004 and 2006 just when China managed to increase its share by a big 6.3% to 27.2%.

The worrying trend continued for India in 2007 as well, if one looks at the US market. In January-November 2007, US imports of T&C from the world grew by only 3.8%, affecting imports from India that grew by only 2% though China again managed a robust 20.5% growth.

China builds world's largest press forge

CHENGDU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China has started the building of an 80,000-ton press forge in Deyang, the southwestern Sichuan Province, paving the way for making large planes, a longtime dream of the nation.

The project, with an investment of 1.517 billion yuan (204.7 million U.S. dollars), has won the approval of the National Development and Reform Commission and is expected to be the world's largest when it is finished in two and a half years, said Zeng Xiangdong, project director and vice general manager of China National Erzhong Group Co. on Friday.

A large die-hydraulic press forge is one of the key instruments in making jumbo planes. Only a few countries, including the United States, Russia and France, have such facilities, according to Zeng.

The current largest press forge is 75,000-tons and is owned by Russia. All the press forges currently in China are below 40,000 tons, which are unfit for making key parts of very large planes and hence hinder the development of the aviation industry, equipment and manufacturing.

Chen Xiaoci, vice director of the press forge project, said the machine is designed by China National Erzhong Group and built in the company's compound.

The company has produced more than 400,000 die-forgings during the past 30-odd years for China's aviation industry, used in all the models of Chinese airplanes.

China started to build very large aircraft in 1970, only two years after Airbus went into production, but the project was later shelved despite a promising start.

After a decades-long suspension, the central government last year revived the blueprint in the 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) in order to meet the country's growing demand for air travel.

To prepare for the very large plane project, China began building its own regional jet, the ARJ-21 -- meaning "advanced regional jet for the 21st century" -- in 2002.

Only the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and Spain currently have the ability to build very large aircraft, with the United State's Boeing and Europe's Airbus taking the lion's share of the international market.


Source.

Auto sales keep roaring In China

Automakers produced over three million automobiles in China from January to April, of which 2,934,000 units were sold, a year-on-year growth of 21.36 and 21.46 percent respectively, as shown in statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

More information can be obtained at Chinadaily

China's AVS codec gains more top-tier support

SHANGHAI — More top-tier chipmakers are offering support for a Chinese codec that will be used in the domestic IPTV, satellite and possibly the cable TV market.

Both Broadcom Corp. and Conexant Systems Inc. are working on chips for China's Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS). They join STMicroelectronics, which already supports the codec in software, and is spinning a hardware optimized version that will be ready by the fourth quarter.

In that same time period, one of Broadcom's 65-nanometer based products will include custom hardware accelerators to support AVS, said Aidan O'Rourke, a Broadcom executive in charge of IPTV products.

Conexant plans to have its silicon ready for sampling by the first quarter of 2008, a spokeswoman said. Texas Instruments is also able to offer DSP-based support.

A handful of Chinese chip companies are also targeting AVS for set-top boxes. SVA Co and Beijing-based United Source Coding Co. have developed an encoder and Longjing Microelectronics Co., Grandview Semiconductor, and Celestial Semiconductor are working on decoders.


Source: EETimes

Shanghai builds China's biggest container ship

Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Group Corporation, built a container ship capable of carrying 8,530 20-foot containers, making China the fourth country in the world capable of creating such container ships after South Korea, Japan and Denmark.

With a loading capacity of 101,000 tons, the 334-meter-long ship only needs one helmsman and is equipped with four electricity generators.

It is one of the five 8,530-TEU-ships the company is building for China Shipping Container Lines Co. Ltd. The company will also build four such ships for Greek shipping company Costamare.

Source: Shanghai Daily:

26 of 29 Crashed Fighters Had Been Touched by Indian HAL

In a damning indictment of state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), parliament was informed Wednesday that 26 of the 29 combat aircraft that crashed in the past three years had been manufactured, overhauled or upgraded by the company.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) operated all the 26 aircraft, which had 40-50 percent of their operational life left when they crashed, Defence Minister A.K. Antony said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

The other three aircraft belonged to the Indian Navy, which has its own repair and maintenance facilities independent of HAL.

Giving details, Antony said the IAF had lost eight MiG-21s, six Jaguars, four MiG-27s, four Mirages, three MiG-29s, and one Bison - an upgraded version of the MiG-21 during 2004-05 and 2006-07.

The Indian Navy lost three Sea Harriers during this period.

During 1992-2004, Antony said, HAL had manufactured two MiG-21s and overhauled eight, of which eight had crashed. In addition, the company had overhauled a Bison and upgraded another, of which one crashed.

In the case of the Jaguars, the company had manufactured three and overhauled five, of which six crashed.

In the case of the Mirages, HAL had overhauled four, all of which had crashed.

In the case of the MiG-27, HAL had manufactured three and overhauled a similar number, of which four crashed.

As for the MiG-29, HAL had overhauled three, all of which crashed.

Of the 29 crashes, 13 had occurred in 2004-05, and eight each in the subsequent two years.


Sorry for India's quality.

Source: http://www.newkerala.com/news5.php?action=fullnews&id=27446

China reports its largest oil find in four decades

A huge PetroChina (0857) discovery in Bohai Bay has increased the nation's oil reserves by one fifth, pushed China past Libya to ninth in the world's oil reserve rankings and significantly boosted the oil giant's share price and analysts' outlook.
The surging share price pushed PetroChina to overtake BP to become the world's third-largest oil company by market capitalization, after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

But even though Premier Wen Jiabao called the find "the most encouraging discovery in over 40 years" - giving him a "sleepless night" - the high cost of development and the speed that oil can be obtained from the field are a concern.
(Source)


Other sources said that the discovery boasted China's oil reserves by 7.35 billion barrels or one billion tons.

Huawei launches 65nm CDMA 1xEV-DO Data Card

Huawei Technologies has developed world's first 65nm CDMA 1xEV-DO data card, EC360, especially for the North American market.

The card is manufactured using a 65nm process, which allows for less power consumption and simpler maintenance requirements. This data card reportedly supports fast packet data services with a maximum downlink transmission rate of 3.1M and uplink transmission rate of 1.8M.

More detail can be accessed here.

Huawei, ZTE to Build New Bases in China

http://circuitsassembly.com/cms/cms/content/view/4713/95/

SHENZHEN, CHINA – China's two leading telecom equipment providers, Huawei TechnologiesZTE Corp., are planning to build new manufacturing and R&D bases to speed up domestic and global expansion.

Huawei will spend a reported $517 million on a base in Dongguan. The company will build the base in phases, the first of which will be ready early next year. When fully operational, the cluster of factories will account for several billion dollars worth of Huawei's revenue, according to local media.

Huawei is also building a similar base in Langfang to be finished in July. It is also expected to generate billions in revenue.

ZTE is building a national R&D and manufacturing park in Shenzhen to expand its presence in cellphones. The park will cover 440,000 sq. meters and employ 15,000 workers.

China Netcom to Implement Domestic A/V codec for IPTV

China Netcom said positive results from testing the Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS) in the coastal city of Dalian persuaded it to fully implement the codec this year in 20 more cities. It will also transfer current H.264-based IPTV trials in four cities to AVS, although there's no schedule for that. China Netcom is running IPTV trial in five cities, one of which uses AVS while the other four use the more popular H.264.

There are several firms in China designing for AVS, including Celestial Semiconductor, Grandview Semiconductor, Longjing Microelectronics, Fudan Micro Nano and Beijing USC.

In addition, Broadcom Corp. said it will release a chip supporting AVS this year. STMicroelectronics has been waiting to see if AVS will be used in the satellite set-top box market, but because that's still unclear, ST has not committed to developing chips.

Envivio Inc., provider of MPEG-4-based IP video convergence solutions, recently released a telco-grade encoder that supports AVS for broadcast and IPTV deployments.

China Netcom hopes for 2 million AVS-based IPTV users in two years and 6 million in five to seven years, or 40 percent of its current broadband users. Market researcher iSuppli estimates that by 2008 there will be 3.6 million IPTV users in China and by 2010, the figure will be 17.4 million. Last year, there were 436,000 IPTV users.

AVS is a domestically developed audio/video codec that is being considered as part of a global IPTV standard being drafted by the International Telecommunication Union. A recently released broadcast mobile TV specification, known as CMMB, also uses AVS as its codec. Still, China Telecom, the largest domestic telecom company, favors H.264 in its IPTV offering.

AVS backers say the codec is similar to H.264 in terms of technical performance. Unlike MPEG-4/H.264, however, the AVS group probably will not charge "participation fees" to use the codec for subscription-based services, over-the-air free broad- casts or duplication of content on a title-by-title basis.

The codec is among a handful of domestic standards that China is promoting in order to lessen its reliance on foreign intellectual property. If the strategy is successful in the long run, it will shift the flow of royalties and fees into the coffers of local, rather than foreign, companies and help to build up domestic technology.

Netcom added it will also test AVS-based TV over a TD-SCDMA cellular network. Currently, there are no plans for commercialization since Netcom doesn't have a cellular license yet, said Xiongyan Tang, vice chief engineer at Netcom.

(Source)

The homepage of China's AVS forum is http://www.avs.org.cn/en/

Intel confirms $2.5 billion fab in China

Intel Corp. confirmed Monday that it will build a $2.5 billion, 300mm wafer fab in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. Fab 68 will begin construction later this year and is expected to go online in 2010, using 90-nanometer technology to "initially" make chipsets. (Source)

This will boost China's fast developing IC industry. China's SMIC is now using 90 nano technology in its 12-inch wafer fab in Beijing. SMIC now has four 8-inch fab plants and one 12-inch fab plant and is building another 12-inch fab in Wuhan.

Revenue from China's local semiconductor chip industry grew more than 43 per cent to exceed $13bn in 2006, a research and consulting firm has reported. (Source)

China will Develop 3 MW & 5 MW Wind Energy Systems

Windtec, a subsidiary of American Superconductor Corporation, and Sinovel will design and jointly develop 3- and 5-megawatt (MW) wind energy systems that Sinovel plans to market and sell worldwide. Sinovel will have the exclusive ownership and complete industrial and intellectual property rights for large-scale onshore and offshore wind turbines developed under this contract. Based in Beijing, Sinovel plans to begin series production of 3 MW systems during 2009 and 5 MW systems in 2010.

"We look forward to benefiting from our expanded relationship with Windtec," said Han Junliang, Chairman and President of Sinovel, "as we continue to implement our plan to manufacture 500 wind energy systems in 2007, 800 in 2008 and reach an annual capacity of 1,000 wind energy systems in 2010." Since 2005, Sinovel has ordered electrical components from Windtec for 785 wind energy systems rated at 1.5 MW.

By December 2006, Sinovel had already signed more than US$1 billion in contracts to supply domestically made wind energy systems to help meet China's rising demand for clean energy. The Chinese government has mandated that at least 70 percent of equipment used in Chinese wind farms must be made in China.

Source

China's 3G Mobile Phone Mess??

BusinessWeek had a article that said China's 3G Mobile Phone Mess.

Is it a mess? I don't think so. Actually it is a great oppertunity for China to push China's technology into a higher level.

China developed TD-SCDMA is one of the only three international standard for the third generation (3G) wirelss telecommunication. The other two are CDMA-2000 developed in US and WCDMA developed in Europe. Since the telecommunication equipement makers are more mature and have a lot more technology support from the related industry, such as IC and software companies. It is understood that the development of the China's standard is slower than the other two.

Western companies have been waiting for China government to award the licenses to service suppliers so that they can sell their equipment. But apparantly China government will not do so until 2008. It is obvious that China government is waiting for the development of TD-SCDMA.

Today, China's TD-SCDMA is almost ready. With the development of this new technology, some new tech companies appears in China, such as the IC design in Chongqing and Shanghai. Some China's telecommunication equipment makers get boost, such as ZTE, Huawei, Datang, Putian.....

Shanghai, Beijing, northern city of Baoding, southern city of Xiamen and eastern coastal city of Qingdao have been trying the new technology for a while, and China government decided to add 5 more cities in the larger scale of trials. The 5 cities are Tianjin and Qinhuangdao in the east, Shenzhen and Guangzhou in the south and Shenyang in northeast. (Source)

China Mobile Communications, the largest wirelss service company in the world, will be responsible for building and maintain the trial networks in the latter 5 cities.
CMCC is already testing the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard in Xiamen, while fixed-line carrier China Telecom operates trial TD-SCDMA networks in Shanghai and Baoding. No 2 fixed-line telephone operator China Netcom is testing the technology in Qingdao and Beijing. (Source)

China Mobile officially launched bidding for TD-SCDMA equipment contracts totaling over RMB 20 billion ($2.58 billion) in preparation for the construction of large-scale TD-SCDMA trial networks in China on March 19.

"TD Tech, a joint venture between Huawei and Siemens, will bid for the access network equipment contract, while Huawei will bid for the core network equipment contract," the Huawei source said.

According to sources from Datang Mobile and ZTE, ten equipment makers will directly or indirectly participate in the bids. They are TD Tech, Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, Putian, Nokia, Datang Mobile, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Guangzhou New Postcom Equipment Co. Ltd. and Wuhan Fiberhome Mobile Communication Inc..

"Datang Mobile, ZTE and TD Tech have advantage over the other vendors. The Chinese vendors should account for about 85 percent of China Mobile's contracts," Chen from TD-SCDMA Forum said.

Datang Mobile and ZTE are likely to each obtain 30 percent share of the contracts, Chen said. (Source)

The China trial is said to cover 80 million to 100 million people, about a third of the population of the US. It will involve an infrastructure cost of about $4bn, and it will cover nine cities including, incidentally, those which host Olympic events.

So the WTO is fobbed off, TD-SCDMA gets a head start, the government gets to keep its commitment to ‘make the Olympics a 3G event’ and, by the time the government has to keep faith with the WTO by licensing other standards than TD-SCDMA, the 100 million potential subscribers who matter, i.e. the ones in the big rich cities, will have been exposed to TD-SCDMA for some time.

Furthermore, the government can wait until it is convinced that TD-SCDMA is technically robust and sufficiently established in the market to either see off the foreign standards, or at least compete satisfactorily against them. (Source)

Until now, you can understand why China government delay the rewarding of the 3G license, why build such a big scale "trial" networks, and why China Mobile is selected. There is no mess in it at all. All Chinese are doing is promoting domestic technology, promoting domestic companies. China is not satisfied with the title of "large manufacturer", China wants to be a strong and powerful one.

Of cource China will not stop at 3G, China is working on 4G wirelss networks now. (Source)

ZTE Tops 2006 International CDMA Market

ZTE Corp, China's only listed telecoms manufacturer, and a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, topped the world CDMA equipment market in 2006 by number of shipments.

ZTE shipped over 12,000 units of CDMA BTS equipment from January to December 2006, 41% of the global market by number of contracts, according to China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) telecom academy. Industry analyst Ovum anticipates that ZTE will achieve 20% market share in China's coming 3G CDMA 2000 market and will gain a rapid market share increase as a result.

To date, ZTE has deployed over 60 million lines of CDMA equipment in over 100 carriers' networks in more than 60 countries and regions, including India, Indonesia, the Czech Republic and a variety of countries in Africa, as well as in developed markets like the US and Europe.

In India, ZTE was the sole CDMA equipment provider to the country's three largest CDMA operators Reliance, Tata and BSNL in 2006. ZTE equipment currently accounts for 85% of BSNL's CDMA market. ZTE has also undertaken Tata's national rural telecoms project and has helped Reliance expand its CDMA network at the speed of one million new users per month.

In Indonesia, ZTE has worked with Indosat to expand a 3G Softswitch core network in 12 cities across the country and has been awarded a large-capacity CDMA contract by PT Telkom Indonesia.

In Africa, ZTE's CDMA products are in use in over 70% of African countries and have helped with local telecom projects from the first national CDMA cellular network in Morocco in North Africa to the national rural network in Nigeria in West Africa.

Across Europe, ZTE constructed Europe's first EV-DO Rev A. national network in the Czech Republic; the EV-DO network constructed by ZTE has been put into commercial use in Norway and ZTE has established a strategic partnership with OTE to deploy the first 450MHz 3G CDMA 2000 network in Estonia.

In the US, ZTE has won a 3G CDMA 2000 network with regional operators Copper Valley Group and ClearTalk and ZTE's equipment is currently under test with several tier one carriers' labs.

Shoure

China Started to Produce the Turbofan Regional Aircraft ARJ21,

The ARJ21, China's first turbofan regional aircraft designed by China Aviation Industry Corp I (AVIC I), is expected to come off the production line at the end of this year and be ready for test flights in March 2008. The aircraft will be delivered in the third quarter of 2009, the official China Daily said.

The jet can carry 70 to 110 passengers and flies a maximum distance of 3,702 kilometers.

AVIC I has so far received 71 orders for the jet from domestic carriers, the company expects to sell at least 300 ARJ21 aircrafts within 20 years to domestic airlines.

The ARJ21 project, which was approved in 2002, received government investment of 5.0 bln yuan for its first stage, the newspaper added.

The final assembly plant in AVIC1’s Shanghai Aircraft (SAC) has received many of the aircraft parts and final assembly work is due to commence this month.

Xian Aircraft (XAC, owned by AVIC I) delivered an ARJ21 mid-fuselage and one set of wings to SAC. “It is the most important development in the ARJ21 programme,", said a spokesman of the company.

Other parts already delivered to SAC for final assembly include the aircraft’s nose, which AVIC 1’s Chengdu Aircraft delivered in December, and a front fuselage section that XAC delivered to Shanghai in September.

For mroe detail, please refer to:
Forbes and FlightGlobal.

Some Numbers about China in 2006

2006 passed, data about China in 2006 come out one by one. I compile this post so that people who care about or want to understand China feel easy in getting the data in one place.

Any viewers are welcome to post the data you find in you reply. I will update this post when I think the data is reliable.

1. Economy in General
Preliminary calculations from National Bureau of Statistics show that China's gross domestic product (GDP) hit 20,940.7 billion yuan in 2006, up 10.7 percent over 2005.
At the end of 2006, the total number of employees was 764 million, 5.75 million more than the end of 2005. National tax revenue stood at 3,763.6 billion yuan (excluding tariffs, farmland use tax and deed tax), an increase of 21.9 percent.
In 2006, the per capita net income of farmers was 3,587 yuan, rising 7.4 percent in real terms; the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 11,759 yuan, rising 10.4 percent.
At the end of last year, there were still 21.48 million people living below the poverty line in rural areas (earnings less than 693 yuan), 2.17 million less than at the end of 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

2. Social Development
The nation had a total population of 1,314.48 million, 6.92 million more than 2005. The urban population stood at 577.06 million and the rural population at 737.42 million. The urbanization rate grew 0.93% to 43.9%. The urbanization rates from 2002 to 2005 were 39.1, 40.5, 41.8 and 43 percent respectively.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

Male Chinese accounted for 51.5 per cent of the population. The gender imbalance is a growing problem in China. The ratio of males to female newborns stood at 119.25 to 100 in 2006.
Source: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0301/breaking13.htm

China witnessed frequent natural disasters which claimed 3,186 lives in 2006.
Natural disasters damaged 41 million hectares of farmland, toppled down 1.93 million houses and forced 13.84 million people to leave their homes, causing direct economic losses of 252.8 billion yuan.
The central and local governments earmarked more than 10 billion yuan (about 1.25 billion U.S. dollars) last year in disaster relief and salvation.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/01/eng20070301_353133.html

3. Agriculture
In 2006 China recorded a grain output of 497.46 million tons, rising 2.8 percent.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/01/eng20070301_353189.html

The output of cotton was 6.73 million tons in 2005, up by 17.8 percent over the previous year.
The total outputs of meat and eggswere expected to reach 80 million tons and 29.5 million tons in 2005, up by 4.5 percent and 3.0 percent respectively over the previous year.
Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=31601

4. Industry
According to the data released by National Bureanu of Statistis of China, China's Steel products consumption moved up 17.2% to 450 million tonnes. Aluminium consumption rised 32.1% to 8.65 million tonnes. Copper consumption dropped 4% to 3.72 million tonnes as increased the use of aluminium as a substitute due to the high copper price. China's ethylene consumption rose 23.9% to 9.39 million tonnes while cement increased 14.5% to 1.2 billion tonnes. China burned 2.37 billion tons of coal in 2006, increased by 9.6%. Oil comsumption increased 7.1% to 320 million tons.
Source: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=29478

In 2006, the value added of industrial sector was up by 12.5 percent over the previous year. Of this total, the value added of the industrial enterprises above the designated size was up by 16.6 percent.
The sales ratio was 98.1 percent for the industrial enterprises above the designated size. In 2006, the amount of profits made by those enterprises was 1,878.4 billion yuan, an increase of 31.0 percent.
Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=31601&page=2

China recorded 4.75 trillion Yuan in electronic product sales revenue in 2006, up 23.6 percent on 2005.
Source: http://www.pacificepoch.com/newsstories/90717_0_5_0_M/

China produced 466.85 mln tons of steel products in 2006, up 24.45 pct year-on-year. crude steel output totaled 418.78 mln tons, up 18.48 pct, while pig iron output gained 19.78 pct to 404.17 mln tons.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/02/01/afx3388004.html

China's iron and steel industry saw its profit surge 30 per cent year on year to a record $22 billion in 2006. The iron and steel industry secured 279.5 billion yuan in pre-tax profit in 2006, an increase of 23.95 per cent over the previous year. China's stainless steel output jumped by a whopping 68 per cent year on year to 5.3 million tonnes, ranking the first in the world.
Source: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/steel/20070226_profit.html

China's gold output rose by 7.15 tonnes in 2006 to a record 240.08 tonnes.
Source: http://www.diamonds.net/news/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=16891

China's crude output rose a mere 1.7 pct to 183.68 mln tons in 2006.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/02/12/afx3420562.html

China's share of the world VLCC market increased to 36.2 percent in 2006, not far below Korea's 40 percent share.
Source: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200703/200703020010.html

In 2006 China's auto industry sold 7.22 million auto vehicles, increasing 25 percent over 2005. China's automobile industry made a profit of 76.8 billion yuan (approximately 10 billion US dollars) in 2006, up 46 percent from the previous year. and the country become the world's second largest auto market.
China's automakers last year produced 7.28 million vehicles, up 27.32 percent over the previous year, No. 3 in the world.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200702/20/eng20070220_351356.html

Chinese shipbuilders produced 14.52 million deadweight tons last year, nearly 20 percent of the world's total. The industry's total profits doubled last year to reach a record high of 9.6 billion yuan, more than the combined profits of the previous five years.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/14/content_5738059.htm

China's two largest shipbuilding companies - China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) - both made rapid development. CSSC completed 103 ships with a total carrying capacity of 6.02 million tons. CSSC received orders for ships with a combined carrying capacity of 22.18 million tons last year. CSIC's main business income reached 62.2 billion yuan and it received orders for ships with a combined carrying capacity of 6.2 million tons.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200701/31/eng20070131_346422.html

Revenue from China's local semiconductor chip industry grew more than 43 per cent to exceed $13bn in 2006.
Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2186292/china-chips-13bn-2006

5. Service Industry
The fixed asset investment in China’s telecom sector touched the mark of 218.69 Billion Yuan (i.e. US$ 28 Billion) in the year 2006, An YOY increase of 7.5%.
The telecom sector, comprising fixed line phone links, Internet services, mobile phone connections, raked in 648 Billion Yuan (i.e. US$ 83 Billion) in revenues.
In the year 2006, mobile subscribers’ number in China touched 461 Million, 68 Million up from previous year (2005). In 2006, there were about 368 Million fixed line phone users throughout the nation, representing 17 million up against previous year.
Source: http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/

China had 137 million Internet users by the end of last year, an increase of 23.4 percent year-on-year. The number of broadband users hit 90.7 million by 2006, up 41.1 percent year-on-year, while about 17 million mobile phones users now use their handsets to access the Internet.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353642.html

China's advertising market revenue reached 386.6 billion yuan ($49.9 billion) in 2006, led by television, which claimed 81 percent of the total.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2007-02-16T090454Z_01_PEK150834_RTRIDST_0_MEDIA-NIELSEN-CHINA.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

China's airline safety record is on a par with North America's and surpasses that of Europe. According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, in the 10 years ended in 2005, there were 0.4 accidents per million takeoffs in the U.S., 0.5 in China, 0.7 in Europe, 2.5 in Latin America and 11.7 in Africa.
Source: http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070302/BUSINESS01/703020352/1066

Chinese airports reported passenger traffic growth of 16.7 pct in 2006 to 331.97 mln in 2006.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/03/21/afx3536051.html

Retail sales of China's hotel and catering sector hit 1.03 trillion yuan in 2006, an increase of 16.4 percent year on year. The sector accounted for 13.5 percent of the country's total retail sales of consumer goods in 2006.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/20/eng20070320_359444.html


Digital TV subscriptions in China reached 12 million at the end of 2006, up from 6.5 million.
Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960354.html?categoryid=18&cs=1

China's retail sales rose 13.7 percent to 7.64 trillion yuan ($979.6 billion) in 2006.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-01/26/content_796035.htm

6. Education
A total of 4.13 million students graduated from higher education institutions in 2006, 750,000 more than last year. 1.24 million of them couldn't find jobs that match their majors.
Source: http://www.china.org.cn/english/education/189340.htm

7. Science and Technology
China spent 294.3 billion yuan on research and development in 2006, 20.1 percent more than the previous year and 1.41 percent of GDP. But this is still less than 2% in the developed world. Funds allocated for fundamental research programs reached 14.8 billion yuan.
a total of 1,409 projects under the National Key Technology Research and Development Program and 2,841 projects under the Hi-tech Research and Development Program (the 863 Program) were implemented.
China added seven new national engineering research centers and three national engineering laboratories.
A total of 268,000 patents were approved in 2006, of which 224,000 were domestic patents, accounting for 83.5 percent of the total. A total of 58,000 patents for new inventions were given, of which 25,000 were domestic, accounting for 43.4 percent.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

The patent application fillings to PCT from China jumped 56.8% to 3910 in 2006. This made China as the 8th in the world. China's Huawei was 13th on the top 20 list worldwide in 2006, up 24 places from 2005.
Source: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/prdocs/en/2007/wipo_pr_2007_476.html

8. Trade
China import/export trade value reached US$1,760.7 trillion in 2006, up 23.8 percent from 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

China's trade surplus amounted to US$177.5 billion in 2006, up 74 percent over 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353781.html

China's net oil import was up 19.6 pct year-on-year at 162.87 mln tons last year.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/02/12/afx3420562.html

Airbus delivered 76 new aircraft to China and received orders for 159 in 2006. Boeing delivered 28 and received orders for 112.
Source: http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070302/BUSINESS01/703020352/1066

China emerged the world's largest exporter of steel last year, with an export volume of 43 million tonnes. China imported 2.5 million tonnes of stainless steel products in 2006, down 20.13 per cent.
Source: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/steel/20070226_profit.html

The export volume of China's shipbuilding industry surged 74 percent to 8.11 billion U.S. dollars in 2006.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/14/content_5738059.htm

The China's farm products export hit US$31.03 billion , a 14.1% increase over 2005.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/31/content_5677424.htm

9. Infrastructure
China's power capacityhad expanded by 102 gigawatts in 2006, or roughly equal to the entire capacity of the UK and Thailand combined.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e66cde98-b5fc-11db-9eea-0000779e2340.html

10. Finance
China's forex reserve topped one trillion US dollar mark at the end of 2006.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353781

Chinese government's budget deficit in 2006 was only 275 billion yuan, 20 billion yuan less than targeted set at the beginning of 2006.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aY5kdkPadPjA&refer=asia

China's Shipbuilding Industry is on the Fast Path

Accoring to the report from Xinhua China's ship export volume surged 74 percent to 8.11 billion U.S. dollars in 2006. Two leading Chinese shipbuilders, Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co Ltd and Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co Ltd, became world top-10 shipbuilders.

Chinese shipbuilders produced 14.52 million deadweight tons last year, nearly 20 percent of the world's total, compared to only 6 percent of the global market in 2000. More important, Their profitability has also improved. The industry's total profits doubled last year to reach a record high of 9.6 billion yuan, more than the combined profits of the previous five years.

Types of made-in-China ships have developed from conventional bulk carriers and crude oil tankers into high value and sophisticated vessels, such as very large crude carriers (VLCCs), liquefied natural gas carriers and high-speed containerships.

My another blog has some details about the orders Chinese companies received last year.

Chosun, a S Korean media, said that Chinese shipbuilders received orders of 1.4 million CGT in January, 2007, almost half of the world total order volume of 2.8 million CGT.