Issued every five years, the report said there were a total of 119,876 expatriates living in the city in 2006, compared to 61,610 in 2002. The number of expats working in foreign-invested companies in the city increased from 40,076 to 76,873 over the same period.

The report found local workers’ average salary increased 11 percent annually between 2002 and 2006. The annual wage of local workers on average reached 29,569 yuan (US$4,224) in 2006.

But the report also said the average monthly salary had gone up 9.1 percent between 2006 and April last year to 2,687 yuan.

The number of local workers who were paid less than 2,000 yuan every month decreased from 83.2 percent to 58.1 percent between 2002 and 2006.

The report said the number of workers in the service industry increased four-fold over the past five years, the number in the financial industry increased 65 percent, and the number of real estate industry professionals rose 36 percent from 2002 to 2006.

Those working in state-owned enterprises dropped by 31.7 percent, while the number of staff in foreign-invested companies and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan enterprises increased 25.6 percent. The survey covered nearly 4,000 local employees.

ShareThis

The number of China’s netizens grew 53 percent last year from 2006 to hit 210 million by December, which means the country is close to overtaking the United States to become the world’s No. 1 by web population size, according to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC): Nearly 60 percent of the web users (more than 120 million) have played at least one title in the past year, with an average of 7.3 hours spent on the online games every week. Twenty-one percent of them even played more than 10 hours a week.

At the same time, game companies are trying to attract more players by offering free-to-play games that are gaining in popularity.

Shanda ranked the first with a market share of 19.3 percent while the runner-up Netease took 15.1 percent, followed by Giant Interactive Group who took 11.9 percent. The combined share of the three operators last year dropped by five percentage points last year to 58 percent, according to Beijing-based Analysys International.

Overseas game companies are also looking for ways to set up their platforms, though current regulations on the Chinese mainland make it difficult for them to operate a game on their own. Among them, GigaMedia, a Taiwan-based game operator, has gained control of Shanghai-based T2CN, while Electronic Arts Inc is still seeking partners to operate its Pogo China portal after a former local partner broke up with it.

China’s online game market is expected to hit 19.1 billion yuan in 2008 and 40.1 billion yuan in 2011, predicts the firm.

ShareThis

The list, made by World Entrepreneur magazine, covered magnates in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. The Kwok brothers of Sun Hung Kai Properties in Hong Kong took top place on the list. Yang Huiyan of Country Garden and the family behind Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Limited were the top two magnates from the mainland.

According to statistics, there are more than 18,000 people in China with more than a hundred million yuan in wealth (nearly 14 million US dollars), 440,000 with 10 million, and the nation’s number of millionaires now accounts for 3.3 percent of the total population.

The stupendous increase in Chinese magnates is been attributed to high-speed increases in the stock and property markets. Among the 500 magnates on the list, 128 are from the real estate industry.

ShareThis

The law entrusts enforcement of its antitrust-focused provisions to a new agency, the anti-monopoly implementation or enforcement authority (Article 10). The authority will perform work (including merger reviews) currently handled by other agencies–the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC)–under existing Chinese law. The authority is empowered to investigate suspected anti-competitive conduct through inspections, questioning of individuals and examination of business records–subject to the requirement that authority staff first submit a written report to the authority’s senior officials (Article 39). The authority is required to keep confidential commercial secrets it receives in the process of enforcement (Article 41).

Plans for staffing the authority are unclear, and the rivalry between MOFCOM and SAIC may not yet be fully resolved. Moreover, there is no indication in the law that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is relinquishing its price regulatory function. The law also provides for an anti-monopoly commission, but its roles are primarily research and coordination rather than policy making and implementation (Article 9).

The Anti-Monopoly Law prohibits discriminatory and anti-competitive practices by local administrative and public bodies against products, business operators and investors from other parts of China. The Anti-Unfair Competition Law already contains less detailed but similar prohibitions. It also prohibits administrative bodies from compelling business operators to engage in monopolistic activities and from abusing their administrative power by formulating provisions eliminating or restricting competition.

Fines for monopoly agreements and abuses of dominant position may range as high as one to ten percent of the wrongdoing company’s total sales volume in the relevant market during the previous year (Articles 46 and 47). If the parties have not yet implemented a monopoly agreement, however, the fine will not exceed 500,000 RMB (about $66,000 USD) (Article 46). The law also provides for fines for undertaking a merger in violation of the law’s notification requirement, also capped at 500,000 RMB (Article 48). The authority may also order divestitures and other steps necessary to restore competitive conditions that existed before the merger (Article 48). Finally, the law provides that civil remedies may be available to injured parties under other legislation (Article 50).

The law will become effective on August 1, 2008 (Article 57). Much will remain uncertain until the National People’s Congress issues an interpretation of the law, the authority is established, and the authority issues implementing regulations. In the interim, companies that are active or wish to become active in China are well-advised to review their existing business practices to determine whether they comply with the law as written.

Although the law is more detailed than the basic competition statutes in the United States and the European Union, those statutes have been supplemented over the decades by a huge body of judicial decisions, administrative guidance and practical experience. It will take time to establish such a body of knowledge in China, particularly given the limited number of government officials with legal and economic training in competition law. The authority will, therefore, enjoy substantial discretion at the outset. This will be of particular concern with respect, for example, to intellectual property rights (IPR). The law provides that the exercise of IPR established in accordance with intellectual property law will not be subject to the law (Article 55), but the abuse of IPR will be subject to the law. Where and how the line between exercise and abuse is drawn will be of great concern to IPR holders.

ShareThis