If you’re in China, you probably won’t be able to watch the Academy Award Nominee documentary “China’s Unnatural Disaster” from HBO, which chronicles the aftermath of the Sichuan Quake from the perspective of the grieving parents. You can — at least — watch the trailer here: Read More…

The following video, produced by Sexy Beijing and posted on Danwei, is part of Abigail Washburn’s Afterquake project, in which she creates music with children from the earthquake-affected areas of Sichuan: Read More…

The increase in China’s retail sales volume exceeded 20 percent year on year in the last eight months and is still accelerating, enough to sustain economic growth above 9.5 percent for the rest of the year, a HSBC report said.

According to the report “China Economic Spotlight” released on recently, consumer spending has performed strongly despite the slowing economy, the disastrous earthquake and the cancellation of the May Day golden week.

Taking into account the retail price index, the real retail sales growth hit a decade record of 15.4 percent year on year (to about 100 billion U.S. dollars) in July from 14.8 percent in June, substantially higher than the monthly average of 12.4 percent in 2007.

Both urban and rural areas showed strong retail sales growth in real terms over the same period last year, with rural retail up 14percent to 280 billion yuan and that of urban areas up 17 percent to 600 billion yuan.

Strong consumer spending is attributable to the rapidly increasing expenditure on accommodation and catering, up 26.5 percent year on year in July, and the robust growth of wholesale and retail trading, said the report.

In terms of commodities, petroleum products, jewelery, cosmetics, garments and automobiles are taking the lead. Petroleum products sales rose 55.2 percent year on year in July from 44.4 percent in the first half, reflecting the still strong demand despite the fuel price rise in June.

However, as a side effect of a less vibrant property market, the growth of building material sales fell further to -3.4 percent in July from the -1.8 percent in Jan-Jun period, a sharp decline from the 41 percent growth in the first half of 2007.

The report attributed the vibrant spending to the strong income growth of the past few years and the structural upgrading of spending on consumer goods.

In real terms, urban disposable income growth has maintained 10percent growth annually in the last three years, while rural residents’ net income is increasing even faster. From January to June, urban per capita disposable income rose by 6.3 percent, while rural incomes increased 10.3 percent.

With nearly 1,900 US dollars per annum of disposable income for the urban residents and almost 700 US dollars per annum cash income for farmers, Chinese people are upgrading their consumption structure, said the report. They spend more on recreational goods, dine out more frequently, buy cars and go on more holidays, hence the fast rising sales of automobiles, garments, cosmetics and jewelery.

In terms of the tumbling stock market, the HSBC report held that the sharp fall in the market had a limited negative wealth effect because shareholders represent less than 5 percent of the population.

China’s dot-com economy grew nearly 63 percent year on year in the second quarter, despite increasing inflation and the effects of the Sichuan earthquake, a Shanghai-based research firm reported recently.

Revenue generated by China’s online search, game and travel providers reached 13.32 billion yuan (US$1.94 billion) in the April-to-June period, iResearch said.

Because of the runup in prices and the natural disaster, the quarterly growth rate was only 14.9 percent.

In addition to the revenue earned by Internet services firms, overall trade volume generated by buyers and sellers also rose during the quarter, hitting 29.1 billion yuan, up 22.6 percent from the first quarter.

Online game revenue, which was influenced by the earthquake, gained 9.2 percent quarter on quarter to 5.08 billion yuan, compared with 13.4 percent growth in the first quarter.

China halted all entertainment services nationwide, including online games, for three days in May to mourn the earthquake victims.

“New-media leaders are outpacing the old-media players as the online media break down the barriers (geography, distribution and content) to make them accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime,” Richard Ji, a Morgan Stanley’s analyst, said in a report.

China’s Internet population recently took the No. 1 spot from the United States for the first time.

On June 30, China had 253 million Internet users, compared with about 220 million in the US, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

There’s even higher potential ahead. Only 19.1 percent of all Chinese are Internet users, compared with 60 to 70 percent in the US, Japan and South Korea.

And the Beijing Olympics, which opens this weekend, provides even more good news. The Games are expected to fuel a surge in online advertising and cyber games, according to the report by iResearch.

The Internet economy will be powered by online advertising for the Beijing event and the advent of third-generation telecommunications services in the world’s No. 1 mobile phone market, iResearch said.

The coming high-speed mobile network will allow handset users to enjoy new and faster data services, such as video conferences and film downloads.

Among the cyber-market segment, Baidu still leads in the search sector, with Alibaba.com dominating online auction services, followed by foreign players Google and eBay. Competition in online games is heating up as many newcomers have entered the fray. Only about 27 percent of China’s online game revenue was contributed by major Internet portals such as Sohu and Sina, according to iResearch findings.

The blizzards that struck southern China in the past month have killed at least 107 people and left eight missing, as of February 12/2007, reported a senior Chinese official recently.

The disaster has also caused direct economic losses of about 111 billion yuan ($15.4 billion), Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju said: 21 provincial-level areas had been affected, with Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region the worst hit.

About 1.5 million people have been evacuated and more than 1.9 million travelers were stranded at some point.

The extreme weather affected close to 24.4 million hectares of farmland, with crop failure in 168 hectares of farmland, and led to the destruction of more than 350,000 homes; 18.6 million hectares of forest have been damaged in 19 snow-afflicted regions including Hunan and Hubei provinces.

The snowstorms, the worst in five decades and up to a century in some areas, caused deaths, building collapses, blackouts, accidents, transport problems and livestock and crop loss in the country’s eastern, central and southern regions for about a month.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday chaired an executive meeting of the Chinese State Council and warned of “arduous tasks” for the hardest-hit areas to recover.

“Some major power grids have yet to be repaired. The straining of coal supplies for electricity plants has not been fundamentally resolved,” Wen said at the meeting.

The premier urged local governments to put restoring power supply as the top priority. Local electricity networks should be repaired and work normally by the end of next month, Wen said: efforts should be made to mobilize and organize farmers to prepare for the spring farming season, as crops in most disaster-stricken areas will bear no harvest.

Meanwhile, production and transportation of coal for power generation should continue to be guaranteed, and efforts must be made to help victims, he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has ordered all of the country’s military forces to continue supporting reconstruction work in snow-hit areas.

The disaster is also testing insurance firms, which have paid out more than 1 billion yuan on claims (over 165 million US Dollars) stemming from the severe weather in south and central China, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said yesterday.

More than 855 million yuan were on property claims and more than 56 million yuan on health and life policies.

The power sector received about 254 million yuan and the farming sector 40 million yuan, the CIRC said in a bulletin.

Meteorologists forecast a warm-up for most areas south of the Yangtze River in the coming days, which could help the thawing of piled snow and ice.

Tens of thousands queue to enter the main railway station
in Guangzhou City yesterday
credits: Shanghai Daily

Heavy white storms staged a comeback late yesterday as China’s transport network remained crippled by the heaviest snowfall in five decades.

Millions of people trying to head home for the Spring Festival are stranded.

The big freeze has killed dozens of people, impacted on the lives of at least 80 million others and caused economic losses estimated at more than 53.8 billion yuan (US$7.5 billion).

Snow began to hit central Hunan Province and eastern Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces yesterday afternoon.

The national meteorological center forecast red-alert-level snowstorms in the northern and central parts of Zhejiang today.

Sleet is today set to hit major parts of Guizhou Province, and southern regions of Hunan and central Jiangxi – three areas where icy weather has seriously disrupted power supplies. Fujian Province in the east can also expect sleet, weather experts said.

Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday made a second trip to Changsha, capital of Hunan, within a week to help direct emergency work. Wen visited railways in Changsha and Guangzhou on Monday and Wednesday in an effort to calm stranded passengers. After several days of respite from the heavy snow, traffic along the expressway linking Beijing and Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, began to pick up speed after ice was removed.

More and more trains also resumed operations on the Beijing-Guangzhou railway. The north-south trunk line had been paralyzed since last Saturday from the Hunan section southward where power-transmission facilities were knocked out by heavy snow.

Guangzhou, home to millions of migrant workers seeking to go home for the holidays, has been the worst affected.

The number of stranded people in Guangzhou yesterday dropped to 400,000 from a peak of 800,000.

The cold weather is China’s worst since 1954.

Between January 25 and Thursday, a total of 5.8 million passengers were stranded throughout the railway system, said Zhao Chunlei, deputy director of the Regulation Department of the Ministry of Railways.

So far at least 60 people have been killed and nearly 1.76 million have been relocated.