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In the first half of 2008, China’s total advertising launch reached 244.9 billion yuan (over 36 billion U.S. dollars) , an increase of 17% compared with the same period last year, according to well-known global media and information group Nielsen latest report of ad information services, Xinhua News reported.

Among the three types of major media Nielsen monitored, television continued to lead with 83% of the advertising market share, a total of 204 billion yuan; and print media advertising made progress with an increase of 14 percent. Among them, newspapers and magazine ads amounted to 36 billion and 5 billion yuan.

And the arrival of the Olympic Games clearly has stimulated China’s advertising market. By the end of June, according to the Nielsen results, 28 Olympic sponsors had invested ads of 11.8 billion yuan, grew by 12 percent compared with last year, and the total market share reached 5 percent.

“Advertisers have now returned to expected advertising levels following a lull in May as a consequence of the Sichuan earthquake,” said Richard Basil Jones, Managing Director, Nielsen Media Research, The Nielsen Company, Asia Pacific. “Obviously Olympic sponsors have been more aggressive in their advertising strategy in the lead up to the Games, which has fleshed out to RMB 6.6 billion in just the second quarter, a significant 28 percent increase from the first quarter.”

How time changes: the latest survey from Nielsen during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games shows that among all the sponsors, the Coca-Cola Company had the highest consumer awareness, but only ranked third in advertising costs.

In addition to Nielsen’s survey data, survey data from R3 also showed that nearly 50 percent of respondents initially mentioned that Coca-Cola is the sponsor of the Olympics; and more than 86 percent of respondents could say Coca-Cola is the Olympic Games Sponsor after a simple prompt. Coca-Cola holds the highest consumer awareness; and has made the deepest impression on public Olympic sponsors.

What sets this year’s marketing apart from previous Olympic marketing, which focused mainly on the host country, is that the Coca-Cola headquarters implemented a global marketing plan. During the Olympic Games, the four Chinese “Coca Cola” characters appeared on Coca-Cola products in 160 countries and regions for the first time; and simultaneously launched a huge Olympic marketing plan in the 60 countries and regions. According to statistics, the Coca-Cola supplied 25 million bottles of Coca-Cola daily to Beijing’s Olympic venues, exceeding the 20 million bottles in the Athens Games.

China, the world’s largest cell phone exporter, is expected to maintain momentum in both production and marketing of mobile phones in the remaining of this year, CCID Consulting said recently.

The company predicted that China would produce 605 million cell phones for the whole of 2008, a growth of 16.9 percent over last year, and sell 205 million at home, up 17.55 percent. The foreign sales would amount to 400 million units, up 16.79 percent.

From January and June, according to CCID Consulting, 279 million cell phones were produced nationwide, up 21.2 percent on the same period of last year, and 96.403 million were sold, up 17.52 percent. Exports totaled 182 million units, up 22.74 percent.

Nokia, Samsung and Motorola claimed nearly two thirds of the Chinese cell phone market, with the Finnish company Nokia taking a 41.02 percent share.

The mobile phone subscribers in China soared to 592 million by the end of May/2008, nearly half of its 1.3 billion population.

The number rose by 44.8 million in the first five months of this year as mobile operators cut phone rates to attract customers, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Ministry of Information Industry. It said the number of fixed-line accounts fell by 6.5 million to 358 million. The fixed-line users, however, dropped by 6.5 million to 358 million.

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China has by far the world’s largest population of mobile phone users, with China’s dominant mobile carrier — China Mobile — being the world’s biggest phone company by number of subscribers, with more than 400 million. But several million have multiple phones for personal and business use, so the total number of subscribers is smaller than the number of accounts.

The telecom sector reported a revenue of 330.6 billion yuan (48billion U.S dollars) in the five months — period that included an industry restructuring aimed at creating more robust competitors to China Mobile — which represents an increase of 9.6 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, fixed-asset investment in the telecom industry rose 2.7 percent to 75.1 billion yuan (11 billion U.S dollars).

China’s consumer price index(CPI) rose 8.5 percent in April, mainly driven by uncurbed food costs, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said recently.

The figure, compared with 8.3 percent in March and a nearly 12-year-high of 8.7 percent in February, was broadly in line with most forecasts.

The NBS attributed the figure to a low base of comparison: the CPI rose just 3 percent in April 2007. Another factor was the rapid increase in world grain and commodity prices.

“Price rises are stable in general. Compared with March, the CPI in April was not substantially higher and prices of some items even fell,” said Zhang Liqun, a macro-economist with the Development Research Center of the State Council, China’s Cabinet. “That means fewer new driving factors for price rises.”

Following the release of consumer prices, China’s Central Bank announced a raising of the reserve requirement for another 0.5 percentage point to 16.5 percent on yuan deposits, effective on May 20.

The consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, rose 8.1 percent in cities and 9.3 percent in rural areas last month.

“The CPI figure remains high because of a low base last year and the soaring prices of primary food on the international market to push up domestic food costs,” said a statement on the bureau’s Website.

Food prices, which make up around one third of the CPI basket, soared 22.1 percent in April.

The cost of pork rocketed 68.3 percent from a year earlier while edible oil jumped 46.6 percent and vegetables grew 13.6 percent.

The non-food sector saw a growth of 1.8 percent last month, compared to 1.6 percent in February. The March figure was not available.

“The growth is in line with our estimate ranging between 8.3 to 8.5 percent for April. It is still a stable growth and the inflationary pressure will gradually ease in the coming months,” said Li Maoyu, an analyst with Changjiang Securities.

Tao Dong, a Credit Suisse economist, shared that view but cautioned about price increases in the non-food sector.

“We believe the CPI is likely to moderate over the next few months, as food inflation can be curbed by a higher base and improved pork supplies. However, we are cautious about non-food inflation fueled by wage hikes in the medium term,” Tao said.

The producer price index, the factory-gate inflation gauge, jumped 8.1 percent year on year in April to reach a record high in more than three years, boosted by accelerating energy and raw material prices.

Water and air quality improved in Shanghai last year, but noise pollution was worse, the city’s Environment Protection Administration said.

Water quality in the Huangpu River showed signs of improvement for the first time in five years, the administration said in an annual report before Thursday’s World Environment Day, according to the Oriental Morning Post.

Shanghai had 328 days of fine air last year, four more than in 2006.

Road noise on Shanghai streets hit an average of 71.9 dB during the day while it dropped to 65.9 dB at night, failing to meet last year’s target, the report said. However, the report didn’t say what the target was.

Shanghai invested 36.62 billion yuan (5.28 billion US dollars) last year in environment protection, taking a 3.05 percent slice of the city’s gross domestic product, the administration added.

China has told its six telecommunications companies to merge their assets, allowing fixed-line carriers to expand into wireless services and creating three operators that will offer phone and Internet connections to 1.3 billion people.

Under the plan, the parent of China Telecom will buy a mobile phone network from the parent of China Unicom, which in turn will merge with the company that controls the China Netcom Group, the Ministry of Industry and Information said in a statement on Saturday. China will issue three third-generation wireless licenses after the overhaul is completed, it said.

The revamp will help China Telecom and Netcom expand their operations to compete against China Mobile in China, the world’s biggest wireless and Internet market by users.

China had 583.5 million mobile phone users at the end of April, exceeding the combined populations of the United States and Japan. But the $105 billion US dollars industry has room to expand because 6 out of 10 people in China still do not own mobile phones and 84 percent of the population lacks Web connections.

“Everyone has been waiting for it for over three years and now it is here,” said Kelvin Ho, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Nomura International, referring to the reorganization plan. “Creating three full-service phone companies offering both fixed and mobile services will help the fixed-line phone companies.”

The statement, jointly issued with the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission, did not give a timeframe for the plan or financial details.

China Telecom said in a statement on Sunday that it was in talks to buy Unicom’s code-division multiple access technology business, or C.D.M.A. — the technology that is used in Japan and South Korea. The companies have not agreed on a price. In a separate release, Unicom confirmed those talks and also said it was discussing a merger with Netcom.

Trading in shares of Netcom, China Unicom and China Telecom was suspended on Friday at the companies’ request after a report from the official Xinhua News Agency prompted speculation that China was poised to announce its plans for the industry. Trading will continue to be suspended in Hong Kong pending further announcements, according to the statements.

China Mobile, which has nearly 400 million customers and is the world’s largest phone company by users, fell the most in two months in Hong Kong trading. The drop wiped out $12.8 billion in market value on concern that the company would face increased competition.

China Telecom, the nation’s biggest fixed-line company, will acquire Unicom’s smaller mobile-phone network, which provides services to 43 million customers based on the C.D.M.A. technology, according to the statement. China Telecom will also get the phone assets of China Satellite Communications, the statement said.

Unicom’s C.D.M.A. network, the smaller of the company’s two wireless networks, and its subscribers are worth about 111 billion yuan ($16 billion US dollars), according to estimates by Goldman Sachs in a March report.

The China Network Communications Group, Netcom’s parent, will merge with Unicom’s parent to offer fixed-line and mobile phone services based on the global system for mobile communications technology, or G.S.M., which is the technology used in most of the world, according to the statement.

Unicom had 125.4 million G.S.M. customers as of the end of April, according to the company. Netcom, the nation’s second-largest fixed-line company, had 108.7 million phone users.

China Mobile, which counts more than two-thirds of the nation’s mobile phone users as customers, will take control of the unlisted Tietong, the statement said, confirming the Xinhua report.

China’s telecom market has long suffered from a lack of competition under the de facto monopoly of China Mobile, which has been raking in huge revenues in recent years and taking business away from fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom as users go mobile.

Chinese regulators aim to boost competitiveness at fixed-line operators before the nation introduces 3G high-speed wireless services, which will require billions of dollars in investments for network equipment. The government has said it plans to offer 3G during the Olympic Games in August.

Rescuers are racing against time to reach survivors a day after the strongest quake that hit China in more than three decades jolted the southwestern province of Sichuan.

The country was immersed in immense grief as the death toll rose to nearly 10,000. China’s English-language newspaper China Daily silhouetted the front page in black to mourn the victims. The headline reads: “The Day the Earth Moved.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew to Sichuan Monday evening, urged “calm, confidence and courage” in face of the catastrophe.

By 7:00 a.m. Tuesday, the death toll from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake has climbed to 9,219, according to the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs. Of the killed, 8,993 were in Sichuan.

Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the earthquake at western Sichuan province, has reported 57 confirmed deaths, and about 60,000 locals were still out of reach.

“I am so worried! I am so worried!” said He Biao, a government official with the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, Sichuan Province, exclaimed to Xinhua over phone in an anxious tone. Wenchuan is part of the prefecture.

Wenchuan and neighboring areas were set amid steep hills north of Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu. Attempts to reach the epicenter “via land, air and water were all thwarted”, said an official with the Sichuan provincial relief headquarters, citing blocked transport, disrupted telecom and rainy weather as the key factors to hold back efforts to access the epicenter.

Premier Wen has ordered the removal of the rocks and mud slides that blocked the roads to the epicenter before 12 p.m. Tuesday.

“People are trapped in debris, we must treasure every second,” he told an emergency meeting at 7 a.m.

Read here for the latest updates. Below are some images of the devastation.

From AP news:

From CCTV:

A student at Sichuan University took this footage from his dorm room at 2:29 pm:

About 353.8 billion junk text messages were sent in China in 2007, 92.7 percent year-on-year, the anti-spam committee of the Internet Society of China said recently.

Illegal and fraudulent messages accounted for 49.7 percent, while ads made up 45.48 percent.

Group spam companies accounted for 36.67 percent of the total, service provider firms made up 32.18 percent and net operators 20.75 percent.

At the end of 2007, China’s cell-phone users topped 500 million.