Categories
China Innovation Readings Trend Watching

China, Technology, Innovation and the Environment: energy security pushes China into Wind Power

The Chinese government recently upgraded its wind installation capacity target for 2020 to 150 gigawatts from 100 gigawatts, representing a compound annual growth rate of 20% for accumulated wind-generation capacity, according to analysts Min Li and Wendy Wang at Yuanta Research {…]

Categories
China Economics Trend Watching

China, Technology and the Environment: Chinese National Energy Commission is established

China has established the National Energy Commission for better coordination in formulating energy strategy and development planning, said an announcement released by the General Office of the Chinese State Council recently […]

Categories
China Economics Trend Watching

China, Technology and the Environment: Electricity bills to jump for Chinese industries

China announced a 5.7 percent increase in electricity prices for businesses and industries and said it will adjust residential tariffs early next year through a new pricing mechanism to promote energy savings […]

Categories
Design Economics Innovation

Watch Amy Smith’s “Simple designs that could save millions of childrens’ lives” talk at TED

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. M.I.T. engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal.

Categories
China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

China, Technology and the Environment: Power consumption up in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong

In the first half of June/2009, China’s average daily power generation capacity was 9.764 billion kilowatt-hours, down 0.17 percent year-on-year, according to statistics from the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC). In May, the nation’s average daily power generation capacity dropped around 3.5 percent year-on-year […]

Categories
China Innovation

China, Technology and the Environment: first 10 million-kw-level wind power station to be built in mid-July 2009

Workers would begin construction on China’s first 10 million-kw-level wind power station in mid-July in the far northwestern city of Jiuquan, Gansu Province, a local official said recently […]

Categories
China

107 dead, $15.4 billion lost due to snow in China

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 […]

Categories
China Economics

Disaster prevails as relief effort beefed up

Weather conditions in southern China will remain severe and relief work difficult, Chinese leaders warned yesterday as the country battles with the worst snowfalls in decades. The warning came after a meeting chaired by Chinese President Hu Jintao to study the relief effort. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has just concluded his second visit in a week to central Hunan Province, the region worst hit.

Categories
China Economics Information Technology Trend Watching

Information Technology Salaries in the Rise in Shanghai

People working in the information technology industry earned more than employees in all other industries on average last year, according to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau. The wage gap between different sectors widened last year. The average wage in the IT sector was 3.55 times of the average salary for those in the service sector, the lowest paid group of workers, while in 2000, the average wage in the highest sector was 3.24 times that of the lowest […]

Categories
China Economics Information Technology Innovation Trend Watching

China: Technology, Innovation and the Environment

Since the beginning of its economical opening — when the first 5-year plans were devised in 1979 — China has being growing at an incredible speed, with its GNP numbers jumping from 44 billion dollars to 1.6 trillion dollars in just 20 years. Such growth has pushed the Chinese manufacturing industry into devouring huge amounts of natural resources in a alarming way: in 2004, China — the 8th largest economy in GNP scale — consumed 8% of all the oil, 31% of all the coal, 10% of all the electricity, 30% of all ore, 30% of all steel, 19% of all aluminum, 20% of all the copper and 40% of all cement produced in the world […]