Those funds have since shrunk to about 558 billion yuan at the end of June as expectations of the yuan's appreciation receded and discouraged individuals from tapping the 20,000-yuan-a-day purchase limit allowed in the city.
Caroline Mak, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Retail Management Association, said retailers have been offering discounts of 50 percent this summer and slow sales of goods such as furniture indicate weakness in local residents' consumption.
Last month, Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei was barred by the Australian government from bidding for a broadband network contract for "security concerns," and China said it was "unfair."
2. Policies affecting the size distribution of cities and the relative concentration of people in major metropolitan centers;
Chinese consumers are also frog-leaping the expectations of foreign manufacturers as they get more exposure by travel and wider access to online media. This requires companies to offer products of higher quality.
US retail gasoline prices fell less than a penny to US$3.539 per gallon overnight. That's 16 cents per gallon less than last year and 40 cents less than this year's high, set on April 6. Even though lower gasoline sales dragged down retail spending last month, economists think declining pump prices may help boost retail spending in months to come by giving drivers more money to spend on other things.
The websites raised prices by 7.5 percent on average in October but then had to cut prices by more than 10 percent in November and December as they carried out sales promotions, said the report by Etao, the search site of Alibaba Group.
News of the Twitter deal for TweetDeck was first reported by the technology blog TechCrunch on yesterday. Zero2IPO estimated that new private equity funds raised in 2011 may reach US$30 billion.
The outlook for 2012 is not good, Shen Danyang, spokesman at the ministry, said in a press conference today. "There's no proper solution for Europe's debt crisis yet, which has cut European companies' spending in China."
Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin revealed that the ministry will complete a project to link databases of personal housing information concerning 40 major cities by the end of June, a measure designed to further curb house speculation, the analysts said.
The firm said its key stakeholders, including most of its secured bank debt and unsecured bond debt, will back the reorganization plan.
The two new modern steel projects have come to fruition only after local governments agreed to ditch some old capacity. The Guangdong government will close 16.14 million tons of obsolete crude steel annual capacity elsewhere in the province as part of its deal with Baosteel for the Zhanjiang project.
Imports expanded 4.7 percent to US$151.8 billion last month, the pace of which was also slower than June's 6.3 percent.
Premier Wen said during his recent tour in Hunan Province that enterprises across the country might experience a "relatively difficult" time this quarter in the face of financial strains and shrinking external demands, and the central government would fine-tune its monetary policies accordingly to maintain a supportive economic environment.