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Thursday, July 29, 2010

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China shows strong resolve to develop clean energy: ITER

PARIS -- China had shown its commitment to developing clean energy through its strong support for an international alternative energy program, the head of the program's China office said Wednesday.

The program, known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER, aims to emulate the power of the sun to provide limitless clean energy, Luo Delong told Xinhua during a telephone interview.

"China's active participation in the international nuclear fusion project reflects the country's determination to promote the development of clean energy," Luo said.

"It is also in line with China's long-term energy strategy," Luo said.
In a bid to solve the energy shortage and maintain sustainable development, China is working to develop fossil energy and fission energy while vigorously seeking alternative energy sources, according to Luo.

Now it seemed ITER might be a reliable answer to the problem of energy in the long run, he said.

"I can give you an example: after ITER nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water can produce as much energy as that of 300 liters of gasoline," and fusion energy had huge potential, "because it uses the inexhaustible sea water as material," he said.

Moreover, the ITER process won't produce greenhouse gases or cause any pollutants such as high-radiation uranium waste, which made it an ideal energy source for both environmental protection and security, Luo said.

China had devoted a lot of effort and funds to the project, he said.
Luo said China had made great efforts in helping establish the organization and the country would inject about 10 billion yuan (1.4 billion dollars) to the project, about 10 percent of its total cost.

China would also undertake nearly 10 percent of the project, producing various components and transporting them to Cadarache, southern France, where the ITER's reactor units would be constructed, he said.

On Wednesday, the ITER Council, the governing body of the ITER Organization, approved the baseline of overall schedule and costs for the project.
Representatives of the seven ITER members -- China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, attended the meeting in Cadarache.

The council said in a statement the ITER project, with a designed capacity to produce 500 megawatts (MW) of fusion power, had fixed a goal to achieve the first plasma in November 2019.

The ITER project was proposed in 1985 and research assessment and design work for an experimental reactor were begun in 1988.

A related ITER Agreement was signed in Paris in November 2006 by ministers from the seven ITER members, officially launching the project.

According to the ITER Agreement, the ITER project will last 35 years and require a total investment of up to 10 billion euros.

It is the second largest international science and engineering project behind the International Space Station, and is also the biggest international science and technology cooperation in which China has taken part so far.

Editor: Zhang Xiang 
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Forbes: World's most valuable brands

BEIJING -- From top luxury brand Louis Vuitton to leading IT corporation Apple, Forbes.com unveiled a list of "50 world's most valuable brands."
Although some of these tycoons are now facing some troubles, such as massive global recall of Toyota and iPhone's antenna problems, they seem not to impair those brands to being the world's best.
Here're top 10 of them:

No. 1 Apple



Brand value: 57.4 billion U.S. dollars
Country::  United States
Industry:: Computer hardware

No. 2 Microsoft



Brand value: 56.6 billion U.S. dollars
Country:: United States
Industry:: Computer software

No. 3: Coca-Cola



Brand value: 55.4 billion U.S. dollars
Country: United States
Industry: Beverages

No. 4 IBM



Brand value: 43 billion U.S. dollars

Country: United States
Industry: Computer software and services

No. 5 Google



Brand value: 39.7 billion U.S. dollars
Country: United States
Industry: Internet services

No. 6 McDonald's


Brand value: 35.9 billion U.S. dollars
Country: United States
Industry: Restaurants

No. 7 General Electric



Brand value: 33.7 billion U.S. dollars

Country: United States
Industry: Diversified

No. 8 Marlboro


Brand value: 29.1 billion U.S. dollars

Parent company Altria/Philip Morris International
Country: United States
Industry: Tobacco

No. 9 Intel


Brand value: 28.6 billion U.S. dollars
Country: United States
Industry: Computer hardware

No. 10 Nokia


Brand value: 27.4 billion U.S. dollars
Country: Finland
Industry: Telecom








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India to become potential buyer of L.American, Caribbean products

SANTIAGO -- A research by the Inter-American Development Bank said on Tuesday that India could become a potential buyer of agricultural and mineral products of Latin America and the Caribbean, given New Delhi's rising buying power.

With a 1.1-billion population and facing a huge lack of raw materials, India is poised to become a big buyer of agricultural and mineral products, main export resources of Latin America, the research titled "India: Opportunities and challenges for Latin America" said.

Thus India could become a great consumer of Latin American and Caribbean raw materials, it said.

The region's trade with India represents only 0.8 percent of its foreign trade, it pointed out.

The research suggested both sides reduce their commercial taxes and trade barriers to enhance trade. Currently, the average tax India levied on Latin American agricultural products remain as high as 65 percent.

Another difficulty to enhance trade is a lack of direct shipping route between the two sides, it said.
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Yuan and absurdity of U.S. demand

BEIJING -- The conventional wisdom is that once the value of the yuan is increased, the US trade deficit with China would start falling. This rationale has prompted many Americans to push for further, faster revaluation of the yuan even after China changed its currency policy.
For those who endorse such logic, the yuan's value is a paramount factor behind China's - and their countries' - trade balances. But for John Ross, former deputy mayor of London in charge of economic and business policy, the trade gap between a country and China would widen instead of narrowing down, at least in the short term, if the yuan's values go up.
Ross, a visiting professor at Antai College of Economics and Management in Shanghai Jiaotong University, says that once the yuan's value rises the Americans would demand further revaluation, ultimately forcing the yuan to rise to a level that would not only disrupt China's trade and economy, but also pose a threat to the entire world economy.
Moreover, the number of jobs in the US would not increase unless the federal government changes its economic policy and raises investments, which is the real solution to its problem. Pressuring China to raise the yuan's value sharply will not help.
"Most people, particularly those abroad, don't know the real situation. The reason they want the yuan to be revaluated further is because they think it would reduce China's trade surplus. But let's say up to 18 months, this is not true."
From what happened between 2005 and 2008, when the yuan rose 21 percent against the dollar, it's clear that China's "trade surplus rose, too", Ross says. Any revaluation of the yuan raises the price of exports and reduces the price of imports, which means China's trade surplus would get bigger as its currency rises.
By examining historical data, Ross has found that China's exports and imports grew simultaneously after 2005 in terms of volume, but the prices of exports rose more relative to import thanks to the revaluation of the yuan. "That's why its trade surplus with the US is bigger today."

There's a big debate among economists over what would happen in the long term if the yuan rose further, he says. Some people think China's trade surplus would increase, while others think it would fall in the long run. "But there's no difference (in what they say) would happen in the short term."
Seen from the history of US trade, its overall trade deficit rose at nearly $70 billion a month until 2006, he says. Then it stabilized before rising again after the passage of the worst period of the global financial crisis. "That's why (American) people are getting agitated because it has worsened But it is not rising because of China, for - I'm using US figures, not Chinese figures - the trade surplus of China with the US is rather stable, slightly under $20 billion a month."
In other words, claiming that the trade deficit of the US is rising because of China is simply not true, he says. "It's because its (America's) trade deficit with the rest of the world is rising, too."
The US has a trade deficit with about 90 countries. "If you reduce its trade deficit with China, all that would happen is that its trade deficit with some other country would increase."
US hawks, however, have always targeted China and pressured it to dance to the tune of their demand. Even if China has pledged to make the yuan more flexible by reforming its exchange rate mechanism further and peg it to a basket of currencies to better reflect the demand of the market, some US politicians and industrial leaders say it's "too little too late" and demand the Chinese currency be revaluated by up to 40 percent.
Forcing the value of the yuan to rise would cause further uncertainties in the world economy, which today faces other big challenges such as the European Union debt crisis. "We are not (living) in a normal stable economic environment; we are just about recovering from a very bad financial crisis and what happens in the next six to 18 months is very important and would have a very big effect," he says. "The last thing the world needs at present is a short-term increase in China's trade surplus because of an increase in the value of the yuan."

As the yuan's value rises, the US would demand more revaluations, thus making it unaffordable for the Chinese and world economies. "The point is that the US has not given it a really serious thought."
Ross says economic history shows that the only way for the US to increase exports and jobs is to raise its level of investment. The Americans are famous for their low savings rate while China, Japan and some other countries boast high savings that can be used for investment.
The US suffered job losses because of the global financial crisis and because the savings rate in America was (and still is) very low. "It's very easy to explain the financial crisis in the US: The investment level of the US has not gone up in the past 150 years," he says. "The only way the US could increase its growth rate, which can create more jobs, is to raise the level of investment in its domestic market."
Ross accuses the US of trying to slow down growth of other countries by pressing them to raise the exchange of their currencies and lower their rate of investment. "The two effective means of slowing down an economy are to increase the exchange rate of its currencies sharply and force it to reduce its level of investment," Ross says. "This is what the US did for Japan in the 1970s and in later decades."
"What are the two demands the US places on China? One is to raise the exchange rate of the yuan. The second is to increase the share of consumption," he says. "But the increase in the share of consumption means reducing the share of investment and if China does these two things simultaneously, then its economy would slow down a lot."
Will that benefit China or, more importantly, the world economy?
(Source: China Daily)
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