Fonterra sorry for milk powder scare

Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter, apologized on Monday for its tainted milk powder scare and said the contaminated whey protein responsible for the botulism concerns will be under control within 48 hours.

Over the weekend, the New Zealand-based company said it had discovered a strain of bacteria —Clostridium botulinum — in its whey protein that can cause botulism. The company said tainted whey protein had been exported to China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Saudi Arabia. The raw material is used to produce baby formula and sports drinks.

C. botulinum is one of the world’s strongest toxins and can destroy the human nervous system if ingested. In infants under one year old, it can trigger neural paralysis.

Theo Spierings, CEO of Fonterra, which accounts for about one-third of the global trade in dairy, said in a Monday media briefing in Beijing that about 90 percent of its products that contain contaminated whey protein have been located. Another 10 percent of the whey protein exports will be recalled in the next 24-48 hours.

Spierings said a total of 38 metric tons of tainted whey protein was contaminated. About 20 tons were sold to three beverage companies, including Coca-Cola and China’s Wahaha, and three animal feed companies.

After news of the tainted milk powder broke, Spierings flew directly from New Zealand to China, one of Fonterra’s top markets that have had its fair share of milk powder scares over the years.

“We’ve confirmed with the beverage clients that the bacteria cannot survive the heated treatment in their production process. Those company’s products are clear,” said Spierings, who added that the other 18 metric tons of tainted whey protein are used to produce infant nutritional products.

He said that Fonterra doesn’t know how much of the infant nutritional products are at risk. According to Fonterra, two companies used the contaminated whey protein to produce infant formula. One company asked to remain unnamed and the other is Danone, which owns Dumex, a baby formula brand.

“We’ve been working closely with the companies to identify where the products are and what actions need to be taken. All products have been located and we are working with local authorities, more detailed information will come out very soon,” Spierings said.

By Meng Jing ( chinadaily.com.cn)

China Daily via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/_q5eLd4asr0/

China, US hold dialogue on human rights

China and the United States on Wednesday held a dialogue on human rights issue in Kunming, capital city of southwest China’s Yunnan province, according to a Foreign Ministry press release on Friday evening.

The Chinese delegation is headed by a Foreign Ministry official and the US delegation is led by a State Department official.

The two sides conducted frank, in-depth, comprehensive and constructive discussions on the protection of human rights and national concerns, international cooperation in human rights, justice and human rights, freedom of expression and privacy rights protection, according to the press release.

The Chinese side introduced the country’s achievements in democracy and the rule of law, improvement of people’s livelihood, protection of minority rights, promotion of the coordinated development of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights, it said.

The US side fully affirmed China’s progress in promoting economic and social development and poverty alleviation, the press release said.

The Chinese side said that the dialogue on human rights is meaningful for building a new type of relationship between major powers, calling on the two sides to effectively deal with differences and conduct pragmatic cooperation.

The dialogue should be guided by mutual respect, equality, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, according to the Chinese side.

China’s human rights situation is in the best period in history and China is a country ruled by law, the Chinese side stressed, urging the US side to respect China’s judicial sovereignty and stop bothering China on some isolated cases.

The Chinese side raised the issues of racial discrimination, lack of protection of indigenous rights, the use of torture against terrorism, poor prison conditions and other issues within the United States, according to the press release.

Besides the talks, the US delegation on Tuesday visited a minority village, a women’s prison, a mosque and a temple in Yunnan, and visited on Thursday the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Supreme People’s Court and the State Bureau of Religious Affairs in Beijing, said the press release.

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China becomes largest source of overseas students

From 1978 to the end of 2012, more than 2.6 million Chinese studied outside the country, making China the world’s top source of overseas students, official figures released on Friday showed.

In 2012, 399,600 Chinese went to study abroad, funded by the government or their employers, or at their own expense, according to the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange under the Ministry of Education.

China ranked first in the world in terms of the number of overseas students.

Currently, around 74 percent of Chinese overseas students are studying in the United States, Australia, Japan, Britain and Canada, showed the data.

The center added that the number of younger students studying abroad is rising year by year.

Since the introduction of China’s reform and opening-up policy in 1978, around 1.1 million Chinese overseas students have chosen to return to their home country after finishing their studies, accounting for 72.38 percent of the total.

In 2012, 272,900 Chinese returned, an increase of 46.57 percent from 2011, according to the figures.

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US urged to ease exports ban

Reclaiming 10 percent import share by 2015 the target: council report

Chinese experts are urging the United States to loosen restrictions on high-tech exports to China to balance bilateral trade and spur the US economic recovery.

The call comes as the US has pledged to work hard to expand its shipments to China and to reclaim 10 percent of China’s total imports by 2015.

Although China remained the US’ third-largest export market in 2012, buying goods from the US worth $109 billion, Washington must fight harder to increase its share of that total, the US-China Business Council said in two reports on Thursday.

From 2003 to 2012, US exports to China rose by 294 percent, up nearly $81 billion. But the US share in China’s total imports has fallen to 7 percent from 10 percent in 2000 and it “significantly” trails the European Union, Japan and South Korea in exports to the country.

Chinese trade experts attribute the drop to Washington’s restrictions on high-tech exports to China. “The key problem is that the US has competitiveness in high-tech products but restricted the exports to China, which forced China to diversify its imports from the EU, South Korea and other sources,” said Wang Jun, an expert with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

“The US should relax its guard against China. Easing the export restriction will not only balance bilateral trade but also boost the US economic recovery.”

Long Guoqiang, director of foreign economic relations at the State Council Development Research Center, agreed, saying that besides the restrictions on exports China has seen a change in its domestic consumption demand in the past decade.

In that time, China has witnessed a rapid rise in imports of primary commodities, while the US has strengthened exports of agricultural and high-tech products, along with chemicals, to China, he added.

Constrained US exports to China and China’s robust exports to the US have resulted in a large trade surplus for China, which rose 8.5 percent year-on-year to $218.92 billion in 2012.

At the same time, Washington has continued to accuse Beijing of manipulating the yuan.

Addressing the US’ ability to compete with other countries on exports to China, the report on US Congressional district exports to the country said that China acts as a primary processing area in East Asian supply chains routed through Japan and South Korea. This relationship accounts for strong imports from those countries, it added. But it said that China’s imports from the European Union, which “far outpace those from the United States”, provide a more useful benchmark for comparing US export competitiveness in China.

The business council’s annual report said the US could increase its sales and global competitiveness while providing China with innovative products and services to regain the 10 percent import share by 2015.

“As its economy and middle class continue to expand, China will continue to play a significant role as an export market for a wide selection of US goods,” the report said.

It also said that US exports to China “remain a bright spot for US companies”. Although annual growth in US exports to China slowed to 6.5 percent last year due to China’s slowing economy, annual average growth over the past decade was nearly 17 percent, according to the report.

“Strengthening exports to China will greatly benefit the US economic recovery, as China is not only a leading export market for the US but also the fastest growing one,” Long said, calling for the establishment of a China-US free trade agreement.

“If the US really wants to gain from the Chinese market, the strategic move is to launch a bilateral FTA,” he said.

Wang said such an agreement between the two countries will remove barriers in trade and investment.

Charlie Welsh, editor-in-chief of XportReporter, an online business-information journal that covers the export market, said the council’s report underlines how essential it is that more US companies look to faster-growing foreign markets like China for growth opportunities.

“While absolute numbers look impressive, the fact remains that US companies, particularly in the middle market, continue to let their lunch get eaten by their more proactive peers in Europe, Japan and elsewhere,” Welsh told China Daily.

“American companies remain a statistical anomaly insofar as they, unlike other advanced economies, do not look to foreign markets as a substitute for lower domestic growth. That is why the US’ share of imports into China has fallen to 7 percent from 10 percent in 2000,” he said.

The business council’s report on US exports to China by state shows that California led last year, with exports worth $13.6 billion, a 156 percent rise from 2003 to 2012.

It was followed by Texas, with exports worth $10.1 billion and growth of 229 percent. The third-largest state exporter was Washington, with $7.9 billion in exports and growth of 239 percent.

By MICHAEL BARRIS in New York and LI JIABAO in Beijing ( China Daily)

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Relaxation of one-child policy still being mulled

China is still deliberating whether to further relax the country’s one-chid policy by allowing a couple in which only one party is an only child to have two children, a spokesman for the country’s health and family planning authority said Friday.

Mao Qun’an, spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, made the statement in response to media attention on China’s population policies. The current policy requires that to have a second child, the father and the mother must be both only children.

Mao reaffirmed that China must adhere to the basic state policy of family planning for a long period of time.

He explained that because the country’s basic conditions still include a huge population, weak economic foundations, sparse per capita resources and insufficient environmental capacity, the population will continue to put pressure on and strain the economy, society, resources and the environment.

However, Mao said that one of the recently restructured commission’s major tasks lies in improving the family planning policy. It is organizing surveys and studies on the correlations between the size, quality, structure and distribution of China’s population.

To improve population policies, Mao said, China must maintain the current low birth rate while also taking into consideration the public’s needs, social and economic development, and changes in the population structure.

The family planning policy was first introduced in the late 1970s to rein in China’s surging population by encouraging late marriages and pregnancies, as well as limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children, if the first one is a girl.

Under the policy, most couples born in urban areas in the 1980s come from single-child families.

The policy was relaxed around 2007, allowing couples in all Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, except for Henan province, in which both parents come from single-child families to give birth to two children.

Henan province adopted the relaxed family planning policy in 2011.

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Weatherford, China’s Sinopec close to oil service tie-up; shale in focus

(Reuters) – China’s Sinopec Corp (0386.HK) and U.S.-listed Weatherford International (WFT.N) are in advanced talks about forming a joint oilfield service company, as the world’s top energy consumer seeks overseas expertise to help unlock its vast shale resources, said people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The proposed joint venture would likely be the largest of its kind in China, aiming to marry Weatherford’s technological know-how with the Chinese oil major’s (600028.SS) potential to grow in a nascent shale oil and gas sector.

Read Full Article HERE

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China lauds naval power after first Japan circuit

BEIJING (AFP) – China’s state media lauded the country’s maritime power Friday after navy vessels completed their first circuit around Japan.

Beijing has been looking to expand its bluewater reach, launching its first aircraft carrier last year, and the circumnavigation of Japan sends a symbolic signal with Beijing and Tokyo at loggerheads over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Read Full Article HERE

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