London 2012: China assesses Olympic 'journey'

The Games saw China finish with 38 gold, 27 silver and 22 bronze medals, putting it second on the medal table behind the US. Although it bagged 51 golds in the 2008 Beijing Games, sports officials said this was the best-ever result in an Olympics not hosted by China, seemingly not greatly bothered by the fact that China was beaten by the US.

Calling the Olympics a source of inspiration, state-run China Daily newspaper said "the journey is more important than the destination". "For all athletes, as long as they have tried their best, they deserve the respect of spectators," it said.

"I think the general public was very happy with the result, with China finishing second after the US," Dong Jun, a journalist with China Radio International (CRI), told the BBC. "China's 2008 delegation was huge," David Yang, editor of the China Sports Review website, pointed out. "The delegation for London was roughly 60% the size."

"For a major sports nation like China, this was already a streamlined delegation - so their performance was splendid," Mr Yang said.
 

'Unfairness'

But it is clear not all Chinese people see the London Games as a happy experience. Chinese media have complained of unfair treatment meted out to Chinese athletes.

This includes questions over the record-breaking performance of female swimmer Ye Shiwen and the disqualification of two Chinese badminton players for match-throwing. Chinese players also hit out at refereeing in events such as gymnastics and track cycling.

People's Daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial on Monday, saying athletes "faced naivety and bias from individual referees as they imposed punishments based on double standards".

And some netizens are very angry - it is not hard to find comments on China's Twitter-like weibo sites calling the London Games "a total failure". "London Olympics were the worst Olympics ever," said a Sina Weibo user in southern Guangdong province. "It has hosted the Games three times, but it was full of blunders."

"Britain, Germany, Japan and South Korea won shameless appeals, but China was always unfairly treated. I am so angry," said a Tencent Weibo user in northern Hebei province.

But there are some micro-blog comments that are positive, and China Sports Review's David Yang thinks perceived slights have been blown out of proportion. "I think it has happened at every Olympic Games in the past," said Mr Yang, who believes harsh comments are merely venting.

"All sports competitions - including the Fifa World Cup and the Uefa European Football Championships - all face the same problems. Refereeing is always a controversial issue in the media."

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China Begins Construction on its First Luxury Cruise Liner

Last week marked the beginning of the construction phase of China’s first large luxury cruise liner, a project that is estimated to top $2.63 billion.

As part of a package of projects intended to boost tourism and the shipping industries at coastal cities, the Southeast China International Shipping Center package includes 10 projects led by the construction of the 100,000-ton luxury cruise liner. The package also includes building a cruise terminal and shipping business center in the city of Xiamen.

The cruise liner alone is said to cost approximately $487 million and leading international design firms are participating in the project.

According to Lin Shilin, an industry and investment official with Xiamen’s Haicang district, it could take up to 47 months to build the massive cruise liner. Once it’s complete, it will be able to carry more than 2,000 passengers and will be named, “Xiamen, China”. According to officials, the cruise liner won’t be ready to sail the waters until 2018.

Xiamen, China will be operated by a subsidiary of Beijing-based Shan Hai Shu Group, a conglomerate that already has an established partnership with US-based Royal Caribbean International.

Shan Hai Shu’s chief operational officer, Huang Ju, said, “With our own cruise liner, it will be easier to design cruise routes and develop our own tourism products.” The cruise liner is expected to further promote the city and help with economic growth in the region.

According to Xiamen’s tourism bureau, the city also plans to partner with global cruise tourism operators to build a world-class shopping and entertainment center on the cruise terminal. They hope to include the highest number of luxury stores in the world.

Locals hope that the city’s new industrial port belt, dubbed “Cruise City”, will allow “people arriving in Xiamen on cruises to have as much fun … as they do in Las Vegas.

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Audi outsells its biggest rival, BMW, in April

(CBS News) The battle between the three biggest luxury car makers has a new champion. Audi, a division of Volkswagen, outsold market leader BMW for the first time in over a year in April. Strong demand from China and the U.S. boosted sales among all automakers, but Audi came out on top, with the strongest performance of the three major German luxury brands.

The company told Reuters that vehicle demand increased 14.4 percent in April to 125,200. Sales of BMW brand models rose 7.4 percent to 121,476.

Munich-based BMW has long been the strongest of the big three luxury brands: BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz. A spokeswoman for Audi said that the last time the company out-sold BMW in a month was January 2011. Audi surpassed Mercedes-Benz in sales last year and hopes to take the lead by the end of the decade. Volkswagen, Audi's parent company, has a goal of doubling car deliveries to 2 million by 2020.

"Audi will remain the No. 1 challenger to BMW over the next four to five years," Frank Schwope, an analyst with NordLB in Hanover, told Reuters. "They're firmly rooted in lucrative markets and benefit greatly from VW resources."

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Apple may lose iPad trademark in China

BEIJING: A top Chinese official has sided with a Chinese firm involved in a legal battle with Apple over the iPad trademark, suggesting the US giant could lose the right to use the iconic name in China.

Proview Technology, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, has been locked in a protracted legal battle with Apple over ownership of the Chinese rights to the "iPad" trademark, which both claim as their own.

"Currently, Shenzhen Proview is still the legitimate registered owner of the iPad trademark," Fu Shuangjian, deputy minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told reporters, according to an online transcript.

The Taiwanese affiliate of Proview Technology registered "iPad" as a trademark in several countries including China as early as 2000 -- years before Apple began selling its product.

The US titan subsequently bought the rights for global trademark -- including from the Taiwanese affiliate -- but Proview claims the deal did not include the rights for mainland China.

Last year, Apple took Proview to a Chinese court, claiming trademark infringement, but the court ruled the US company lacked "supporting facts and evidence" for its claim.

The US company is now appealing the case but debt-laden Proview, which makes computer monitors, has since filed trademark lawsuits against Apple in China and is also suing the technology giant in the United States.

Fu -- whose administration deals with IP infringement cases -- said that according to Chinese law, a trademark transfer must be approved by the Trademark Office. He implied that in this case, approval had not been given.

"Due to the huge impact of this case, the court's final ruling will directly affect ownership of the iPad trademark and Industrial and Commerce departments will carefully and properly handle the case," he said.

It is rare for a Chinese enterprise to accuse an overseas firm of trademark breaches -- although foreign companies frequently complain of intellectual property rights violations in China.

Apple is hugely popular in the Asian nation, where die-hard fans have been known to line up for days to get their hands on the latest offerings from the US giant.

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Green and clean car promotions begin to pay dividends

Despite lingering consumer doubts about the technology and practicality of electric vehicles, the Chinese government and automakers are pushing ahead with the development of green cars.

Buyers of hybrid cars, which run on a combination of batteries and conventional engines, are entitled to a direct central government subsidy of 5,000 yuan ($790) per vehicle, while a rebate of up to 60,000 yuan on the purchase price is offered to buyers of battery-driven cars.

Green and clean car promotions begin to pay dividends

New electric cars on display at Jiading Auto City, Shanghai. [Provided to China Daily]

Other than government incentives, auto manufacturers are luring buyers of their alternative cars with free maintenance and a range of personalized services.

Their combined effort to promote greener cars on Chinese roads is beginning to pay off. A survey by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed that 8,159 hybrid and electric cars were sold nationwide in 2011. All together, there are more than 10,000 green cars on China's roads.

The energy conversion rate of electric vehicles in general is 46 percent higher than in internal combustion engine cars, and they have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 68 percent, said Raymond Tsang, partner at Bain and Company.

The majority of early converts to green cars are college-educated young professionals in major cities. For instance, Zhao Yu, a 30-year-old office worker at Shanghai International Automobile City, in Jiading, a district of the Shanghai municipality, bought a hybrid car domestically produced by BYD "to show support for my district's reputation as the country's showroom for energy-efficient cars".

Jiading, home to Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group), one of China's largest car manufacturers, considers itself a suitable testing ground for popularizing the use of clean cars.

All the promotions were making Zhao feel embarrassed every time she drove her gas-guzzling, pollution-belching, sinister-looking lump of a sedan to work every day. To repent, she spent 160,000 yuan in April last year to buy BYD's new hybrid model, the F3DM, to drive to work and show her eco-friendly credentials.

To her surprise, buying the car has brought benefits that make her feel like a pampered child. For a start, she received close to a 40 percent, or 60,000 yuan, rebate from the central and local governments on the purchase price of her hybrid car. What's more, she was told she could enjoy free battery recharge at stations sprouting in the city, compliments of the Jiading district government.

"I am still getting the hang of owning and driving a hybrid car," she said. But the many incentives have removed any earlier doubts she had about the economic sense of buying one. "I feel like I am one of the chosen few," she said. That feeling, she added, "makes me feel immensely proud of my decision".

Zhao's F3DM can go as far as 150 kilometers in hybrid mode, a range long enough to make the daily round trip from her home to the office and back. "I never need to worry about running out of juice in the middle of nowhere," she said.

In electric power mode, the batteries can sustain up to 90 minutes' driving, or 80 kilometers, before the gas engine takes over. "I only need to recharge the batteries once every day, after I get to work," Zhao said.

The good thing, Zhou added, is that her car is smooth and quiet. What's more, it saves her quite a bit on fuel costs, compared to her other car, which she drives only on weekends.

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Apple faces new fight in China IP dispute

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Creditors of Proview Technology (Shenzhen), the insolvent company which registered the iPad trademark in China, have mounted an additional challenge against Apple in its efforts to gain control of the trademark.

This latest episode in the trademark saga comes as Apple is launching the iPad 3, and serves as a reminder of the risks the company is facing in one of its most dynamic markets.

He Jun Vanguard Group, a consultancy that represents Proview Shenzhen’s eight Chinese creditor banks, said on Wednesday that since the banks had taken control of Proview’s assets in March 2009, it would have been illegal for the company to sell the trademark at the time. Apple closed a deal nine months later with a sister company of Proview Shenzhen, under which the US company claims to have acquired the China trademark.

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The argument creates a new hurdle for Apple in a battle which is being fought in several courts in China and in the US. Proview Shenzhen filed the iPad trademark in China as early as 2000 for a PC product it sold back then. Proview Electronics (Taiwan), a sister company of Proview Shenzhen, filed the trademark in several other markets between 2000 and 2004. In December 2009, when Apple was preparing to launch its tablet, it closed a deal through a special-purpose company to acquire the “global” iPad trademark from Proview Taiwan.

The trademarks in other markets have since been transferred to Apple’s name but Proview Shenzhen has refused to transfer the China trademark, arguing it was not included in the deal. Last December, a Shenzhen court rejected Apple’s request to have the China trademark transferred to its name. Apple has appealed the verdict. A final ruling in this case had so far been seen as the most likely end of the dispute.

But the creditors’ intervention throws this into doubt. He Jun Vanguard warned that the banks would try to block Apple’s access to the trademark even if the final verdict reversed the earlier ruling.

“No matter what the [final] result of the lawsuit is, the eight creditor banks have the right to directly apply to the Trademark Office to reiterate the creditors’ rights of control and seizure and stop the loss of Chinese intellectual property,” He Jun Vanguard said in a statement emailed to the FT.

“The essence of the fight over the IPAD trademark is a fight between Apple and Proview’s eight creditor banks,” said Huang Yiding, He Jun’s vice-president.

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China Builds the World's Largest Battery, a Building-Sized, 36-Megawatt-Hour Behemoth

The largest battery in the world has arrived, and you likely won’t be surprised where it landed: Hebei Province, China. The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) and electric car maker BYD--the company that most recently made big headlines a few years back when Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway took a 10 percent stake--have teamed to create a massive battery array capable of storing 36 megawatt-hours of electricity.

That’s enough to power something like 12,000 homes for an hour during a total power failure, and enough for SGCC authorities to declare it the world’s largest energy storage device. The $500 million facility is constructed of arrays of BYD batteries “larger than a football field,” according to an SGCC press release, and they should increase the region’s renewable energy efficiency by up to 10 percent.

The array, located in Zhangbei, isn’t just a stand-alone battery. It is hooked into 140 megawatts of wind and solar power generation projects as well as a smart grid transmission system. Together, these elements represent China’s push toward a smart grid system that can generate renewable energy when conditions are ripe and store excess energy in its new battery array for use when energy generation troughs throughout the day.

The Deputy Director of China’s National Energy Administration is calling it the model for the future of Chinese renewable energy development, which means it will probably be the first such battery facility of many. That’s good for both China and BYD, which has been having a bit of trouble selling its electric cars both at home and abroad.

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