Roundup - 08/01/2010

• China Mobile's Vice-Chairman, Zhang Chunjiang, has been removed from his post. China Mobile said that the decision was made due to 'alleged serious financial irregularities.' According to Caijing magazine Zhang is suspected of hiding losses when he worked at another state-owned telecommunications company, China Netcom. This led to a merger with China Unicom which left Unicom to deal with the unexpected losses at Zhang's company.
  
  
  
• The family of Yuan Kuansheng have alleged that he was murdered by corrupt colleagues. Yuan Kuansheng, formerly deputy mayor of Wugang, Hunan, was officially said to have committed suicide. However, in Yuan's final phone call to his wife, Liu Yuehong, he warned that their apartment had been bugged and that they may be in danger. Liu, a doctor, found several inconsistencies in her husbands autopsy. She claims that it is simply not feasable that her husband suddenly decided to slash his wrists, electrocute himself and then jump of a balcony. The Guardian(UK) reports that Zhuo Xueqing from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine cited unusual facial injuries, typical of trying to cover somebodies mouth, an unusual distribution of blood stains and a strange pattern of bone fractures. He said that 'we cannot rule out the possibility of murder.'
  
  
  
• Beijing's GDP has now exceeded US$10,000 per capita according to state media. Director of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Committee, Zhang Gong, said that incomes for residents of urban areas of the municipality has risen 12% while those of the outskirts has risen by 9%.
  
  While this news is an achievement for Beijing it also highlights the growing divide between rich and poor. National GDP was expected to rise to only US$3,600 last year.
  
  
  
• China has said that it will offer free vaccinations for the (A)H1N1 virus to children aged between six months and three years. The announcement comes as China ramps up its vaccination programme before the Chinese new year. China has so far vaccinated almost 51.4 million people, 659 deaths from the disease had been reported by the end of 2009.
  
  
  
• Three factory officials have been arrested for covering up the true cost of an accident at a steel plant on Monday. The officials, from the Puyang Iron and Steel co., initially reported only seven deaths from a suspected gas leek at the plant. The death toll has now risen to 21.
  
  
  
• Analysts say the a key interest rate rise is a sign of things to come. Interest from the People's Bank of China's weekly sale of three-month central bank bills has risen by less than 0.05% to 1.3684%. However, analysts predict that this is only the first of many interest rate hikes designed to halt speculative investments and restrain the excess of credit for China's businesses. RBS's Ben Simpfendorfer called it a 'turning point.'