Just read on Fons’ Blog that the Bank of China is bailing out the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China with some pocket money
China’s central bank has agreed to give the country’s four debt clearing agencies 459 billion yuan ($56.6 billion) to buy bad assets from top state lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Securities Journal reported on Friday.
The four would buy the bad assets from ICBC as part of the process of cleaning up the bank’s finances before an eventual planned public listing
No doubt the listing will be a success.
Source: Reuters
I visit sometimes your blog and find some tips useful, I’m not an expat in China, but just searching some information on the chinese internet. I’m wondering whether chinese local search engine (Baidu) is having deals with the government or with the backbone ISPs to block international ones (Google) for its own profit. Do you think there is such a connection, that maybe not all blockings were done to protect political interest?
Comment by Zuzu — November 5, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
Good question and no definitive answer is possible. There have and are always rumours that Chinese companies are helped a little at times by the government. In the period that google.com was blocked in China, already some time ago (I can’t recall the exact date) there was a strong rumour that Baidu was behind it. Whether it’s true or not, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
There is a strong nationalistic tendency in these cases and it would be hard to swallow maybe if a foreign search engine would be more popular.
The fact that there is a strong firewall between China and the rest of the world makes it harder for online competition as their traffic can be squeezed, blocked etc. Google.com Intl. isn’t the fastest kid here on the block, Baidu is localy hosted, hence faster and more readily available.
To make a long answer short, like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have deals with the government and we’ll have to see in the future how this will play out.
Comment by Shanghai — November 6, 2006 @ 5:00 am