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Reports on the economic reform of the government by liberalizing investment in the state sectors in China. Privatization of the state sector; Monopolies in many sectors; Comparison of the reform with that of Russia and other East European countries.

Features an interview with World Bank official David Dollar regarding the state of foreign investment in China. Focus of Chinese government on attracting big-name multinational companies; Dynamic growth of Chinese small and medium sized enterprises; Foreign firms' reinvestment of profit made in China.

Presents comments by Chinese experts on the six-party talks over Korean nuclear issue held in Beijing, China. Publisher Wang Gangyi; Researcher Ruan Zongze; Researcher Gao Haikuan.

• We used times series vegetation indices, phenologies, and the soil moisture downscaled from SMAP to extract the paddy rice areas. • Random forest regression and classifier were employed to downscale the SMAP soil moisture and classify the paddy rice, respectively. • We examined that the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient were improved distinctly, while the downscaled soil moisture added. Rice production is very important for national food security in China. Time series vegetation indices and phenology-based algorithms have been utilized to map paddy rice fields by identifying the flooding and seedling transplanting phases from multitemporal moderate-resolution (500 m to 1 km) images. Satellite imagery in other electromagnetic spectrum such as microwave region provides supplementary information about land surface characteristics such as soil moisture, which may improve the accuracy of rice mapping. In this study, we developed a method for identifying paddy rice at the regional scale based on the potential relationship between soil moisture and crop growth. Random forest classification optimized by the coordinate descent algorithm was used to generate a 500 m resolution paddy rice map with time series downscaled soil moisture based on Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) images and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images of the northern Songnen Plain in Northeast China-one of the major paddy rice cultivation regions in China. A combination of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Land Surface Water Index (LSWI), Phenological Parameters (PH), and Soil Moisture (SM) was used to identify the rice fields during the flooding/transplanting and ripening phases. Two scenarios (EVI+LSWI+PH and EVI+LSWI+PH+SM as the input parameters) were developed to extract the paddy rice from the images. A comparison of the two identification scenarios indicated that the addition of the soil moisture to the combination achieved higher identification accuracy, especially at the junction of the different crop phases. The proposed method could be beneficial to researchers attempting to improve the accuracy of paddy rice identification at regional scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article stresses the risks posed by a possible China-U.S. trade and currency war to the countries and the world economy. The move by the U.S. Democratic Party and President Barack Obama to blame China is said to have been driven by the mid-term elections in 2010. The East Asian economy is expected to suffer from a possible trade and currency war. Also noted is the possibility that such dispute will shift capital from dollars to euros.

Discusses consumer spending in China. Leading item of consumption for Chinese individuals; Plans of the government to increase the per-capita living space for urban residents; Contributions of mobile phones to the country's overall telecommunications revenue; Annual spending on commercial travel; Other hot spots of consumption.

Assesses consumer spending in China. Amount of Chinese individual savings; Consumer behavior of Chinese people; Stories of Chinese rank-and-file employees on what they spend their money on.

Reports on the bidding of the state assets to lure private and foreign investors in Beijing, China. Acclaim of the city as the largest property rights trading center on the Asian Continent; Value of the asset; Decision for asset restriction. INSET: Assets Sale Dilemma..

Focuses on the economic performance of Hangzhou City in China. Destination for investors; Investment climate of the city; Average sales and labor growth rates.

Interviews Long Yongtu, manager of the Boao Forum for Asia. Uniqueness of the forum; Demand for the forum; Vision for the forum; Personal role in Boao.

Interviews Jiang Xiaosong, vice chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia. Contributions to the forum; Involvement with the birth of the forum; Person most afraid of; Vision for the forum. INSET: Profile of Jiang Xiaosong..

Focuses on a notice issued by the China Securities and Regulatory Commission to stop companies from cheating investors. Increase of the threshold of entry into the market; Incentive for state-owned companies to improve corporate governance or business performance; Implementation of quantitative limits in private placement by insiders. INSET: Nuts and Bolts of the Notice on Further Standardizing....

Focuses on the illegal seizure of property and destruction of houses in China. Protest of farmer Zhu Zhengliang against local officials who had destroyed his house; Order on the farmer to relocate after officials seized his property for business development; Issue of the rights of private citizens and the broad powers of the government.

Reports on the plans of aerospace company, United Technologies Corp. (UTC) to increase the number of its joint ventures in China. Rank of UTC in "Fortune" magazine; UTC's 2003 global earnings per share; Plans of UTC to continue to procure a large amount of materials from China; Reasons why UTC has grown so fast in China.

Reports on the number of mergers and consolidations of various companies in China. History of the declined market for consolidation; Improvement of the revenues of the gas industry and financial services; Motives of the multinational companies entering the country.

Provides insights from two Chinese scholars on whether China should or should not revalue its currency. Agreement that revaluating or not is a matter of sovereign independence for China and that a drastic revaluation is not needed; Unscrupulous adoption of a free float that may lead to unpredictable results; Limited impact of revaluating on the renminbi.