Glut in output may hurt steel industry
Regulator to keep track of realtors
Battle breaks out over game approval
In a rare turf war between regulatory agencies, the Ministry of Culture (MOC) yesterday opened fire on the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), saying its decision to pull the plug on a popular online game was “an act out of bounds”.
The firefight broke out after GAPP decided Monday night to suspend its approval of the World of WarCraft online game. The game has more than 1 million players on the Chinese mainland.
In effect, the GAPP decision ran against a State Council circular issued last July that declared the MOC was in charge of regulating the multi-billion dollar online gaming industry.
GAPP had previously overseen the industry.
It has ordered NetEase.com, China’s second-largest Internet games operator and the company with the license to run World of WarCraft in China, not to charge users. GAPP has also told the company to power off its servers and refuse to accept new account registrations.
GAPP is responsible for reviewing and approving “publications” and the department contends that online games are a form of “online publication”.
The MOC insists online games are within its portfolio.
The MOC called an emergency press briefing yesterday afternoon in Beijing to respond to GAPP’s decision to suspend approval on the popular online game.
Li Xiong, head of the MOC’s department of cultural markets, insisted the ministry had the sole right to regulate online games.
“As long as they’re online, these online games and publications are fully subject to administration by the MOC,” Li said.
Nasdaq-listed NetEase is “complete in its paperwork and the content of its game is legitimate”, Li said, insisting that GAPP should not have become involved and blocked the game.
GAPP had earlier threatened to cut NetEase’s Internet service, something that Li said it was not authorized to do.
The MOC will report relevant matters to the State Council, added Liu Qiang, chief of its Internet culture division.
GAPP allowed NetEase to begin testing World of WarCraft on July 30 on the condition that it did not charge gamers and did not allow the registration of new accounts. But NetEase allegedly began to break those conditions on Sept 19.
GAPP responded on Monday evening by saying it had pulled approval of the game.
In a written statement, NetEase yesterday said it had not been officially notified of GAPP’s decision. The company said it was “currently seeking clarification” from the relevant authorities.
Officials from GAPP could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Experts have described China’s online gaming industry as one of the nation’s most promising sectors. The nation’s online gaming industry took in around 2.7 billion yuan last year, according to official statistics.
China had 217 million online gamers by June.
The battle between the two regulatory agencies over who controls online gaming has left many players anxious.
Zhang Chao, 28, who has been a World of WarCraft player for five years, said the dispute was “a show of the intensity of conflict between government agencies whose roles have not been clearly defined”.
“Of course, players like us wouldn’t want to see the game suspended. This looks as if they’re just messing around with things over a conflict of interest,” Zhang said.
A 29-year-old worker at an online advertising agency, who would only give her cyber name, Xiaoyun, said she plays for around four hours a day. She said many online gamers will play via servers in Taiwan, where they will have to spend about twice as much.
“I don’t care which government agency is overseeing online games. But whoever it is, they never come to us for our opinion,” she said. “The players are the biggest victims.”
Air China to hold 51% in cargo deal with Cathay
Air China will hold 51 percent of a cargo venture with Cathay Pacific which it hopes to finalize in the first half of next year, a Chinese airline executive said on Monday.
An industry newsletter sent to Reuters said the two carriers will provide 10 Boeing 747-400 freighters to their Shanghai-based venture which will take off before the Shanghai world expo in May 2010. It did not say where it got the information.
An Air China spokesman said discussions for the tie-up were on-going between the two carriers and no financial details, including the total investment of the venture nor size of its fleet, had been decided.
Air China in August bought a further 12.5 percent stake in Cathay, lifting its interest in the Hong Kong-based carrier to 29.99 percent.
The venture could give Air China and Cathay a foothold in Shanghai, a major air hub in the country, and help them better compete with China Eastern Airlines, which will have rough half of the Shanghai market after its planned merger with Shanghai Air.
Agricultural hi-tech fair opens, highlighting innovation
China’s most influential agricultural high-tech expo opened Sunday in Xi’an City, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, highlighting agricultural innovation and high-tech advancement.
More than 5,000 new agricultural technologies and projects of over 1,100 companies from home and abroad are showcased at the 16th China Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair, said Liang Hongxian, deputy director of Yangling hi-tech zone’s administration committee.
Addressing the opening of the fair, State Councilor Liu Yandon gurged efforts to develop modern ecological agriculture with high yields, high quality and high efficiency through science and technology advancement.
It is imperative to push for the agricultural innovation to achieve development, to settle the “double restrictions” China’s agriculture faces, namely the resources environment and market supply and demand, Liu said.
China welcomes foreign agricultural companies to invest and setup R&D branches in the country and encourages domestic hi-tech agricultural companies to explore the overseas market, she added.
The fair is jointly hosted by the provincial government of Shaanxi and the ministries of science and technology, commerce, education, agriculture and 14 other ministries.
The previous 15 fairs attracted more than 13 million business people and visitors from home and abroad, recording a combined transaction volume of 160 billion yuan and bringing benefits to more than 300 million farmers, Liang said.
China probably not to extend favorable measures in property sector
With a solid recovery in the real estate market, the Chinese government would probably not continue the measures unveiled last October to boost the property sector amid the global financial crisis, the China Business newspaper reported Sunday on its website.
The Newspaper quoted an unnamed source close to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MHURD) said, “Those policies were effective for one year. The MHURD will not propose to extend them.”
Late last October, Beijing rolled out a series of favorable measures to boost the falling property sector amid the global economic downturn.
These measures, which took effect on Nov. 1 last year, included cutting the mortgage rates by as deep as 30 percent, lowering the stamp tax on house purchases from 3-5 percent to 1 percent for first-time home buyers acquiring an apartment of less than 90 square meters, and reducing the down payment requirement to 20 percent from 30 percent.
These measures, implemented by the Ministry of Finance, the central bank and the State Administration of Taxation, had been largely proposed by the MHURD, the newspaper quoted the source as saying.
Thanks to these policies and rising demand, China’s property market has seen price and sale hikes after February this year. Net profit of China Vanke, the country’s largest property developer by market value, jumped nearly 30 percent year on year to about 3 billion yuan (439 million U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters of this year.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that housing price in 70 of China’s large and medium-sized cities rose 2.8 percent in September compared with the same month last year. On a month-to-month comparison, it was 0.7 percent higher than in August, and it was the seventh straight month of price increase of housing price.
Real estate investment is one of the largest contributors to China’s urban fixed-asset investment, which has been an important driver of China’s double-digit economic growth of recent years.
Comments (0) 
Industries
| 
[
