more stories

Icon Yao Ming projects China's soft power in global arena

Opinion | Chinese perspectives
2011-7-22

WITH 26 screws inserted in his left foot, world famous NBA player Yao Ming said farewell to the basketball courts at 30, an age when a man is at his prime. On Wednesday, Yao announced his retirement because of...

---

Europe needs political unity in federation 'lite'

Opinion | Foreign perspectives
2011-7-21

THE euro contagion triggered by Greece's sovereign-debt crisis has now infected Italy. In the absence of a strong EU-wide commitment to stop the contagion, other eurozone countries hit by the sovereign-debt crisis...

---

Forget stress tests: Most banks insolvent

Opinion | Foreign perspectives
2011-7-21

NEWS reports at the end of last week informed the financial markets that the European Banking Authority (EBA) failed only eight of the 90 banks examined in the most recent round of stress tests. These eight unfortunates...

---

Bullet train on wrong track loses touch with reality

Opinion | Shanghai Daily columnists
2011-7-20

LAST Saturday my sister came to Shanghai from Beijing for a business trip, traveling on the newly christened gaotie, the latest bullet train. Like dongche, another kind of bullet train, this much-hyped gaotie is...

---

All hail fast and fancy railway but is it safe to ride?

Opinion | Chinese perspectives
2011-7-20

ARGUABLY, the debut of the much expected, much celebrated world's longest and fastest high-speed railway - the Beijing-Shanghai bullet train service - was a flop. Malfunctions and glitches that resulted in hours...

---

Banking on buying into bubbles

Opinion | Shanghai Daily columnists
2011-7-19

A POSSIBLE banking crisis in China lurks less in real estate bubbles than in the political economy of local governments. Though I am a victim of astronomically high housing prices, I don't see an imminent danger...

---

A bridge too far is a bridge that may collapse too soon

Opinion | Press Notes
2011-7-19

LAST week witnessed the collapses of three bridges in China, all of which had been in service for no more than 14 years. These accidents prompt us to ask why relatively new bridges are so fragile? Official probes...

---

Blame pretentious buyers for DaVinci fake furniture

Opinion | Press Notes
2011-7-19

DUE to the persistent media firestorm, public scrutiny and official inquiry into the widening DaVinci scandal, in which the company was found to sell inferior homemade furniture labeled "Made in Italy," the unscrupulous...

---

Government shills turn public hearings into jokes

Opinion | Press Notes
2011-7-19

PUBLIC hearings are supposedly places where people heckle the government on a variety of issues, but in Chengdu City in southwestern China, four citizen representatives invariably raise their hands in approval of whatever...

---

Banks fear loans may sour if property falls

Opinion | China Knowledge@Wharton
2011-7-19

THE banking system of China's mainland is one of the largest in the world in terms of assets, after the United States. The country has three of the world's 12 largest banks in terms of top-tier capital adequacy,...

---

Chinese parents use kids for personal status and one-upmanship

Opinion | Chinese perspectives
2011-7-18

WAN Lixin's "Cruel ratings mindset calls for shunning kids with low scores" (July 4) and Zong Lei's "Chinese mom: My son isn't just a test score in a US school" (July 11) have pointed out some serious flaws of the...

---

Avoiding the pitfalls of mid-income trap

Opinion | Foreign perspectives
2011-7-18

A SWITCHOVER of global growth engines is taking place. Developing economies as a whole are now the source of more than half of global GDP growth. As a result, concern has naturally shifted to a new question: Are...

---

Perking up work with gyms, Botox, parking, flex-time

Opinion | China Knowledge@Wharton
2011-7-16

ACCORDING to BusinessDictionary.com, perks are "privileges granted to employees in addition to their salaries and benefits," and may include such things as "the company car, vacations, reserved parking spaces, spacious...

---

High price for made-in-China 'bargains'

Opinion | Shanghai Daily columnists
2011-7-16

LOW wages, long work hours, squalid dorms. Compound these conditions with polluted lands and lungs, and you'll arrive at a price for many if not most Made-in-Chinas. In her 2008 book "The China Price: The...

---

Business Books TOP FIVE US

Opinion | Book review
2011-7-16

1.THE Thank You Economy If your firm isn't already using social media, it clearly doesn't care about its customers. Here's how to change that perception. Gary Vaynerchuk | Copyright @ 2011 by Gary VaynerchukPublished...