By Pete Sweeney SHANGHAI | Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:44pm EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's foreign exchange regulator has removed the $1 billion limit for foreign sovereign wealth funds, central banks and monetary authorities buying Chinese assets through the Qualified Institutional Investor Programme (QFII). The new regulations, published on the websi...

By Himank Sharma Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:03am EST (Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders t...

SHANGHAI | Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:18am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has launched a Kindle store for China, the company said on Thursday, selling Chinese electronic books for the mobile Kindle application, in a move that could soon see the device launched in China. The launch of the store could pave the way for a roll-out of Amazon's Kindle device ...

By Manuel Mogato MANILA | Wed Dec 12, 2012 8:33am EST MANILA (Reuters) - U.S. and Philippine officials are expected to agree on an increase in the number of U.S. military ships, aircraft and troops rotating through the Philippines, Filipino officials said, as tensions simmer with China over its maritime claims. Though he made no direct reference ...

By Lee Chyen Yee HONG KONG | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:59am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese mobile phone makers chasing market share with lower prices in the world's biggest smartphone market will see their margins continue to be pressured as they upgrade to quad-core chips to satisfy demand from users for faster speeds and flashier graphics. Most sma...

By Aileen Wang and Kevin Yao BEIJING | Mon Dec 10, 2012 6:53am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's exports growth slowed sharply to a much lower than expected 2.9 percent in November, a customs report said on Monday, underscoring the global headwinds dragging on an economy showing otherwise solid signs of a pick up in domestic activity. Data at the w...

By Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay and Rod Nickel Fri Dec 7, 2012 12:48pm EST (Reuters) - Glencore International Plc won approval from China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday for its C$6 billion ($6 billion) purchase of Canadian grain handler Viterra Inc, clearing the last regulatory hurdle for the long-delayed deal. The takeover, one of the largest in the global ag...

Fri Dec 7, 2012 8:17am EST (Reuters) - Glencore International Plc won approval from China's Ministry of Commerce for its C$6 billion ($6 billion) purchase of Canadian grain handler Viterra Inc, clearing the last regulatory hurdle for the long-delayed deal. The takeover, one of the largest in the global agriculture industry in years, was originally expected to clo...

By Melanie Lee BEIJING | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:16am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Xiaomi Technology is a fairy tale for nerdy entrepreneurs. Less than three years after its founding, the smartphone maker is valued at $4 billion and evokes Apple-like adoration from its fans, some of whom are desperate enough to skip work for a shot at buying the lat...

By Tan Ee Lyn HONG KONG | Fri Dec 7, 2012 4:47am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese labor arbitrators have ruled against the father of a Foxconn worker brain-damaged in a factory accident in southern China, in a case that puts more attention on the labor practices of Apple Inc's largest contract manufacturer. The case involves Zhang Tingzhen, a 26...

BEIJING | Fri Dec 7, 2012 4:21am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry lambasted the United States on Friday for "disgusting" comments by a U.S. official on the human rights situation in Tibet, saying it had prompted them to file a formal diplomatic complaint with Washington. Maria Otero, United States Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, s...

By Lee Chyen Yee HONG KONG | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:50am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Apple Inc's rank in China's smartphone market, which is set to become the world's largest this year, fell to No.6 in the third quarter as it faced tough competition from Chinese brands, research firm IDC said on Thursday. IDC's announcement comes a day after Apple's sha...

By Jussi Rosendahl HELSINKI | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:14am EST HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia is to partner with China Mobile, the world's biggest operator, to launch a version of its flagship Lumia smartphone tailored for the world's largest market. China Mobile, which has more than 700 million subscribers but no contract to sell iPhones, will start selli...

By Ben Blanchard BEIJING | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:03am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of 134 Nobel laureates including the Dalai Lama and author Toni Morrison have written to Chinese Communist Party chief and president-in-waiting Xi Jinping urging that he release detained Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and his wife. Liu, a veteran dissident involved i...

HANOI/NEW DELHI | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:39am EST HANOI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Vietnam condemned on Tuesday China's claims to disputed South China Sea islands as a serious violation of its sovereignty after saying it was setting up patrols to protect its fisheries and accusing Chinese boats of sabotage. The condemnation of China's claims to the sea and its num...

By Aruna Viswanatha and Dena Aubin WASHINGTON/NEW YORK | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:01pm EST WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Regulators on Monday charged the Chinese arms of five top accounting firms with securities violations over their refusal to produce certain audit papers for U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission began...

MOSCOW/BEIJING | Mon Dec 3, 2012 4:00pm EST MOSCOW/BEIJING (Reuters) - Russia and China urged North Korea on Monday not to go ahead with a plan for its second rocket launch of 2012, with Moscow saying any such move would violate restrictions imposed by the U.N. Security Council. North Korea's state news agency on Saturday announced the decision to launch...

By Andy Bruce and Lucy Hornby LONDON/BEIJING | Mon Dec 3, 2012 8:56am EST LONDON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese manufacturing returned to growth in November for the first time in over a year and the deep downturn in euro zone factories eased slightly, according to business surveys on Monday. Monday's purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) suggested Chin...

By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK | Mon Dec 3, 2012 9:17am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 could rise for a fourth straight day on Monday as U.S. stocks were set to open higher on upbeat factory data from China, but concerns over budget dealings in Washington are expected to keep traders cautious. China's economy picked up in November even as a...

By Umesh Desai and Pete Sweeney HONG KONG/SHANGHAI | Sun Dec 2, 2012 4:06pm EST HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese search engine company Baidu Inc paid a lower interest rate than Google Inc when it sold $750 million in 10-year bonds last month. China's three dominant dot-com names - Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings Ltd - have successfully ...

Fri Nov 30, 2012 8:16am EST (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) and their local Chinese partner, Changan Automobile Co Ltd (000625.SZ), said on Friday that they had obtained final approval from the Chinese government to split their three-way manufacturing and sales joint venture into two. Starting immediately, Changan Ford Mazda Automobi...

By Matthew Bigg JAKARTA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:44am EST JAKARTA (Reuters) - China's plan to board and search ships that illegally enter what it considers its territory in the disputed South China Sea could spark naval clashes and hurt the region's economy, Southeast Asia's top diplomat warned on Friday. Seeking to ease alarm over the issue, China s...

By Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada SHANGHAI | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:19am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's state-backed electronic payment services giant, China UnionPay, launched an international arm tasked with speeding its expansion overseas, heating up competition with rivals such as Visa Inc (V.N) and Mastercard Inc (MA.N). The move underscores ...

SHANGHAI | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:34pm EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Apple Inc's latest iPhone has received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. China is Apple's second-largest market and its Chinese fans are eagerly...

By Norihiko Shirouzu SHANGHAI | Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:47am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Motors Co unveiled its latest global research center in China on Thursday, where it hopes to take advantage of the country's vast supply of engineering graduates to drive its development of a new generation of electric vehicles. China's auto market has grown ...

BEIJING | Wed Nov 28, 2012 7:45am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's cabinet vowed on Wednesday to tighten laws on the expropriation of farmland, warning that the problem risked fuelling rural unrest and undermining the country's food security. "Rural land has been expropriated too much and too fast as industrialization and urbanization accelerate," state n...

BEIJING | Wed Nov 28, 2012 6:11am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday that people should not read too much into the placement of a new map in its passports that depicts claims to disputed territory, after the United States said it would raise concerns with Beijing over the issue. The Philippines and Vietnam have condemned the new microchip-eq...