Recruiting in China

Vehicle communication guidelines are set to be published by the end of this year, as wireless communication is now a fundamental technology for intelligent cars. So there needs to be a universal definition and standard.

Carmakers and Tsinghua University recently teamed up to define vehicle communication standards in order to help boost transportation safety and the development of vehicle intelligence. Communication standards are now included as part of the upcoming China Intelligent and Connected Vehicles Technology Roadmap.

"The development of vehicle intelligence requires the technologies of big data, cloud computing, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication," said Li Keqiang, director of the automotive engineering department at Tsinghua University.

A group was founded in October and is led by Tsinghua University, General Motors Co and Chang'an Automobile Ltd. Supported by the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, the group will exchange standards for vehicle-to-everything communication, or V2X, and complete a definition and demand analysis.

Industry insiders hope the group's work may help accelerate the application of intelligent transportation systems on a larger scale to prevent transportation accidents.

Yao Danya, professor of automation at Tsinghua University, said: "The focus of V2X communication is on improving transportation safety and easing traffic congestion."

Yao suggested that "China may accelerate the deployment of the technology, as long as local governments initiate the necessary infrastructure upgrades at high-incidence spots of traffic accidents."

V2X communications include vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-pedestrian communications, and the technology supports Intersection Collision Alert and Emergency Brake Alert.

The deployment of V2X communications may elevate the overall efficiency of the nation's transportation by 30 percent, according to SAE-China's prediction. The United States' National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated the technology could help avoid 81 percent of traffic light accidents in the country.

V2X communication is the vehicles' language, so a complete set of communication standards is necessary for underpinning an intelligent transportation system using intelligent and connected vehicles.

Vehicle intelligence is based on the real-time calculation of big data collected by sensors and radars in the vehicle. The current solution uses a combination of an in-car computer and a cloud computing system.

The computer in the car reacts instantly to emergent safety threats. A lot more traffic information is uploaded through wireless connections to a cloud server for further processing, and the results are downloaded to command the vehicle.

The solution requires fast wireless connections to transmit big data in a flash and powerful enough servers to process the information in a brief period.

Gong Weijie, deputy secretary general of SAE-China, said: "The challenges to the intelligent vehicles' communication technologies are in the coordination among varied government bodies, including the Ministry of Transport, and the trans-industrial synergy among the mobile communication operators and equipment suppliers."

Carmakers have to join with communications operators and internet service providers. The State-controlled mobile operators are working on 5G mobile communication networks to fix the bandwidth bottleneck for data exchange.

The 5G data transmission, 100 times faster than 4G, is capable of transferring more data within a shorter period of time, and 1 million access points are planned to be built in each square kilometer, making V2X communication possible, according to China Mobile.

Challenges remain in cross-border trade and regulations

After setting a new record at the annual "Singles' Day" online shopping event, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding will generate value that is equivalent to the fifth-largest economy in the future. Industry experts lauded the feat as "unprecedented" but also cautioned about future challenges.

The company surpassed 3 trillion yuan ($440 billion) in annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) for fiscal year 2016, a year-on-year increase of 27 percent, and it is expected to generate more than tens of billions in its daily GMV, mainly driven by this year's "Singles' Day," also known as double 11, shopping festival, Alibaba said in a press release sent to the Global Times during the weekend. Based on the current growth rate, the company will help create a "new economy" that combines billions of individuals and millions of enterprises worldwide, and size up to the equivalent of a GDP just behind the U.S., China, the EU and Japan, the release noted, without providing a timeframe.

A company's output can't be compared to a country's GDP, as the company still faces uncertainties in its corporate operations, but the business model that Alibaba has created will certainly have a significant impact on enterprises not only in China but also overseas, Zhang Yi, CEO of Guangzhou-based market research firm iiMedia Research, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"In the past decade, the e-commerce model has been playing a major role in solving the problem of asymmetric information in the marketplace, but it will focus more and more on how to better integrate online and offline sectors in the future, which will reshape global economic and trade landscape," he said.

Alibaba's business-to-consumer platform Tmall recorded a daily sales volume of 120.7 billion yuan on Friday. The 24-hour event this year covered 235 countries and regions, and 94 brands broke sales records of over 100 million yuan, the press release showed. For example, Japanese retailer Uniqlo surpassed 100 million yuan in online sales in less than three minutes, and multinational luxury goods conglomerate LVMH also exceeded expectations, for example its affiliated brand Guerlain broke monthly sales record in 12 minutes on the day.

Alibaba will maintain its growth momentum in the next five years as online retail has not reached the "growth ceiling" yet, said Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent industry expert. "Meanwhile, Alibaba is helping create hundreds and thousands jobs, which could also be seen as a contribution to the world development," he told the Global Times on Sunday.

Challenges remain

However, global trade has been sliding in recent years, and this year the growth will be the slowest since the financial crisis, according to the WTO estimates in September. To boost cross-border transactions, Alibaba included "buy globally, sell globally" in its strategy for this year's Double 11 shopping razzmatazz, which is in line with the group's founder Jack Ma Yun's proposal of building an electronic world trade platform (eWTP).

The eWTP would help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) overcome complex regulations, processes and barriers that hinder their participation in global commerce.

While pushing forward this idea, Alibaba has been facing mounting pressure from foreign regulators. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has recently probed the counterfeit goods on its platform, which could be seen as a result of the trade frictions between the countries, Liu said, noting however that there is no need to exaggerate the aftermath of this conflict, as the current success of Alibaba will eventually help the real economy, or the SMEs, to upgrade their business models and generate more profits.

Alibaba is not the only e-commerce giant that aims at connecting the world and trying to build a global business cycle, "U.S. e-commerce platform Amazon has been doing the same thing for years, but the outcome is not as good as expected," Zhang Yi said.

Zhang noted that like Amazon, the Chinese company's overseas business still accounts for a small part of its overall business due to barriers in international trade.

"Finding complementary areas for doing business is crucial for Alibaba, as shown by JD.com, another Chinese online supplier, which has purchased some of overseas retail marketplaces to better serve the diversified demand in China," he said.

Forget Black Friday, said a Telegraph report, as China's Singles Day, the world's biggest online shopping day of the year, kicked off at 0:00 local time (1600 GMT) on Friday.

More than one billion U.S. dollars was spent within the first five minutes and the number has soared to 9 billion as of 8:00 local time (2400 GMT), according to Chinese media reports.

Singles Day, which started as an "anti-Valentine's" celebration for single people in China back in the 1990s, was adopted by China's e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2009 and has since become the world's biggest online shopping day.

Last year, Chinese consumers bought 14 billion dollars of goods from Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall in just 24 hours, which resulted in 467 million parcels being delivered after 710 million payments were made, said Telegraph.

The sheer scale of the market combined with the acute Chinese appetite for British goods has opened a significant new sales venue, the Guardian said in a report.

Topshop, a British multinational fashion retailer of clothing, shoes,make-up and accessories, saw its sales surge by over 900 percent in 2015, it said.

"These results clearly indicate how impactful this online calendar moment has become, and as a key focus market for the brand we see 11.11 as a great way to raise brand awareness and conversion in China," a Topshop spokesperson was quoted as saying by the Guardian.

Fung Global expects sales of British brands to surge this year, driven by a tailwind from Chinese online shoppers' demands for overseas goods, said Telegraph.

The Hut Group, which owns beauty sites and Protein World, said it expects sales to double compared to 2015 with brands offering 40 percent off haircare products, it said.

Vitamin retailer Holland & Barrett is hoping to make 1.2 million dollars from the event alone this year, it added.

Waitrose, a chain of British supermarkets, partnered with Chinese marketing and logistics company and has started exporting to China in April, selling through the Royal Mail shop on Tmall, said the Guardian.

"Singles Day is a big occasion for consumers and businesses in China and has the potential to give the products we offer more exposure and provide another opportunity to test demand for our brand," Nigel Roberts, Waitcose B2B growth and development manager, was quoted as saying by the Guardian.

Bank of China chairman Tian Guoli speaks at the Bank of China - Bloomberg Global M&A Summit on Tuesday.

Mergers and acquisitions have accelerated the transformation of China's financial industry, according to leaders in the field.

Vice chairman and president of China Investment Corporation, Tu Guangshao told the Bank of China – Bloomberg Global M&A Summit on Tuesday that the sector was changing.

"The expansion from trade finance to acquisition finance will provide a strategic opportunity for development of the Chinese financial sector," Tu said.

"Acquisition finance requires financial institutions to adjust the content of services they provide, improve their product systems, increase the effectiveness of their organizational structures and put risk management well in place," he continued.

Zhu Min, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said M&A is a crucial engine for post-crisis economic growth.

He said it will lead the global economy out of the gloom through supply-side restructuring.

In the first half of 2016, the volume of cross-border mergers and acquisitions led by Chinese buyers reached $149.2 billion, exceeding the total volume in 2015. The amount accounted for 23 percent of the total volume of global cross-border M&A, up from 6 percent in the same period last year, according to Tian Guoli, chairman of Bank of China.

"As the cross-border M&A by Chinese companies has entered a new stage, it is pushing forward the transformation and upgrading of China's financial sector," he said.

Bank of China has established an investment and loan linkage mechanism via diversified platforms and has 600 branches in 47 countries and regions.

"During the process of promoting industrial upgrade through cross-border M&A, Chinese companies should also pay close attention to potential risks to avoid shortsighted, irrational acquisitions that are seeking instant benefits," Tian said.

Certain M&A projects were overpriced and had problems with post-acquisition integration of businesses, he added.

China's overall advertising market edged up 0.1 percent in the first three quarters of this year, reversing from a 3.5 percent drop over the same period a year ago.

Traditional ad spending in the first nine months fell 5.5 percent, narrowing from the loss of 7.3 percent a year ago and a 6.2 percent drop in the first half of this year, CTR said in its quarterly report yesterday.

TV ad grew 1.4 percent in September, the biggest monthly gain since the start of this year, due to rising spending from key industries such as transport and real estate.

Newspapers saw worsening ad income which plunged 40 percent in the first three quarters, with property, commercial services and entertainment companies all cutting spending. Magazines also suffered a 29.9 percent loss in ad income from a year earlier.

Ad spending in movie theaters was the fastest growing sector in the first three quarters, jumping 57 percent.

Hangzhou's gross domestic prod-uct for the first three quarters was 778.07 billion yuan ($116.13 billion), up 10 percent from a year earlier. The economy remained in the double-digit figures for six consecutive quarters, faster than the national average of 6.7 percent and the provincial aver-age of 7.5 percent, according to official statistics.

The city's service industry reported 475.19 billion yuan in added value, a year-on-year increase of 13.4 percent. The manufacturing industry achieved 281.54 billion yuan, up 5.4 percent while agriculture edged up 1.5 percent to 21.34 billion yuan.

The information sector, a key industry in the city's economic re-structuring, expanded 23.1 percent year-on-year to 186.58 billion yuan, and accounting for 24 percent of the city's GDP.

Retail sales rose 10 percent to 369.5 billion yuan, online retail sales jumped 29.3 percent to 210.7 billion yuan, and online consumer spending expanded 30 percent to 92.63 billion.

From January to August, the city registered 59,100 new companies, 26.3 percent more than the same period of last year. The average in-come for urban and rural residents reached 42,225 yuan and 21,404 yuan, respectively, up 8 percent and 8.4 percent.