The three-carriage train is designed to run at a maximum speed of 100 km per hour and carry 600 passengers, said Xu Zongxiang, general manager of Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co. Ltd. of China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation (CSR).

Xu said the new train was much quieter than conventional ones.

While a conventional train moves forward by using friction between its wheels and the railway tracks, the maglev train replaces wheels by electromagnets and levitates on the guideway. This of course is not a technology founded in China.

According to Xu, his company’s has minimized the risk of the new maglev train derailing or overturning.

“It’s ideal for mass transportation, as it is quiet and environmental-friendly. Its manufacturing cost is about 75 percent of a conventional light-rail train,” said Xu.

The maglev train has a minimum turning radius of 50 meters and can easily run in residential communities or on hilly slopes. “It’s an ideal public transport option for Chinese cities and major tourist destinations,” said Xu. In other words China has taken the technology and made it lighter faster and cheaper and they are trying to sell it to the world.

Railway transport specialist Liu Youmei, also an academician with Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the new train is green, economical and safe. “It can be used for public transport in populous areas and at scenic spots with fragile environments.”

Liu said China is one of a few countries that have applied maglev technology.

Beijing is building a maglev route, the Daitai line (S1), which starts at its IT center in Haidian district, passes through Shijingshan district, and ends in Mentougou district on its western outskirts. The line will be operational next year.

The eastern metropolitan of Shanghai runs the world’s first commercial maglev system on a 30-km stretch between the downtown business district and Pudong airport. The German-made maglev went into operation on Dec. 31, 2002.

China announced in July that it would require foreigners to pay into its social security system, effectively instituting a further tax on each foreigner’s salary, on top of relatively high income tax rates. They implemented a social tax to all the local Chinese and now production in China is so expensive that many have moved their production out of China.

The central government has so far given only basic details about the scheme, which all foreigners who work in China are supposed to have started paying into from October last year.

One of the concerns with the scheme has been that foreigners will not be able to access money from unemployment benefits or pensions because work visas are tied to jobs and become invalid when a person is no longer employed.

While Beijing has drawn up guidelines on how the money should be paid into pension fund accounts, Shanghai’s labor officials have yet to do the same, the SCMP reported.

This is apparently in response to a backlash by foreign companies, who are already nervous about the rising costs of doing business in China, the newspaper reported on Saturday quoting unnamed company executives whom it said were close to local regulators.

According to the newspaper, Shanghai’s mayor and party chief

have also privately expressed reservations about the policy, which could hit foreign investor sentiment in Shanghai, the country’s commercial capital.

Shanghai’s labor authorities cited technical difficulties for setting up a payment procedure as the reason for the delay, the South China Morning Post said.

Every night at 11 sharp the police are stationed at the downtown off ramps of the Yan An highway. You can’t back up the highway and you have no where to go if you had some drinks. CONTINUED crackdowns on drink driving has led to a decline in offenses in Shanghai, according to traffic police.

Police said yesterday they have dealt with more than 8,000 cases of drink-driving this year. Officers said drivers have become more cautious after traffic authorities introduced more severe punishments in May.

Chen Zhikang, head of the Shanghai traffic police department, said cases of drink driving were down 60 percent compared with the same period last year. Such a driver has a blood-alcohol level of at least 0.2mg/ml. The idea of a mandatory 15 day jail sentence scares you from even thinking of driving in Shanghai after a few drinks.

Police said 900 cases, or 12 percent, were drunk drivers, meaning their blood-alcohol level was at least 0.8mg/ml. The number of drunk driving cases plunged 78 percent year on year.

Nationwide figures also declined this year, Chen said.
He said reckless driving, still common in the city, “could cause much trouble.”
Earlier this month, a drunken driver drove into an opposite lane causing a fatal head-on crash that killed five people, including himself, in suburban Qingpu District. Two other people were injured.

The driver had a blood-alcohol level of 1.42mg/ml, almost double the legal limit for drunk driving, said police.

In the states Gap’s, Old Navy, Banana Republic are closing down and shrinking the amount of stores all over America. Gap is going to the final frontier China.
Gap Inc., after opening its first Gap store in China last November, expects to launch its Old Navy and Banana Republic brands “in a couple of years,” the company’s Greater China President Redmond Yeung told a meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club today.
“I would say 2013-2014,” Yeung said.

The Gap will open its first store in Hong Kong this month, and aims to open two stores a month in China and Hong Kong for the next 18 months, Yeung said. The company has eight stores in the mainland today, he said.
The company’s China business is growing on the back of strong consumer spending. China has more than 200 cities with a population above one million, and all of that group would be suitable for Gap to expand in, said Yeung, who predicted that the country would one be become Gap’s second most important market.

The company has set up its headquarters in Shanghai because the city is China’s fashion capital, Yeung said. Locating in Shanghai also facilitates staff recruitment, he said.

About 30-40% of items carried by Gap in China are similar to the U.S.; much of the remainder are higher-end fashion items sought by Chinese shoppers, he said.
Luxury U.S. retailers including Tiffany, Calvin Klein and Coach have also been seeking to expand in the country.

On August 10th, two foreign females were spotted skinny-dipping at Baicheng Beach next to Xiamen University. Too bad it wasn’t in Shanghai. Shanghai is missing a good beach.

The scene was captured by a local citizen, who later uploaded the images online, which aroused quite a heated discussion among netizens. Other locals claimed that they had seen at least five other visitors

skinny-dipping in the past. According to locals and netizens, during the past several years, skinny-dipping has not been all that rare along the Xiamen coast, and they found that “tourists

Address:
172 Jinxian Lu,
进贤路172号

Vicinity:
Huaihai Zhong Lu

Directions:
near Shaanxi Nan Lu, Metro Line 1 Shaanxi Nan Lu Station
近陕西南路, 地铁1号线陕西南路站

Contact:
• 6258-1939

Open:
11 A.M. -10 P.M.
Price:

Y100-Y199

This San Francisco-themed restaurant is already known for its authentic and excellent clam chowder in sour dough bread bowl… a great place for a chat with Pier 39’s fresh signature salad (¥58) is full of greens that seem like they’re purchased from a farmer’s market just down the street. A bed of crisp lettuce, arugula and juicy diced tomato, creamy hard-boiled egg, thin slices of red onion and generous chunks of Swiss cheese and smoked chicken. It’s all tossed with a tangy, home made tarragon-based herb vinaigrette. The aromatic herb enhances the slightly fruity olive oil with an addictive flavor. Because the space is small, there will likely be a wait in the colder months of the year. Though, if you’re craving some nice chowder in the summer heat, by all means get in their -they have AC and wireless so on line and great chowder in Shanghai. Actually it’s the best Calm chowder in Shanghai.

Address:
87 Fumin Lu,
富民路87号

Vicinity:
Huaihai Zhong Lu
Directions:
near Julu Lu, Metro Line 2 JingAn Temple Station Exit 3 or 4
近巨鹿路, 地铁二号线静安寺站3、4号口

Contact:
· 6249-5628

Open:
Mon-Sun 11:30am-10:30pm

Price:
Less than Y175 for 2 without drinks

Guyi is an institution of a Hunan restaurant in Shanghai, among both foreigners and locals, for its upscale environment and excellent fiery food, unaffected by local tastes.. Electrify your tongue with the chili-sprinkled ribs Cumin-crusted ribs (ziran paigu) are their signature and open-faced fish. Finish with sweet, sticky banana balls. Milder eaters gravitate toward the equally delicious non-spicy menu offerings.

No matter how many other restaurants i get to know and try in Shanghai, I always go back to Guyi, it is the best restaurant in town, the food is incredible, the taste unforgettable and after the first visit you will always go back for more.
The Shanghai Gu Yi will not take reservations after 6:30, then it a line, the rooms have a 1,000 RMB min. Expect to wait, and it’s not fast Chinese food when the place is packed be prepared to wait for your food.

As housing bubbles go, China’s looks relatively benign. Unlike in the United States, Chinese home buyers typically put down at least 40 percent of the purchase price. That means they don’t have to worry about a modest decline wiping out all their equity, and banks have little reason to fear an influx of “jingle mail” from defaulting homeowners returning the keys.. In Shanghai every block has at least 1 real estate broker.

Household debt amounts to less than 20 percent of China’s gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund, one fifth of the U.S. ratio.
“In the United States, housing was a borrowing vehicle for households. In China, it’s a savings vehicle,” said Stephen Green, an economist with Standard Chartered in Hong Kong. Majority all Shanghai families own at least 2 apartments.

This is a vital distinction. It was leverage that turned the U.S. housing slump into a global financial crisis. That suggests even if China’s housing market suffers a similar slide, the economic consequences would be far less severe.
That doesn’t mean it would be painless.

There are a couple of trouble spots. China’s new home sales have fallen sharply in some cities, putting property developers in greater danger of default. Local governments counting on land sales to help repay $1.5 trillion in loans may find the money flow slows, saddling banks with bad debts. People in China all belive they should own the property they live in and not rent it.

But Beijing appears to be ready, willing and able to limit the economic fallout. Over the past 18 months, China has clamped down on property speculators to try to cool prices.

If it stays on that course, China could become one of the few countries to successfully deflate a property bubble before it bursts. If there is a global recession, all bets are off.

Nationwide data suggests China’s housing affordability is not that much different from Britain’s and only marginally worse than that of the United States, where house prices have fallen precipitously over the past five years.

But in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, it is off the charts. IMF figures show that a 70 square meter home in Beijing costs about 20 times the average annual household disposable income, quadruple the national ratio and almost seven times higher than in the United States. Shanghai property has just sky rocketed in the last 5 years.

Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou look worse than even notoriously pricey Tokyo on the affordability scale.

A People’s Bank of China survey in mid-September showed 76 percent of urban residents saw property prices as too high, and 38 percent expected them to keep rising this year. Both readings were higher than in the PBOC’s mid-June poll.
For China, expensive housing may pose a bigger threat to social stability than financial. When the average city resident is priced out of the property market, the risk of unrest rises, and that sounds alarms in the ruling Communist Party.
That helps explain why Beijing was quick to try to stamp out speculation while other countries have left it up to market forces to squeeze out the excess — sometimes with catastrophic economic consequences, as the United States can attest.
In July, China extended the list of cities where it limits the number of homes a family can buy. There are now 40 cities with such restrictions in place, including Beijing and Shanghai. The Shanghainese are getting divorces so they can buy more than 1 apartment.

In January, it raised the minimum down-payment for second homes to 60 percent from 50 percent.

Compare that with the United States, where at the height of the housing boom speculators could buy with no money down. Some even obtained mortgages for more than the purchase price.

Now, 22.5 percent of U.S. homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes were worth, according to data analysis company CoreLogic. These “underwater” borrowers are more likely to default than those with positive equity.
In China, it would take a house price drop in the 40 percent range before negative equity became a serious concern, said Barend Janssens, head of wealth management for emerging markets at Royal Bank of Canada.

“There is a lot of fat, and people will lose some of that,” Janssens said at the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Singapore this week.
Rising wages also play in China’s favor. The U.S. housing bust coincided with a severe spike in unemployment, and wages stagnated. In China, double-digit annual wage increases are the norm, so income should rise faster than housing costs.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

China has a built-in propensity toward property over-investment because there are few other options available to most citizens. The stock market has been extraordinarily volatile, capital markets are underdeveloped, and bank deposit rates are too low to compensate for rising inflation.

“The problem with China is that it tells people it doesn’t want them to invest in housing, but it doesn’t tell people what else to invest in,” said John Woods, chief Asian strategist at Citi Private Bank.

The IMF’s housing policy recommendations to Beijing earlier this year were to raise interest rates, develop financial markets, and introduce a broad-based property tax.
There is little reason to expect movement on the first two any time soon. As for the property tax, a pilot program in Chongqing has been credited with helping to cool price rises, and the mayor told Reuters last week it may eventually be rolled out across the country. That change will come too late to address the current situation, but there is cause for optimism that Beijing’s housing restrictions are working. Property prices have begun to ease in some of the frothiest cities, including Beijing.
Barclays Capital economist Jian Chang expects a 10 percent decline from the 2011 peak by the end of this year.

“I don’t see a sudden bursting of the bubble near term,” she said. “I see a gradual deflating.”

The property sector makes up about 12 percent of China’s GDP, but its impact spreads wider. Housing construction is an important source of demand for steel, cement, copper and other commodities. Real estate — both mortgages and loans to developers — accounts for about 18 percent of banks’ credit portfolios, according to the IMF.
That implies a 10 percent decline in house prices could potentially shave 1.2 percentage points off of China’s GDP. Many economists have already factored a weaker housing market into their 2012 forecasts, which show China’s growth easing to around 8.5 percent from the current pace of 9.5 percent.
But even as commercial housing construction falls, China is ramping up development of so-called “social housing” for lower-income households. It has targeted 10 million units for this year alone, and 36 million by 2015. That will take up some of the slack from slowing private-sector development.

A steeper price drop — say, 20 or 30 percent — would be a different story. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said in September that a decline of 30 percent may be the breaking point for many property developers.

That would become a significant risk for creditors, both banks and the informal lenders who have provided an increasingly large fraction of China’s credit as Beijing cracks down on traditional forms of lending.

Already, developers are hesitating over buying parcels of land from local governments as the pace of new home sales slows.
Barclays’ Chang recently visited northern China to gauge the degree of the housing slowdown there and found property developers and agents growing increasingly pessimistic about sales prospects in the coming months.
“They all wanted to complete projects and sell as fast as possible because expectations changed,” she said.

Well-known China bear Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report, paints an even darker scenario.

“Some real estate markets will blow up, and massively so, where prices could easily drop 40 to 50 percent,” he said in a Reuters Insider interview on September 27.
If there is a global recession, China’s housing troubles become more significant. Barclays thinks a worldwide downturn would push China’s GDP growth down to 7 percent, a level considered a “hard landing” because it is too weak to generate sufficient jobs to keep up with urban migration.

Such a sharp slowdown could set off a negative feedback loop, where spooked investors sell everything — property included. Panic selling would drive down housing prices even more, taking a deeper bite out of economic growth.
But because of China’s relatively low household leverage, the risk of forced sales is limited. The bigger financial stability risk comes from the corporate side. If hundreds or thousands of property developers go bust, banks might grow more reluctant to lend, which would feed the downward spiral.

WHAT WOULD BEIJING DO?
The predominant view among China economists is that Beijing would step in well before conditions got that bad. It could relax some of the home buying restrictions it placed over the past 18 months, or cut banks’ reserve requirements, which stand at a record high of 21.5 percent for large banks. Beijing property has not declined.

“China is trying to cause real estate prices to go sideways,” said Paul Schulte, head of financial strategy at the investment banking arm of CCB, China’s biggest mortgage lender. “It is not trying to kill the market.”

Standard Chartered’s Green said Beijing is aware that it needs to hold the line on property controls a little while longer to ensure that prices don’t keep climbing.
“Maybe Beijing needs to see some pain in the sector before it considers loosening,” he said, adding that there will no doubt be failures and consolidation among property developers.

A sharp downturn in the global economy would send a strong signal to Beijing to ease up on credit conditions for the entire economy, not just housing.
The trigger could be a reading below 50 in the government’s monthly purchasing managers’ index, Green said. The index rose to 51.2 in September, suggesting China’s economy is still growing solidly.
That, in turn, bodes well for China’s ability to gradually let the air out of the housing bubble.

“It is hard to see problems in China’s housing market unraveling in a manner that sets off a major crisis,” said Eswar Prasad, a former head of the IMF’s China division who now teaches trade policy at Cornell University in New York.

SHANGHAI: Property developer Zhang Xin made a fortune over the past decade on the back of a building boom fuelled by China’s blistering economic growth and the privatisation of its housing market.

Now the co-founder of SOHO China, one of the nation’s leading developers, is worried Beijing’s efforts to cool the sector are hurting sales and threatening to send some debt-laden property developers to the wall. Some developers are levied to the hill in China, some have taken back to back loans hoping of finding the gold mine in china’s real estate.

“In my sixteen years as a developer this is by far the most challenging year I’ve ever had, in terms of what we could sell,” Zhang, chief executive of Beijing-based SOHO, recently told reporters.

China has invested heavily in property — about $750 billion in 2010 alone — since it privatised the market in the late 1990s, ending decades of state allocated housing and enabling a growing middle class to own their own homes.

But with real estate investment now a key driver of the economy, there are fears a collapse in the market could trigger social unrest fuelled by millions of home-owners seeing the value of their properties plummet.

A massive stimulus package unveiled in late 2008 to combat the global financial crisis triggered a flood of credit into the world’s second-largest economy, with a large portion funneled into construction.

Since the beginning of this year Beijing, fearing a bubble, has been trying to bring down dizzying prices by hiking interest rates and restricting lending to developers, making it nearly impossible for many to get financing, Zhang said. Is that really a bad thing. China needs to grow slower so everything else can catch up to speed.

“We’re now facing a very uncertain time,” he said.

Authorities have also banned the purchase of second homes in some cities, increased minimum down payments and introduced property taxes in Shanghai and Chongqing.

“That really has killed the market,” Zhang added.

Industry officials and analysts are worried that the measures are now squeezing sales so much that property developers who have borrowed heavily to fund new projects could be tipped into bankruptcy.

“Near-term prospects for real estate developers are increasingly gloomy,” said London-based research house Capital Economics, noting third-quarter sales fell 15 percent from a year ago.

“A wave of newly completed property is about to hit the market. Developers are likely to find themselves holding large volumes of unsold property.”

In August, 46 out of China’s 70 major cities reported residential housing prices fell or stayed the same compared with July, official figures showed.

In once-booming Shanghai, the volume of new home sales fell over 50 percent year-on-year in September, according to information provider SouFun. In the capital Beijing, home sales in the secondary market are at a three-year low.

“The hard times aren’t over yet. Industry consolidation is likely to accelerate, weeding out weaker players,” ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said in a recent report.

Some developers struggling to get financing from banks are turning to trust companies — firms set up by local governments to fund pet projects — and other informal lenders which charge much higher interest rates than banks. Which in simple terms means that the property develops are making less and that’s not the end of the world. For an average developer the profit margin is 65% of what’s invested. That’s why the develops are getting richer and now that loans are harder to get it only means they can’t rocket the prices anymore.

Standard & Poor’s estimates some weaker developers have repayments due that exceed their expected sales next year, while Capital Economics forecast “many developers are likely to fail”.

While Beijing has pledged to maintain tight credit controls for now, it may reconsider its position if property firms start to default or go bankrupt — or if the global economic downturn severely impacts the country, analysts said.

The risk of popular anger was shown earlier this month when scores of home buyers protested to a Shanghai property developer after it slashed prices for an unfinished project in nearby Jiangsu province, which they had bought at higher cost. The ones that bought first got the better floors and better directions, so why complain, it’s all about the greed in China.

But for the next six to 12 months restrictions on credit and weak property sales are likely to persist, according to Standard & Poor’s.

“So far, the objectives of the government towards the sector are still not being met. It’s still going to be on the tightening end,” said Christopher Lee, director of S&P corporate ratings for the Asia-Pacific.

But in Shanghai — where the average cost for one square meter of downtown housing was 48,000 yuan (about $7,500) last year, about 12 times the average monthly salary — home buyers have little sympathy for cash-strapped developers.

“Considering the high housing prices in Shanghai, a new flat is just a dream. If you look at any major city in the world it’s no different. The rich in Shanghai live in the center of the city and the white collar live further out of the city. The poor and people from other cities just rent.

You often hear people, usually tourists, comment on how cheap everything is in China. And in a large majority of cases, that is quite true – China has a wide variety of products you can find for much less than you can in most of the Western world. But as is true with most everything in life, there are exceptions. While some items may be exponentially cheaper in China, you’ll often find that the quality is not the same (sometimes not even close).

Or you’ll occasionally run into items that are much more expensive here than they are back in your home country. These inconsistencies occur for various reasons and with seemingly random products. Below is a list of items you can buy in China that are relative bargains but that still give you good – or at the very least decent – value for your money. This is followed by a list of products that are best bought outside of China, both for price and quality considerations. While China is certainly still a shopping paradise for many items, it’s ultimately better to pick and choose what to buy here.

Shop in China for:
1) Custom-made clothing
While Vietnam is giving it a run for its money, China still has a firm grip on the custom-made clothing market. It’s not hard to find custom tailors and seamstresses who are willing and able to make your clothing dreams come true. Men’s dress shirts can range anywhere from 90 RMB to 150 RMB, while ladies’ dresses tend to run a bit more depending on the intricacy and length. Choose from the abundance of fabric these markets have on hand, or bring your own from an independent fabric shop to save even more. Just remember the golden rule – negotiate! Shanghai has many great places to have your custom made cloths.

2) DVD’s
This one requires a disclaimer – I’m not talking about those DVD’s you see sold on wooden carts scattered on the sidewalks throughout town. No, I’m referring to those DVD’s you can purchase in an actual shop. Granted, they’re all illegally downloaded and copied regardless of where you buy them, but the store-bought ones are of infinitely higher quality and only tend to run a few renminbi more than the street side ones. Plus, if for some reason you find yourself with a dud, most stores are willing to replace the DVD with a new one (or, if they no longer carry that particular title, they’ll swap it with another one of your choice). Just remember, don’t try to bring them all home. Like most countries, U.S in particular. The fine is 500 USD for each fake and if you have lots your looking at jail time.

3) (Fake) Luxury brands
When people speak of how cheap China is, chances are that they have these fake markets in mind. Louis Vuitton handbags, Jimmy Choo heels, Apple iPhones, Rosetta Stone language learning discs… you can find all of these brands and more practically anywhere you turn in China – that is, you can find fake versions of them. Some markets have impressively decent fakes, while others are quite obviously not the real thing. Regardless, it’s certainly the best – and cheapest – way to stock your wardrobe and house with the latest “brand name” items!. Thought of the day pay what you want and don’t be pressured to buy. Also pay peanuts get moneys, copies comes in grades, the cheaper it is the worse the grade.

4) Food
While expats often wax nostalgic over their favorite goodies from home, if you embrace the Chinese culinary traditions, you’ll find that you can eat quite cheap both at home and in restaurants. Fresh produce is a fraction of the cost that it is in other countries, while ingredients to make your favorite Chinese dishes will never break the bank (a stack of over 100 baozi skins, for example, runs about 1 RMB). Or visit your local noodle shop for a hearty portion of la mian for less than you would probably pay for a soda back home.

5) Medicine
While it’s always a good idea to bring your personal medication from home (at least initially), it is possible – and often profitable – to look for that medication here in China. Certain medications that are prescription only in Western countries (such as birth control) are available over the counter here – and at much lower prices. Additionally, if a medicine does need a prescription, you don’t necessarily need to go to one of those expensive international doctors for a refill. If you can find the exact name of your medication in Chinese, you can often just go to a local hospital, show it to a doctor, and he or she will write out a prescription for you without any need for an examination.