US seeks more stable China business landscape

Relationship reset: Raimondo (centre) visiting Boeing Shanghai Aviation Service Co. In her meetings with Chinese officials, she raised the issue of unfair trade practices. — AFP

Shanghai: The United States wants to work with China to ensure a more “predictable” environment for American businesses in Shanghai, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told officials in the economic hub yesterday.

Speaking with Shanghai Communist Party chief Chen Jining on day four of a bridge-building trip to China, Raimondo said a “stable economic relationship is good for America, good for China and good for the world”.

“The US-China economic relationship is among the most consequential in the world,” she told Chen.

Raimondo told Chen she was looking forward to talks to “bring about a more predictable business environment, predictable regulatory environment, and a level playing field for American businesses here in Shanghai”.

US firms in China have long complained about what they see as an unfair business environment, with limited protection for intellectual property and preferential treatment afforded to domestic competitors.

Those fears have been compounded this year by a broad crackdown on US consulting firms operating in China.

A new anti-espionage law, which came into force on July 1, has also spooked foreign and domestic firms as they try to decipher authorities’ intentions and, crucially, pinpoint what is off-limits.

In a Tuesday meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing, Raimondo raised what Washington sees as unfair trade practices by China, according to a US Department of Commerce statement.

She also emphasised the “importance of strengthening the protection of trade secrets for US businesses operating in China”.

The commerce secretary is one of a number of senior US officials to visit China in recent months – part of an effort by Washington to improve its working relationship with its largest strategic rival.

Raimondo has used the trip to seek more open discussions with the Chinese over restrictive trade curbs and the two sides have agreed to set up a working group to iron out the laundry list of trade disputes between them. — AFP

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HSBC to freeze salaries, hiring in 2016 in battle to cut costs

 

Pay and hiring freeze possible at HSBC

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Why Refusing a Pay Cut May Get You Fire?

HSBC Holdings Plc will impose a global hiring and pay freeze as part of its drive to cut as much as $5 billion in costs by the end of 2017.

The measures, which affect the consumer and investment banking businesses, were outlined in a memorandum received by employees on Friday, Gillian James, a spokeswoman for the bank, said Sunday in an e-mailed statement. Europe’s largest bank, which will release full-year earnings on Feb. 22, is mulling whether to move its headquarters away from London, partly because of the tax burden and tougher regulatory scrutiny.

“This is in line with HSBC’s moves to lower operating costs,” said Richard Cao, a Shenzhen-based analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co. “HSBC can’t escape from the global economic slowdown and worsening asset quality like other global banks.”

HSBC Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver, 56, in June outlined a three-year plan to pare back a sprawling global network by shutting money-losing businesses and eliminate as many as 25,000 jobs as he seeks to boost profitability. Barclays Plc extended a freeze on hiring new staff indefinitely in December, while European lenders including Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG are cutting thousands of jobs to shore up earnings.

The moves were reported earlier by Reuters.

The shares fell 1.6 percent to 484.25 pence at 10:10 a.m. in London, extending losses this year to about 9.6 percent. They dropped 12 percent in 2015.

Under its three-year plan, the London-based lender is seeking to reduce the number of full-time employees by between 22,000 and 25,000. In the U.K., the bank may eliminate as many as 8,000 jobs.

As part of its focus on more profitable markets, HSBC is reviewing its operations in Lebanon and may exit the Middle Eastern country, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month. The bank is closing its Indian private-banking business, people familiar with that move said in November.

HSBC is close to concluding an eight-month review into the best location for its headquarters, with Hong Kong seen as the leading candidate city. The lender is likely to stay based in London due to the vast logistics of relocating, Martin Gilbert, chief executive officer of Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, told Bloomberg Television in January. Aberdeen is one of the British bank’s biggest shareholders.- Bloomberg

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Shy boys given rooms to grow as they are lagging girls

 

Schoolboys do relaxation exercises in an all boys class at the government-run Shanghai Number Eight High School. Shanghai, whose school system produces the world's top test-scorers, has launched China's first all-boys high school program with an eye on elite overseas institutions like Eton. Source: AFP

SHANGHAI: Teenage boys in a Shanghai school are on the front line of teaching reform after the world's top-scoring education system introduced male-only classes over worries they are lagging girls.

Rows of white-shirted boys are put through their paces as they are called up individually to complete a chemical formula by teacher Shen Huimin, who hopes that a switch to male-only classes will help them overcome their reticence.

"We give boys a chance to change," she said.

The Shanghai school system topped the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) worldwide assessment tests of 15-year-olds in 2009, the most recent available, ahead of Korea, Finland, Hong Kong and Singapore.

But even so officials are concerned that some male students may be slower than their female counterparts in development and certain academic areas, such as language, and the shift towards single sex classes aims to boost boys' confidence.

Girls do better than boys in secondary school across the developed world, an OECD report found.

A prominent Chinese educator, Sun Yunxiao, found the proportion of boys classed among the top scholars in the country's "gaokao" university entrance exams plunged from 66.2 percent to 39.7 percent between 1999 and 2008.

Across the developed world, girls do better than boys in secondary school, the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found in a 2009 report on the educational performances of 15-year-olds.

"There are significant gender differences in educational outcomes," it said, adding that high school graduation rates across the OECD were 87 percent for girls but only 79 percent for boys.

In response, Shanghai's elite Number Eight High School is halfway through the initial year of an experiment, putting 60 boys into two classes of their own - a quarter of its first-year students - and teaching them with a special curriculum.

Schoolboys solve a math problem in an all boys class at the government-run Shanghai Number Eight High School in Shanghai.

 "This is a big breakthrough," said principal Lu Qisheng. "There's lots of hope - hope that boys will grow up better.

"Boys when they are young do not spend enough time studying," he explained. "Boys' maturity, especially for language and showing self-control, lags behind girls."

-- "We lack confidence" -

China shut most same-sex schools after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, and the only all-boys junior high schools in the country are privately run.

The number of male students scoring top marks in China's university entrance exams has plunged from 66 per cent to 49 per cent

Shanghai does have an all-girls state-run high school, the former McTyeire School for Girls, which marked its 120th anniversary last year and counts the three Soong sisters - Qing-ling, Ai-ling and Mei-ling - among its former pupils.

Between them they married two leaders and an industrialist. Qing-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the first President of the Republic of China, while Mei-ling wed Chiang Kai-shek, who would also later become president.

Student Li Zhongyang, 15, said he felt less shy about answering questions in his all-boys class, but drew hoots of laughter from his fellows by suggesting an absence of girls let them concentrate more on study.

"We lack confidence," he said. "The teachers like girls, who answer more questions in class. This programme lets us realise we are not worse than girls."

It is something of a contrast to males' traditionally dominant roles in Chinese culture, but principal Lu said the programme "doesn't have much relationship to equality in society".

The scheme was launched after China's government called for more "diversification" in educational choices within the state system.

A Peking University professor has called for an even bolder reform, suggesting in September that boys should start school one or two years later than girls.

"The Chinese education system needs to improve and allow various education methods," Wu Bihu said on his microblog. Now Lu hopes to create China's first all-boys school one day.

"Ten or twenty years ago, there was no need for an all-boys class - just put everyone together," he said.

In an increasingly aspirational society, he added, some families saw the new programme as having connotations of top overseas private schools, and so promising an advantage in the highly competitive gaokao.

"The parents know: England has Eton," he said. - AFP