BizChina

Chinese Internet television company Youku.com Inc. has signed a deal with Warner Bros. studio to stream the movie "Inception" over the Internet in China.

The company says the sci-fi blockbuster film is now available on its premium on-demand paid video service. Youku also has online resale rights to the film, the company said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Youku users who watch the film can comment on it, share film recommendations or discuss the plot with other users on the site, the company said.

Richard Nixon was full of surprises, not least when he shook hands with Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972. The previous year, Nixon imposed price controls at home to stamp out inflation, another surprising move from a Republican president. The president's visit transformed Sino-American relations, but it is those price controls Beijing should be recalling right now.

China's government hopes to force prices down by fiat. Even after the central bank increased its one-year lending rate to 5.81% over the holidays, inflation of 5.1% in November suggests real rates remain low or negative, given lags in data. Raising rates sharply, or letting the yuan appreciate quickly, would be the more straightforward way of curbing prices.

Unfortunately, higher rates would hurt economic growth, and thereby employment. Meanwhile, China's exporters, already dealing with slower demand from Western consumers, don't need a stronger currency.

Hence, Beijing is using price controls and other microeconomic tools to head off inflation. Imminent measures to strengthen rules against price collusion can be read as helping in this regard.

In a command economy, targeting both interest rates and the exchange rate, and controlling prices by decree, is possible. But it depends on precision planning. And keeping real rates low encourages bad investment: Just look at America's late love affair with housing.

The world's fourth-largest personal-computer company by volume is tailoring its approach in emerging markets to first-time buyers, who account for a larger chunk of sales in such areas than they do in more-developed markets, Chen Shaopeng, senior vice president of Lenovo's emerging-markets business, said in an interview.

To attract such buyers, Lenovo has employed tactics that have made it China's PC market leader: offering colorful models and products that can cost less than $300, as well as using retail franchisees who have insight on their individual markets. Lenovo also has increased advertising, using one of the world's biggest billboards, a 1,300-foot-long spot near the Kremlin.

Lenovo increased its share of Russia's market to 8.3% of PCs shipped in the third quarter from just 1.4% in the same period in 2008, according to research firm IDC. Lenovo is now the fifth-biggest PC vendor in Russia, up from No. 14.

In India, where the company aims to add 1,000 franchised retail stores to the 350 it has already, Lenovo has grown to 9% of the market from less than 7% at the end of 2008. The company ranks fourth in India, after Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Acer Inc. by volume.

Lenovo has been trying to steer away from relying on advanced markets like the U.S. to fuel overseas growth. The company struggled with weak consumer sales and declining market share after its purchase of International Business Machines Corp.'s PC business in 2005.

China cut its quotas on first-half exports of rare-earth metals around 35%, a move likely to feed trade tensions and concerns among global buyers after an even deeper cut late this year.

China supplies around 95% of the world's rare-earth metals, which are used in high-tech batteries, television sets, mobile phones and defense products. Beijing's decision to cut export quotas by 72% for this year's second half sparked criticism that China was taking undue advantage of its position to raise prices.

A supply crunch would have its deepest impact on Japanese technology manufacturers, such as Hitachi Ltd., but the problem extends further. Sumitomo Corp. and other companies process the metals and ship them world-wide, said Hallgarten & Co. strategist Christopher Ecclestone. Motors for Dyvacuum cleaners contain magnets made of neodymium, a rare-earth element, while such aerospace companies as Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin use rare-earth materials for guidance systems.