BizChina

French auto maker Peugeot is likely to sell more cars in China's booming market than in its home market by around 2015, said Timothy Zimmerman, a China-based Peugeot executive.

Mr. Zimmerman said Peugeot, a unit of PSA Peugeot Citroën SA, is targeting to sell about a half million vehicles in China by 2015. If realized, the company's China sales are likely to exceed those in France that year or shortly after that, he said. In France, Peugeot sells about 400,000 cars a year, giving it a roughly 19% share of the country's market, he said.

China is the world's biggest car market by total vehicles sold—as well as the fastest-growing major market—and it is increasingly surpassing home-market sales for individual foreign car makers such as General Motors Co. and Hyundai Motor Co.

Passing France's sales volume in China "isn't a strategic objective for us," Mr. Zimmerman said in an interview over the weekend. It would be a result "we might eventually achieve as our sales in China expand."

In China, where PC maker Lenovo Group dominates with nearly 30 percent of market share, there seem to be few opportunities left for smaller players to significantly shake up the market in the short term. But Acer Group is obviously ready to take the challenge.

This year, the Taiwan-based PC maker has made several key deals, including acquiring Founder, a smaller Chinese competitor, in May and invested $150 million this month in the southwestern city of Chongqing to build a factory.

Acer says these moves are only a prelude to its aggressive expansion in the world's second-largest PC market.

Gianfranco Lanci, chief executive officer of Acer, sees China as still "having huge potential".

He said the company hopes to become the second-largest player in the mainland's PC market in the near future, following Lenovo.

He predicts China will surpass the United States to become the world's biggest computer market within three years.

Private medical institutions are to enjoy the same preferential tax as State-owned hospitals in China, which helps create a fair competition platform for all hospitals and attract more social capital into the nation's healthcare sector.

China will exempt non-profit privately owned hospitals and clinics from the medical service income tax and medicine value-added tax as well as housing, land and vehicle and vessel usage taxes, according to the Ministry of Finance. For-profit hospitals and clinics will be exempted from business tax and within three years from taxes on some other items, such as real estate, property and medicine.

The measures are among initiatives approved by the State Council on Dec 3 in a document about encouraging the development of private medical institutions.

"Relatively high tax obligations have become a barrier for the development of many private hospitals, which provide the same products and services as their State-owned counterparts, while paying much more tax," said

The World Trade Organization condemned European Union antidumping tariffs on imports of Chinese screws, handing Beijing its biggest legal victory yet at the Geneva-based body. EU officials described the decision as a significant setback.

Legal experts said the victory is a sign of the effectiveness of China's strategy of fighting foreign import tariffs by hiring top-notch trade lawyers and lobbying heavily at WTO headquarters in Geneva.

Friday's 394-page ruling could also set a precedent, making it harder for the EU and the U.S. to impose antidumping tariffs on developing economies like China and Vietnam, which argue that factors other than state aid make their products cheaper.