BizChina

Timber giants, squeezed by the twin tongs of a U.S. housing slump and a global recession, are starting to stir again in Canada's north woods thanks to insatiable demand from China.

Here in the Lodgepole pine forest 500 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border, workers at one mill move 40,000 logs a day through an assembly line, producing 13-foot-long studs for the Chinese construction industry. Most of the wood will be used to build scaffolding or the forms that concrete is poured into. But the mill's owner, Canfor Forest Products Inc., hopes to be able to export other products, too.

In the meantime, the loggers are grateful for the Chinese demand. The Lodgepole stands were infested with the mountain pine beetle over the past decade, and the voracious bugs killed off trees across millions of acres, leaving the timber prone to splintering. The combination of the bugs' raging appetites and Chinese builders' prodigious output means that producers here will export every log they can process.

China's Alibaba Group created a new domain for its Taobao Mall business-to-consumer portal, separating the brand from the company's flagship consumer-to-consumer site to give the retail site more prominence. 

Taobao Mall, through which such vendors as Adidas AG, Fast Retailing Co.'s Uniqlo and Lenovo Group Ltd. sell goods, now is available through its own Tmall.com Web address. It previously was available primarily through a link on the Taobao.com consumer-to-consumer site.

Ping An Insurance Company of China Ltd, China's second-largest life insurer, said Wednesday its net profit in the first three quarters of this year reached 13.2 billion yuan ($2 billion), up 8.4 percent year on year.

But the rate of growth slowed compared with the first two quarters as net profit in the third quarter fell 25.9 percent to 3.1 billion yuan, the company said in a report filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The company attributed the slower profit growth to decreasing returns from equity investments compared with the same period last year.

Earnings per share for the third quarter were 0.41 yuan, down 29.3 percent year on year.

Wahaha Group, China’s largest beverage producer, plans to set up a chain of shopping malls in the fast-growing country in the next few years, Chairman Zong Qinghou said in an interview with Forbes Asia.

Wahaha wants to expand into malls even though growth in China’s beverage industry looks promising at around 20% annually, said Zong, who ranked number one on the new Forbes China Rich List with wealth of $8 billion. “You can say, 20%-plus growth isn’t enough to satisfy Wahaha,” Zong said.

Wahaha competes with multinationals such as Coke and Pepsi. Multinationals have been expanding their product mix in China to include more drinks that appeal to Chinese consumers, challenging Wahaha.