BizChina

A row of Carrefour shopping trolleys at the entrance to a Beijing outlet of the French retailer. 

Retailer embarks on strategic expansion on the back of high sales

It's 1 am one day during this year's Spring Festival and hundreds of consumers are on a shopping spree, waiting in long queues, trolleys piled high with goods, at Carrefour's Tiantongyuan outlet in the Changping district of northern Beijing.

The night time craze was symbolic of the retail giant's strong performance in China. Claudio Gouveia, vice-president of Carrefour China and also general manager of the North Territory of Carrefour China, said the country has become one of the most significant and also fastest-growing markets for the retailer.

Scottish money managers' moves reflect shift in economic power

EDINBURGH: When Google Inc, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, said on Jan 12 it may close its website in China, Edinburgh money manager James Anderson sold the stock and bought Beijing-based rival Baidu Inc.

Since then, Baidu has risen 34 percent and Google has lost 8.5 percent. That kind of call helped propel Anderson's closed-end fund, Baillie Gifford & Co's 1.87 billion-pound ($2.8 billion) Scottish Mortgage Trust Plc, to the best performance among its UK peers over the past year.

A janitor cleans a metro station platform next to a Baidu.com Inc advertisement in Shanghai. Baidu shares have risen 34% since rival Google said on Jan 12 it may shut down its business in China.

"Google was admitting they had lost in China," said Anderson, who is Baillie Gifford's chief investment officer and responsible for 56 billion pounds in total. "It was revealing and added to the imputed value of Baidu."

Job applicants flip through newspapers searching for employment information at a job fair held at the National Agriculture Exhibition Hall in Beijing late last month.

As nation battles to reduce unemployment, analysts say it is shortage of skilled workers, not jobs, that is causing problems. Daniel Chinoy and Wang Xiaotian report from Beijing.

Song Yongliang did everything right. He worked hard, went to college and majored in Russian, which he thought would be practical in his hometown in Northeast China.

In his senior year, he found an internship as a translator and hoped to find a job with a trading company near the Russian border after he graduated in 2008. Then the financial crisis hit.

Analysts say trip reflects importance of China market

BEIJING: Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda on Monday apologized to Chinese consumers - who make up the world's biggest auto market - over the company's massive global recall.

"The incident had caused worries to Chinese consumers," Toyoda told a packed news conference. "I hereby express my sincere apologies for these worries."

Analysts said the apology to Chinese consumers is significant as it acknowledges the importance of the Chinese market that has become increasingly key to automakers as they struggle with weak global sales. Last year, China overtook the United States as the biggest auto market.

"The China market is very important to Toyota, so I decided to fly here directly from the US in person to deliver my expression of apology and explanation to Chinese consumers in the hope of regaining trust here," said Toyoda, president and CEO of the world's second-largest automaker, and the grandson of the company's founder.