Just hours after a massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to extend deep condolences to the Japanese government and people. And with that phone call came an offer for help to deal with the aftermath.
At this writing, the quake—said to be the worst in Japan’s history and the fifth most powerful in the world since 1900—and ensuing tsunami, has killed more than 10,000 people in the island nation, with thousands more missing. It has also caused serious problems at three nuclear plants in Japan, prompting the evacuation of 200,000 people. And Chinese rescue workers are now on the ground.
The Chinese search and rescue team, the first such mission ever accepted by Japan from China, arrived in Tokyo on Sunday and will join similar groups from dozens of countries in a search for survivors in the worst affected areas. Disaster response teams from the US, Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Israel also arrived in the country on Sunday. In total Japan has received offers of help from more than 50 countries as well as the UN who have sent a team to co-ordinate the international rescue operation, according to news reports.
China’s government, often at odds with Tokyo, offered support to Japan after Friday’s powerful earthquake, with Premier Wen Jiabao expressing “deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people” and telling his counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that China is willing to offer whatever aid is necessary.
Chen Jianmin, director of the China Earthquake Administration, said its International Rescue Team has put its members, equipment, materials and medicines in place and ready to depart for Japan, after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast, triggering a major tsunami and leaving dozens dead and displaced tens of thousands of people. “We are highly concerned about the earthquake in Japan and its consequences such as fires and building damages,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Chen as saying.
China is dealing with the aftermath of its own deadly earthquake, a 5.8-magnitude quake that struck its southwestern Yunnan province on Thursday, killing at least 25 people, injured 250, and destroyed some 18,000 houses.
The World Trade Organization handed an important victory to China, ruling that the U.S. illegally imposed both antidumping and antisubsidy duties on some Chinese exports in 2007.
The trade body's surprise decision sets a precedent in limiting the ability of China's trading partners to impose punitive duties on its exports.
China, the world's biggest exporter and its second biggest economy, faces its biggest wave of trade disputes at the WTO since it joined the Geneva-based organization in 2001.
Led by the U.S. and the European Union, China's trading partners are fighting what they say is an export machine often lubricated by state subsidies and aggressive dumping of goods below cost on foreign markets. And they complain it's a one-way street: China had $1.6 trillion of exports in 2010, with a trade surplus of $184.5 billion.
China has reacted to the trade legal war by hiring teams of consultants and expert counsel in Geneva, Brussels and Washington. It has become difficult for a reporter covering trade to find a lawyer not retained on some level by China or one of its exporters.
The WTO recently issued two significant rulings against China, finding that it improperly imposes export tariffs on raw materials in order to protect domestic supplies, and ordering China to bust a state-backed monopoly on processing some credit-card payments.
In 2008, when Harrah's Entertainment Inc. pulled out of a multibillion-dollar casino resort in Nassau, a Bahamas development company scrambled to find investors and financing to rescue it. Three years later, the Chinese rolled the dice.
On Monday, Baha Mar Resorts Ltd. is set to break ground on the $3.4 billion hotel, casino and resort project. Its unlikely partners: China State Construction Engineering Corp., the country's largest construction company by revenue, and the Export-Import Bank of China, a state-owned bank with the mission to help Chinese companies expand overseas.
"They were extremely aggressive about wanting to be in the project," said Don Robinson, president of Baha Mar. "It will help China State Construction prove to the world that they can build a very complex project outside China."
The Bahamas project, the largest property to be built and partly owned by a Chinese company outside of China, underscores the push into overseas markets by Chinese firms. Beijing has been encouraging Chinese companies to go abroad to help diversify the country's $2.85 trillion foreign-exchange reserves and reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar.
Chinese banks, providing hard-to-find financing, are helping to make such big bets abroad, especially on cheap real estate and infrastructure projects amid a recovering economy.
Read more: China State Construction Join In Bahamas Development
Apple Inc. dispatched its chief operating officer to the Chinese factory complex of its main manufacturing partner last year to assess and advise the company after a rash of highly publicized suicides raised concerns about worker conditions at companies affiliated with the consumer-electronics giant.
In its annual survey of suppliers, Apple said Tim Cook visited the Shenzhen facility of Foxconn—the trade name for Taiwan-headquarted Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics—last June after nearly a dozen workers killed themselves, some by jumping from buildings. The suicides came as Apple launched its iPad tablet computer and raced to meet demand for the device.
The Cupertino, Calif., company said Mr. Cook and his team made recommendations, including better training of counselors, which were adopted by Foxconn, according to the report made public Monday. Mr. Cook and his team interviewed more than 1,000 workers and evaluated Foxconn's reaction to the events, which included establishing a 24-hour care center.
Read more: Apple Says China Partner Made Changes For Workers
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