Society

The city is engulfed in a divisive debate as it prepares to set its first-ever minimum wage.

Lawmakers passed the minimum-wage bill after a 41-hour session in July in response to growing public calls to tackle the widening wealth gap. Some of Hong Kong's lowest-paid workers, such as toilet cleaners or security guards, earn as little as HK$20, or about US$2.60, an hour.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang, in a luncheon address to business groups last week, said the government was forced to legislate a minimum wage after a "tepid" response from the business community to a voluntary plan for a minimum wage proposed in 2006.

China's government will next year start extracting more money in dividends from the companies it controls, in a long-awaited step that could help level the playing field between private firms and the nation's massive state-owned enterprises.

In a decision made with little fanfare, China's State Council, the country's equivalent of a cabinet, said hundreds more state-owned companies will have to pay a higher level of dividends from 2011.

The move strengthens an existing trial program, widely criticized as ineffective, under which about 130 large companies—including China National Petroleum Corp., State Grid Corp. and China Mobile Communications Corp.—pay 5% or 10% of their annual profits to their government shareholder.

Behind that decision lies a long-running and increasingly intense debate over the role of state-owned companies in today's market-driven China. Some Chinese see a strong state sector as key to the nation's economic resilience during the financial crisis and its rising global prominence. Others see powerful state companies, flush with cash from the government's stimulus program, as a growing threat to the smaller private businesses that create most new jobs.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron held talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday afternoon on the first day of a major trade mission aimed at deepening commercial ties.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Wen sat down for talks in Beijing's Great Hall of the People following a series of ministerial talks earlier this week covering economic, energy and educational issues.

After a brief welcoming ceremony, Mr. Wen thanked Mr. Cameron for prioritizing U.K.-China relations in his first months of office and pledged to push "forward the friendship and cooperation between our two countries." Mr. Cameron said he was glad to be "back in China and to be back with such a big delegation of ministers and business people."

China’s economic growth unexpectedly accelerated in the third quarter, according to the estimates of analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal, a finding that runs counter to official statistics and could help explain the central bank’s recent move to raise interest rates.

The poll, the latest in a quarterly series, asks economists for their estimates of China’s growth in the same seasonally adjusted quarter-to-quarter terms used by other major economies. China officially reports changes in gross domestic product only relative to the same period a year earlier, which can make it harder to discern turning points in the economy.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported last month that the country’s gross domestic product was 9.6% higher than a year earlier in the third quarter, slowing from the 10.3% expansion in the second quarter. The figure was in line with market expectations and consistent with the government’s public statements that it has been gradually cooling down the economy to avoid risks from the huge stimulus plan launched in late 2008.