Society

A highly publicized incident about milk products that caused baby girls to develop breasts may have been a smear campaign by a competitor.

Mengniu Dairy Co, the largest dairy company in the country by market value, on Wednesday denied rumors that it was assisted by a public relations company in plotting online attacks against its competitors, the Yili Group and Synutra International.

Rumors are now circulating that Mengniu made up a story that spread online in July, which claimed Yili's infant formula contained fish oil that could lead to premature sexual development.

At last the front line media has caught up with the idea that it is foreign exchange that is driving the markets.

While we watch the credit crunch through the lens of stocks, the real story is almost tangential to equities.

While people still think in terms of the credit crunch being about sub-prime debt and bank failures, there is a bigger picture. The real headline of the credit crunch is, the debt world blew up and took western government finances with it.

Trade imbalances remain the chronic reason for this whole sorry state.

Governments rely heavily on citizens to generate taxes. Taxes are generated on earning and spending. When that spending can’t be produced through the creation of wealth, it must be generated by credit. When that credit can’t be repaid by enterprise it has to come out of assets. In order to bolster and liquidate assets credit is needed once again.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesman Yao Jian said Friday that China welcomes the US intent to waive the embargo on the export of C-130 planes to China for use in oil spill response operations.

Yao said China had taken note of US President Barack Obama's proposal to end the restrictions on C-130 military transport aircraft sales to China in a letter to the US Congress on Oct 8.

The waiver of this embargo reflects a positive sign sent by the US to promote its exports to China, and China welcomes all measures that are conducive to promoting the bilateral economic cooperation and boosting the bilateral trade, said Yao.

The US government's export control, which started 61 years ago, has lead to trade imbalances in the manufacturing sector between the two nations and an unstable trade environment.

China hopes that the US will further relax controls over the exports of high-tech products and adopt "fair and non-discriminatory" policies to China in the process of export control reform, he said.

China also hopes the United States to expedite the export control reform announced on Aug 31, in order to boost bilateral economic ties with China and to improve its trade balance, said Yao.

A total of 1.03 million people visited the Shanghai World Exposition on Saturday, a record number since the Expo opened. The total number also exceeded an earlier record.

The Expo had received some 64.62 million visitors by the end of Saturday, the 169th day since the event began on May 1. The previous record was set during the 1970 Osaka World Expo in Japan, which about 64 million people attended over a six month period.