March 17:
Britain, Germany, France, and Italy will join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which the U.S. views as rival to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. Beijing has pledged most of the institution’s initial $50 billion in capital, the New York Times reports. Theresa Fallon at the European Institute for Asian Studies said: “China is shaping an alternative universe and getting America’s European allies to support it. [China] provides an alternative to the creaking international structures shaped by the U.S.” On Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said it is “urgent that we address prior unmet commitments, which have grown to levels that raise significant questions about U.S. credibility and leadership in the multilateral system.” Failure to do so could “result in a loss of U.S. shareholding, at a time when new players are challenging U.S. leadership.”
The Shanghai Stock Exchange will expand its Qualified Domestic Individual Investor program (QDII) from only institutional Chinese investors to also allow Chinese citizens to invest directly in overseas markets. The new program, QDII2, is part of China's Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Pudong, Shanghai. Authorities are also considering increasing the annual maximum of foreign currency that Chinese citizens can buy under QDII, which is limited at $50,000. The QDII2 trial run is a part of a series of 51 reform measures being jointly drafted by the Shanghai government, the People’s Bank of China and the country’s banking, stock exchange and insurance regulatory authorities, the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE reports.
March 19:
Last year Hong Kong customs officers seized 61.2 metric tons of baby formula and arrested 5,000 people for taking more than the allowed two tins across the border into China. Most offenders were mainlanders (3,235), followed by Hong Kongers (1,748), and 17 non-Chinese. Courts levied fines ranging between $32 and $12,900, and jailed 157 people for between one and 140 days. In 2013, the first year of the ban, 5,092 people were arrested and 39 metric tons of powdered formula was seized. There has seen a surge in parallel-goods trading – whereby people buy goods in Hong Kong for resale over the border. As of the end of last month, there were more than 13,500 mainlanders on the Immigration Department “suspected parallel traders watch list” and the immigration authorities had refused more than 28,500 entries, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.
March 20:
According to new guidelines, Hong Kong police officers will enforce public order “more strictly” to prevent any “suspicious” gathering of three or more people from turning into a protest. The new direction puts the focus on “preventive” handling of unauthorized protests and is meant for immediate implementation. According to a police source: “If officers deem a gathering could cause any breach of the peace or threat to public safety we would not allow the participants to proceed. We would demand that they produce identification and disperse, and follow them around if they did not leave. Anyone who refuses to comply can be arrested for obstructing police.” If necessary, the Police Tactical Unit would be deployed, SCMP reports.
March 25:
The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the China Central Committee has approved plans to build three experimental FTZ in Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian, and improve the Shanghai FTZ, the official Beijing Review reports. “The Guangdong FTZ will carry out programs on economic integration with Hong Kong and Macao, the Fujian FTZ will stress unified development with Taiwan, and the Tianjin FTZ will highlight coordinated growth with Beijing and Hebei,” said a trade expert with the Ministry of Commerce.