Foreign Investment in China Rises
Up 15% Through July

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Foreign direct investment in China rose in the first seven months as companies including Siemens AG and Ford Motor Co. expanded to take advantage of low wages and tap rising demand in the world's fastest-growing major economy.

Investment from abroad increased 15 percent from a year earlier to $38.4 billion in the seven months through July after gaining 12 percent in the first six months, the Beijing-based Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site. Contracted investment, a sign of future investment, rose 40 percent to $82.7 billion.

China drew a record $53 billion in overseas investment last year, surpassing the U.S. as the world's biggest recipient. Premier Wen Jiabao needs overseas investment to help create jobs as he reins in indiscriminate expansion by state-owned companies.

China ``is still a good investment for the long term,'' said Harriet Green, Asia-Pacific president of Arrow Electronics Inc., the world's largest distributor of computer parts. The company expects its China sales to rise more than 30 percent this year, Green said Tuesday.

Employment in urban areas, home to a third of the nation's 1.3 billion people, increased by 552,000 to 109 million in the first half, the statistics bureau said last month. Almost 4 million jobs were added in the private sector, it said.

Ford, the world's second-largest carmaker, last month announced plans to build a new plant in China with its Mazda Motor Corp. affiliate, part of a $1.5 billion investment to catch up with bigger rival General Motors Corp. in the third-biggest car market.

Siemens, the world's fourth-largest mobile-phone maker, on July 29 said it plans to triple the number of engineers at a Beijing telephone-network equipment venture, aiming to take market share in China from rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co.

The average worker in China's private sector earned 7,446 yuan ($900) in the past six months, a 9.6 percent increase over the first half of 2003, the statistics bureau said last month. Workers in Germany earn about 20 times as much.

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What is a Static Load Rating?
by Mike Mortensen - Director of Engineering RBI-USA

As radial load is applied to a bearing, elastic deformation occurs between the rolling element and raceway. As radial load is increased, the stress on the rolling element and raceway increase. As stress level increases, non-elastic or permanent deformation to the rolling element and raceway will occur. Non-elastic deformation increases in area and depth as the load increases, and when the load exceeds a certain limit, the smooth running of the bearing is affected.

The basic static radial load rating is defined in accordance with ISO and ABMA standards as the static radial load which corresponds to a calculated contact stress at the center of the most heavily loaded rolling element/raceway contact. For the following bearing types, the listed contact stress level will cause a total permanent deformation of approximately 0.0001 of the rolling element diameter.

(MPa or MegaPascal or 10 6 Pascal is a unit of stress. 1 Pa or Pascal equals 1 N/m 2. 1 N or Newton is a unit of force)

This small amount of non-elastic (or plastic) deformation for standard wide-purpose bearings will not have any substantial influence on the bearing performances (vibration, noise, stiffness, friction moment, etc.)

For stainless steel bearings, static load ratings are approximately 75% of the load ratings for chrome steel bearings.

Final Word
A Guide to Chinese Takeout Menus

Odds are you know him as General Tso, General Chao, General Zhou, even General Ching - namesake of the succulent, sweet-spicy chunks of dark-meat chicken that features in most every Chinese restaurant in America but is almost entirely unknown in China itself.

General Tso/Zuo himself, however, is well known - decidedly real and born in 1812 in this tiny valley in Hunan province. And a bit of detective work turns up the fact that, indeed, there is an obscure Hunan chicken recipe that bears his name - though no one can say quite how that happened.

"We have chickens here. We make chicken. But it's nothing special," says Zuo, sitting in the shade of his open-front house a few yards from the general's old homestead. As he speaks, a hen wanders in. "You say millions of Americans are familiar with our ancestor?"

His son, Zuo Jingyou, offers this: "It's been forgotten here. We Zuos have all heard stories about it. But did it come from him? We don't know."

Chinese food in the United States is full of such anomalies. Dishes that Americans consider takeout-joint stalwarts leave mainland Chinese scratching their heads.

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