Technically, China is top exporter

PARIS (Reuters) - China recently surpassed the United States as the world's top exporter of laptop computers, mobile phones and other technology devices, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said last month.

China exported $180 billion worth of information and communications technology (ICT) goods in 2004, compared with U.S. exports of $149 billion, the OECD, a free-market agency funded by 30 countries, said.

OECD officials said that China was likely to take top spot in 2005 too, but hard proof would take many months to collect.

The United States was world leader in 2003 with $137 billion worth of exports of ICT goods, followed by China with $123 billion, the OECD said in a statement.

"The data show a shift towards more trade between China and other Asian countries, with a corresponding decline in ICT imports to this region from the European Union and the U.S.," it said.

China's Lenovo Group Ltd. has long dominated the Chinese computer market, the world's second largest, but it burst onto the world stage this year with the purchase of International Business Machines Corp. PC business, making it the third-biggest maker of computers behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard Co.

China used to rely heavily on Europe and the United States for computer chips and other components, but is now turning to suppliers in Japan, Taipei, South Korea and Malaysia, the OECD said.

"China itself is also manufacturing and exporting more electronic components than ever before, with these now forming China's second-largest export item, after computers and related equipment," it said.

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Firm fights to sell moon real estate

A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy.

Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co. has sued commercial authorities in China's capital for suspending its business licence on October 28, just days after it opened, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

"There is not a law or regulation in China that prohibits the selling of land on the moon," chief executive officer Li Jie was quoted as saying.

"They don't have enough evidence to make the ruling."

The company, which calls itself the "Lunar Embassy to China", had sold 49 acres of lunar land to 34 Chinese clients within three days of opening on October 19, Xinhua previously reported, two days after two Chinese astronauts returned to Earth from the country's second manned space mission.

Just under 300 yuan ($37) was all it cost to buy a deed promising rights to one acre of dusty lunar soil and any minerals up to two miles underground until the company was accused of illegal speculation and profiteering.

The domestically financed firm is the China agent of the U.S.-based Lunar Embassy, an extra-terrestrial real estate agency aimed at exploiting what it sees as a loophole in a 1967 international treaty on the moon.

Earlier this month, the Lunar Embassy started selling domain names for the "extra-terrestrial Internet", which the company says will eventually include Web sites with such endings as .lunar, .space and .uranus.

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China lets foreign banks do more

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday increased the number of cities where foreign banks can do business denominated in yuan, and eased capital requirements, opening the sector faster than required under international trade commitments.

The gradual introduction of foreign banks is ratcheting up competition for China's domestic banks, whose operations the government is keen to sharpen.

Foreign banks had maintained annual growth of more than 30 percent in China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said in a statement that listed new cities where they could operate.

"Foreign banks have become an indispensable force in China's banking system," it said.

As required under commitments that Beijing made when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the cities of Shantou and Ningbo were now open to foreign banks offering yuan business to Chinese and foreign companies and to foreign individuals, the commission said.

It also added five other cities that it said it was not yet required to open to foreign banks: Harbin, Changchun, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Nanning.

The CBRC reduced the minimum operational capital requirement for a foreign bank branch to provide yuan business to clients, including Chinese residents, to 400 million yuan ($49.5 million) from 500 million yuan.

It also cut the minimum operational capital required for a branch of a wholly-owned foreign bank registered in China, or a joint venture, to 200 million yuan from 300 million yuan.

Foreign banks are already allowed to offer foreign-currency business anywhere in China. From next December, they will be allowed to offer yuan business to anyone anywhere in China, subject to regulatory approval.

Beijing is eager to entice foreign cash and expertise into its banking sector, which is saddled with $200 billion in bad debt.

That effort has lured billions of dollars in investment from banks such as HSBC Holdings Plc., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America.

The commission said that at the end of October, foreign banks had total assets in China of $84.5 billion, about two percent of all banking assets in China. Foreign currency loans by foreign banks had been 25 percent of all foreign currency loans.

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