IN BRIEF (Page 18)

Helicopter market 'booming'

Airbus Helicopters, a division of Airbus Group, is expecting to sell 60 aircraft to buyers on the Chinese mainland by the end of the year in a market which is "emerging and booming", according to its president in the country.

"We expect a 100 percent increase in orders each year, and estimate that around 50 to 60 helicopters made by us will have been sold here within the year," said Norbert Ducrot, on the sidelines of the Third China Helicopter Expo that concluded in Tianjin on Sept 13.

Last year the European aircraft maker, previously Eurocopter Group before being renamed in January 2014, had 32 Chinese mainland orders.

Regulators favor M&As for automobile firms

Regulators in China have indicated that they may refrain from introducing large-scale stimulus measures and instead encourage weaker automakers to merge or be acquired, as a slowdown in the industry exposes problematic overcapacity. Slowing vehicle sales will "severely undermine" the auto industry's profitability and make companies with operational difficulties targets for takeovers, said Qu Guochun, a deputy director at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, on Sept 12 at a forum in Tianjin.

Xi to press the case for early BIT

Negotiations on the China-United States Bilateral Investment Treaty will make up most of the discussions during President Xi Jinping's forthcoming state visit to the US, the Ministry of Commerce said on Sept 16.

The visit will speed up and upgrade trade, economic cooperation between the two nations and bolster bilateral relations, said Shen Danyang, the ministry spokesman.

"Xi's upcoming state visit to the US is a matter of primary importance for Sino-US relations, and will exert a profound influence on the bilateral relationship and economic cooperation," he said.

Chinalco, Shenhua to set up alumina project

Aluminum Corp of China and Shenhua Group plan to build a 4-million-ton-a-year alumina project in the northern Chinese province of Hebei in partnership with the provincial government, a media report said on Sept 14. Alumina is a common name for aluminium oxide, which is used to produce aluminium.

State-owned Aluminum Corp of China, or Chinalco, is China's biggest integrated aluminum group, while Shenhua is the country's top coal producer. The companies have agreed to build the alumina project at Huanghua port in Cangzhou city.

Transport into the future

Transportation time between Beijing and Shanghai could shorten significantly, if tech magnate Elon Musk's wild idea about next-generation travel, or transporting passengers in capsules, becomes a reality.

The concept of the hyperloop project is to let passengers travel in a low-pressure tube at the speed of sound. Once applied, the project in theory can reduce the 1,500-km, two-hour Beijing-Shanghai flight trip time by half.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc, a United States-based company that specializes in supersonic transportation systems, is considering a hyperloop project between Beijing and Shanghai.

"We are speaking with certain parties in China," said Bibop G. Gresta, deputy chairman of HTT, on Tuesday. "In terms of the distance and the density of travelers, the trip from Beijing to Shanghai is one of the most ideal routes to build a hyperloop project."

(China Daily European Weekly 09/18/2015 page18)