IN BRIEF (Page 24)

Foreign trade rises 19.6% in January

China's exports to markets along the Belt and Road Initiative, including Russia, Malaysia and India, surged in January, indicating that their ongoing industrialization and infrastructure development continued to stimulate economic exchanges with China, experts said on Feb 15. Exports to the three countries grew 39.1 percent, 22.8 percent and 18.1 percent, respectively, on a year-on-year basis, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Zhang Yunling, director of the academic division of international studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says from a global perspective, upgraded consumption, manufacturing capacity and infrastructure cooperation have become the biggest highlights of projects related to the trade route initiative.

Apple ponders Beijing tech group as supplier

Apple Inc is in discussions with Beijing-based BOE Technology Group Co to supply next-generation displays for future iPhones, a key component that is being provided by a Samsung Electronics Co unit, sources familiar with the talks say. Apple has been testing BOE's active-matrix organic light-emitting diode screens for months but hasn't decided if it will add the Chinese company to its roster of suppliers, one of the sources says. BOE, one of the country's biggest screen makers, is spending close to 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion; 13.65 billion euros; 11.63 billion) building two next-generation screen plants in the southwestern province of Sichuan in anticipation of future business. Talks are at an early stage and it's unlikely to supply the next iPhone, but BOE is banking on outfitting the one in 2018 or later, the source says.

Timber group teams upwith Russia on resources

Manzhouli Lianzhong Group, China's largest timber and frame-house building company, is leading a project with Russia to develop forest resources. The project, worth more than 1.5 billion yuan ($218 million; 205.3 million euros; 174.8 million), will seek to construct comprehensive bases in both countries for wood processing, storage and trade, according to Lu Baodong, vice-mayor of Manzhouli city in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Next to Russia, which is rich in forest resources, Manzhouli has been China's biggest land port for wood imports for 16 consecutive years. In the first half of last year, China imported 46.08 million square meters of wood, 33 percent of which was from Russia - the largest source country for China's wood, statistics provided by Zhonglian Group show.

Huawei makes moves to gain 5G edge

Huawei Technologies Co, China's largest telecom equipment maker, plans to unveil its first batch of 5G-ready products next year, as it strives to gain an edge in the race toward the next-generation mobile communication technology, local media reported. The Shenzhen-based company says that as the world moves closer to a consensus on 5G standards, it will start shipping 5G products in 2019, according to a report on qq.com, a news portal owned by Tencent Holdings. Xu Wenwei, strategic marketing president at Huawei, was quoted as saying that the company "will work with telecom carriers to create new business models in the 5G era where all things can be connected to the internet".

Huawei supports French city's surveillance effort

Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, and the French city of Valenciennes have signed an agreement to renovate the city's video surveillance system for public security. It could help Valenciennes, a city of 400,000 people about 200 km to the north of Paris, in the Hauts-de-France region, better manage public security issues and speed up its digital transformation. The cooperation on video surveillance equipment and technology is a result of Valenciennes's ambition to become a technological showcase of the region, and Huawei's willingness to provide its technological expertise to support the city's digital transformation toward a "smart city." The installation of the whole system would take about one year. The project aims to equip the city with 217 Huawei's HD Network cameras of the latest generation and a fully renewed monitoring center.

GCL unit to make solar power push overseas

Chinese mainland clean-power producer GCL New Energy Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of Golden Concord Holdings Limited, is looking to boost its overseas sales revenue to 30 percent of the total by 2020 through increasing solar energy project exports, its company executive says. The Suzhou-based company will focus on expanding markets in developed countries such as the United States, Japan and Australia, and plans to set up new branches, says GCL New Energy President Sun Xingping. Sun says overseas business will grow faster in the foreseeable future, with the percentage of installed capacity of solar power in foreign markets amounting to 30 percent of the total. The company's press office says the current proportion is less than 5 percent. It has installed several rooftop-distributed power plants in the US and Japan, and two ground-based plants in South Africa.

Film and TV group to link with UK's ITV

One of China's leading film and TV production companies has unveiled plans to work closely with UK broadcaster ITV Studios Global Entertainment. Huace Film and TV had previously collaborated with ITV on a Chinese version of the UK's Dancing on Ice. The first season of Star on Ice aired on several Chinese satellite stations in January. The show was both a critical and commercial success. Du Fang, vice-president of Huace group, says: "Based on the popularity of Star on Ice, Huace and ITV have agreed to put in place a long-term strategy cooperation that would bring lots of creative work from Huace's film and television strategy."

BMW achieves recordsales in China market

German automaker BMW Group says that its sales in China achieved double-digit growth in January, hitting a record. A total of 51,345 units of the premium brands BMW and Mini were delivered to Chinese customers, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.2 percent. It is the first time the Bavarian automobile company has delivered more than 50,000 units in a single month in China, the largest market in Asia for BMW Group, the announcement says. In January 2017, a total of 163,288 vehicles were sold worldwide, an increase of 6.8 percent year-on-year. Among them, 21,219 vehicles were delivered to customers in the United States, down by 0.5 percent compared with January 2016.

(China Daily Africa Weekly page24)