Search Results for: China

BY DAVID EIMER, in Beijing

Would you take medicine containing products from endangered species such as tigers and bears?

Traditional Chinese Medicine has long used ingredients such as tiger bone, bear gallbladder and rhinoceros horn, in its remedies. But their popularity is on the decline in China.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has abandoned plans to impose protective safeguard duties on imports from China of frozen strawberries. This follows the withdrawal of a complaint by Poland, the member state that had been pressing for protection. Chinese strawberry producers however could now face an EU anti-dumping duty instead, as an investigation into establishing this potentially permanent tariff barrier has been launched by the European Commission.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) political leaders have agreed medium-term (2007-13) budgets for crucial spending projects for the energy sector: Trans European Networks (TENs) and the EU seventh framework programme (FP7) for research. On TENs, the European Parliament, Commission, and EU Council of Ministers have agreed a Euro 7.2 billion budget, Euro 500 million above previous drafts, although this will have to be split with TENs transport projects.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) has called for a swift resolution to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute launched by the United States and the European Union (EU) over Chinese restrictions on car parts imports. In unusual cooperation, Washington DC and Brussels are combining forces against Beijing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WEST African countries that have spearheaded the call for reductions in cotton subsidies at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round have released a proposed formula guaranteeing these cuts are significant. If proposals tabled by the so-called Cotton-Four states Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali are accepted, cotton reductions would be deeper than cuts to agricultural subsidies in general.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

The Brussels plan to impose anti dumping duties on shoes imported into the EU from China and Vietnam has sharply divided EU governments with as many as ten of the 25 member states voting against it in the EU’s anti-dumping committee this week.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Environment Agency (EEA) has launched a research project aiming to document the effects of long-term, low exposure to toxic metals, such as mercury and lead, to influence future pollution controls. Although many metals have been proven toxic in sufficient quantities, much less is known about the damage caused by trace elements in water, the atmosphere and soil.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

IN the rapidly expanding world of nanotechnology (a nano is one billionth of a metre), more and more applications for the adhesives industry are being developed. Many of these inventions are sophisticated, even futuristic in scope, although bizarrely some advances are linked to natural phenomena, with the sector owing a lot of the latest groundbreaking research to the humble gecko.…

BY JANE MOIR, in Hong Kong

CONSTRUCTION is on the up, people are eagerly buying homes, cars are being churned out at a rapid pace and the 2008 Beijing Olympics are just around the corner. The demand for paint and coatings in China should never have been better.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…