SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – One of China’s most conspicuously reform-minded leaders has stepped back into the spotlight after the nation’s biggest political convulsion in a generation, positioning himself to gain from the fall of populist politician Bo Xilai.

Wang Yang, leader of Guangdong province and well known for his deft handling of recent civil unrest there, is the first of three provincial-level party bosses who stand to benefit after a murder scandal snuffed out Bo’s career last month.

Bo, once seen as a favorite of the party’s conservatives, was a strong contender to join China’s top decision-making body in a leadership transition due to be completed by March. His political demise is now an opportunity for rivals such as Wang.

Wang, 57, used his provincial party congress meeting this month to garner publicity ahead of the 18th national Party Congress where, late this year, a new and younger leadership group will be unveiled to replace President Hu Jintao’s team.

Wang’s performance at the Guangdong congress highlighted his image as the politician most likely to take up the reformist mantle of outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao, who had seen Bo as a threat to his reform legacy and moved swiftly to cut him down.

“Wang Yang’s speech was sort of valedictory,” said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based expert on the Chinese leadership.

“People think that he will sort of be the next Wen Jiabao, the standard bearer of the liberals in the new Standing Committee.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Apple Inc and its key supplier Foxconn Technology Group will share the initial costs of improving labor conditions at the Chinese factories that assemble iPhones and iPads, Foxconn’s top executive said on Thursday.

Foxconn chief Terry Gou did not give a figure for the costs, but the group has been spending heavily to fight a perception its vast plants in China are sweatshops with poor conditions for its million-strong labor force. It regards the criticism as unfair.

“We’ve discovered that this (improving factory conditions) is not a cost. It is a competitive strength,” Gou told reporters on Thursday after the ground-breaking ceremony for a new China headquarters in Shanghai.

“I believe Apple sees this as a competitive strength along with us, and so we will split the initial costs.”

It was unclear if the split would be 50/50 or in some other ratio.

Foxconn announced in mid-February it had raised wages for workers by 16 to 25 percent, and in late March it reached an agreement with Apple to hire tens of thousands of new workers to reduce overtime work.

Analysts have attributed weaker-than-expected first-quarter results at Foxconn’s flagship listed unit Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd mainly to rising salary costs.

HANOI, May 4 (Reuters) – Moves to shrink the number of banks in Vietnam and reform its financial sector may be stalling, which could hurt efforts to put the country’s economy on a solid footing for the long-term.

Four years of economic volatility and sky-high inflation, coupled with tumbling asset prices, have put the Vietnamese banking system under strain. Last November, State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Binh said eight small banks were “unhealthy” while in January he said 10 percent of the country’s nearly 50 banks were “ailing.”

Financial sector reform is one of three pillars in a program of economic restructuring Vietnam unveiled late last year, and on March 1 the government approved and published a broad plan for bank reform.

But banking reform could be stalling because authorities have higher priorities. The merger of up to eight banks, planned for the first quarter of this year, did not take place. The central bank changed the timeframe to the first half.

For the government, the focus has become stimulating economic growth. Such a shift occurred after first-quarter economic data showed gross domestic product growth at an alarming three-year low of 4 percent and that credit had shrunk from the end of 2011.

The central bank cut policy rates by 100 basis points in March and again in April, surprising the market, and has been encouraging commercial banks to lower lending rates. Restrictions on lending to the real estate sector and for consumption have been dropped.

Raising the growth rate would alleviate some of the urgency for bank reform, while prolonged sluggishness would make banking weaknesses more acute.

HANOI (Reuters) – After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Vietnam suspended its nuclear plans and waited for more than a decade before reviving them.

But Vietnam was undeterred by last year’s Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan, the world’s worst atomic accident since Chernobyl, and is racing ahead with plans to start construction of its first reactor in 2014, which should go online six years later.

It aims to follow that up with another 14 reactors by 2030.

At least five other members of the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are studying nuclear power as an option to meet demand for energy in the fast-growing region of 600 million people.

Proponents say atomic energy is unavoidable for the region, and the prohibitive cost of alternatives will help to drive the sector.

Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore are among some 35 countries considering going down the nuclear path, likely doubling the number of operational reactors in the next few decades, according to Lloyds Register.

But even the most ambitious plans will run up against barriers and constraints.

HANOI (Reuters) – After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Vietnam suspended its nuclear plans and waited for more than a decade before reviving them.

But Vietnam was undeterred by last year’s Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan, the world’s worst atomic accident since Chernobyl, and is racing ahead with plans to start construction of its first reactor in 2014, which should go online six years later.

It aims to follow that up with another 14 reactors by 2030.

At least five other members of the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are studying nuclear power as an option to meet demand for energy in the fast-growing region of 600 million people.

Proponents say atomic energy is unavoidable for the region, and the prohibitive cost of alternatives will help to drive the sector.

Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore are among some 35 countries considering going down the nuclear path, likely doubling the number of operational reactors in the next few decades, according to Lloyds Register.

But even the most ambitious plans will run up against barriers and constraints.

HANOI (Reuters) – After four years of economic instability, Vietnam is embarking on reforms some believe could be its most significant since steps started in 1986 that ended stifling central planning and, eventually, turned the war-torn country into a tiger.

However, there’s substantial skepticism that policymakers can fend off resistance to major change from state-owned companies and other interest groups, including private conglomerates, whose influence has surged.

Months of heated discussion have produced a consensus that Vietnam, wracked by Asia’s worst inflation and other woes, needs to change tack, as it did 25 years ago when the “Doi Moi” (renovation) policy took flight.

“It’s not just talk anymore. This is serious business now,” Vice Minister of Planning and Investment Dang Huy Dong told Reuters. “We’ve gone through careful analysis, painful analysis, to see where the shortcomings are and areas for improvement.”

It’s far from certain, though, that the government will pursue reforms that are broad enough and deep enough to fix debt-ridden state banks and rein in inefficient state enterprises (SOEs) such as Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group, or Vinashin, which embarrassingly defaulted last year.

“The Vietnamese economy, once again, is at a crossroads,” said Le Dang Doanh, a reform-minded economist who has advised current and former leaders.

And this time, in Doanh’s view, moving decisively down a reform path is “more difficult because it touches powerful interest groups that are operating behind the scenes.”

HANOI (Reuters) – The Vietnamese dong looks stuck for now with the unappealing title of Asia’s worst performing currency, despite moves by the central bank to dip into foreign reserves to bolster it.

The dong’s chronic weakness has repelled foreign investors and hampered attempts by Vietnam’s policymakers to reverse the faltering fortunes of an economy that only five years ago was one of Asia’s most promising.

Until Vietnam rebuilds trust by decisively taming the region’s worst inflation and narrowing sizable trade and budget deficits, the risks of holding dong are likely to continue to outweigh the benefits no matter what tinkering the central bank does, analysts and investors say.

The dong is stronger today than in February when the State Bank of Vietnam devalued it by 8.5 percent. Still, the currency has lost more than 20 percent in value since mid-2008, as waves of inflation, high credit growth and large deficits eroded already low levels of confidence. Since that time, it has shed more than any other Asian currency.

This year, the dong strengthened from February until August — but it doesn’t look likely to switch again and appreciate.

“The VND will find it difficult to maintain its current level indefinitely given the current economic environment,” said Dominic Bunning, a foreign exchange strategy associate at HSBC.

In an attempt to end a cycle of small devaluations, the State Bank of Vietnam launched a campaign to stabilize the currency on February 11 with the biggest single devaluation since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-8, an 8.5 percent move.

HANOI, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Vietnam’s central bank has been selling U.S. dollars to banks in recent weeks to support the weak dong , which has come under pressure since early August following months of stability, market sources said.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has sold an estimated $1.5 billion to five or six large state-run and partly-private banks since mid-August, two sources who closely follow the Vietnamese currency market estimated.

Two other sources declined to estimate the total value of the intervention but said some banks had been sold between $15 million and $35 million a day over about three weeks.

Intervention in the currency market is not unprecedented for the SBV, but past attempts have proven ineffective at sustainably supporting the dong, which has fallen by more than 20 percent against the dollar since mid-2008.

Central bank governor Nguyen Van Binh declined to comment when asked about the dollar sales late last week. Other central bank officials have also declined to comment.

The sliding dong has been one of a host of problems plaguing Vietnam’s once-promising economy, along with spiraling inflation, a debilitating trade deficit, lumbering state enterprises and slow responses to power shortages and other infrastructure woes.

In February, the SBV devalued the currency by 8.5 percent, the biggest devaluation since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and pledged flexibility on the exchange rate.

HANOI, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Vietnam’s central bank should hold policy rates for now and deploy monetary tools “flexibly” the rest of 2011 to trim price pressures, but it needs to try to lower interest rates as inflation eases, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh said.

His views were reported on official websites on Friday, the day after Ninh met senior central bank officials and two days after the government announced that annual inflation hit 23 percent in August.

High inflation is one of Vietnam’s biggest economic problems. August was the 12th consecutive month in which the annual inflation rate rose.

Separately, an editorial on Friday in the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper, Nhan Dan, said now was not the time for Vietnam to loosen monetary policy.

Economists say inflation momentum has begun to ease and the level may have reached a peak.

Ninh, a former finance minister, was quoted by the government website as saying policy rates should be unchanged for now.

A statement on the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) website quoted Ninh as saying the central bank should “continue to use monetary tools flexibly and effectively to decrease inflationary pressures and lower interest rates gradually in line with changes in the inflation rate.

HANOI (Reuters) – Inflation may have finally peaked in Vietnam. Now comes the hard part for policymakers.

It is too early to start unwinding tight monetary policy but pressure to do so will no doubt rise quickly if, as some economists expect, inflation starts to ease in the next month or so.

The stability of Vietnam’s beleaguered $100-billion economy and its attractiveness to investors hinge on whether policymakers stick to their guns, economists say. Also on the line is the credibility of freshly-reappointed Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his new central bank chief, Nguyen Van Binh.

“The biggest risk to the economy at this stage is a crisis of confidence in policymaking that impacts foreign exchange rates and leads to a significant deterioration in the asset quality of the banking system,” said Johanna Dee Chua, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Citi.

Most of Asia has been grappling with rising prices, yet Vietnam’s economy has been singularly susceptible. This is the country’s second bout with inflation in excess of 20 percent in three years, underscoring the dangers of the government’s traditional pro-growth policy bias.

The annual consumer price index hit 23 percent in August, the 12th consecutive month to see a rise.

But monthly inflation showed its smallest increase in a year, giving some economists hope that price pressures had peaked.