SHANGHAI, May 1 (Reuters) – With flagging sales in their
mainland stores and increasingly price savvy consumers, luxury
companies are taking a leaf out of casinos’ play books by
offering junkets to wealthy Chinese clients eager to splurge in
their Hong Kong stores.

For companies like PPR and LVMH, who
have spent the past few years building stores across China, the
shift toward overseas spending is forcing them to adapt their
strategy in China to the tune of: if you can’t beat them join
them.

April 25 (Reuters) – Baidu Inc, China’s largest
search engine, will increase marketing expenditures for the rest
of the year to counter competition from rival Qihoo 360
Technology, which may further put the brakes on profit
growth.

Baidu posted on Friday its slowest quarterly profit growth
since end-September 2008, citing a rise in traffic acquisition
costs, or what a search engine pays to partner websites and
software applications to show its search box or results.

HANGZHOU, April 23 (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
, China’s largest e-commerce platform, said it will
commit “as many resources necessary” to stop the sale of pirated
goods on its Taobao shopping portals, where transactions
exceeded $161.7 billion last year.

The company said its incoming chief executive would join a
task force to combat piracy on its platforms.

ZHENGZHOU/CHONGQING, China (Reuters) – Wearing a floral brocade cardigan and toting a Huawei smartphone, Guo Qian, 22, gushes over her latest purchases on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform. As an administrative worker, Guo makes only 3,000 yuan a month and spends most of it.

Not only does she spend nearly all of her own money, Guo also fritters away most of her father’s 1,000 yuan monthly pension on trinkets and clothes on Taobao. “Sometimes I feel guilty using his money, so I buy him some clothes.”

ZHENGZHOU/CHONGQING, China (Reuters) – Wearing a floral brocade cardigan and toting a Huawei smartphone, Guo Qian, 22, gushes over her latest purchases on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform. As an administrative worker, Guo makes only 3,000 yuan a month and spends most of it.

Not only does she spend nearly all of her own money, Guo also fritters away most of her father’s 1,000 yuan monthly pension on trinkets and clothes on Taobao. “Sometimes I feel guilty using his money, so I buy him some clothes.”

ZHENGZHOU/CHONGQING, China, April 19 (Reuters) – Wearing a
floral brocade cardigan and toting a Huawei smartphone, Guo
Qian, 22, gushes over her latest purchases on Taobao, China’s
largest e-commerce platform. As an administrative worker, Guo
makes only 3,000 yuan a month and spends most of it.

Not only does she spend nearly all of her own money, Guo
also fritters away most of her father’s 1,000 yuan monthly
pension on trinkets and clothes on Taobao. “Sometimes I feel
guilty using his money, so I buy him some clothes.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – With its rare apology, Apple Inc went from pariah to praiseworthy in the eyes of China’s state-controlled media, a lesson for other foreign firms not to underestimate the speed and power of the government press.

After coming under near-daily media assault for the past two weeks and facing the threat of penalties from two Chinese government bureaus, Apple apologized to Chinese consumers on Monday for poor communication over its warranty policy and said it will change the terms for some of its iPhones sold in China.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese Internet users are crying foul over the perceived unfair treatment doled out to Apple Inc by state-run media which has actively criticized the smartphone maker for the past two weeks over its warranty policy.

Apple and Volkswagen AG were singled out on March 15 by state-run China Central Television in its annual corporate malpractice expose. CCTV accused Apple of having discriminatory after-sales service in China compared to the rest of the world.

SHANGHAI, March 27 (Reuters) – Vera Wang, the queen of
bridal couture, is abolishing the nearly $500 fee she charged
Chinese brides-to-be to try on a garment at her new Shanghai
bridal boutique after the move, meant to deter counterfeiters,
set off a global outcry.

Local and global media had criticised the surcharge as being
discriminatory because it was applied only in China, at the
company’s Shanghai store, which staged a “soft opening” in
January as the company’s first bridal salon in the country, a
vast potential market as the numbers of wealthy grow.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A plan by southern China’s Guangdong province, the first in the country to implement strict property cooling measures as directed this month by the central government, may signal at least 24 other cities could be next in line for a crackdown.

Two of the four cities singled out by the provincial administration late on Monday – Guangzhou and Shenzhen – feature right at the top of the list of 70 cities that have seen some of the sharpest home price spikes so far this year, according to Reuters calculations of official home price data.