NANJING, China, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Beijing Automotive
Industry Holding Corp (BAIC) might still be interested in
buying General Motors’ Saab unit, according to the Chinese car
company’s general manager.

Asked by reporters on Monday whether BAIC would consider
approaching Saab as a solo buyer or only as a part of a
consortium, Wang Dazong said: “I would just say, ‘stay tuned a
little bit’.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – Meng Ni and Fan Zhiqing said “I do” to each other in the same month that they said “we do” to their real estate agent.

China is in the midst of a golden age of weddings, a boon for businesses from photo studios to global platinum miners. Yet nowhere is the economic impact so potentially profound as in the housing market.

NANJING, China (Reuters) – The euro zone’s top economic officials pressed China on Sunday to let the yuan resume its rise but said they were not counting on immediate results.

China, for its part, did not budge from long-standing wording on its exchange rate policy, with Premier Wen Jiabao restating that the yuan should be kept at a reasonable, balanced level.

BEIJING (Reuters) – The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, restated his view that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right, the Fund’s in-house unit of account.

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has promised to raise the issue of the yuan’s exchange rate during his visit this week to Beijing, putting the spotlight on a major bone of contention which has the potential to shake currency markets and diplomatic ties alike.

In an interview with Reuters in Washington, Obama put the question of the yuan in the broader context of a shared need to iron out imbalances in the world economy — including China’s huge savings — in order to ensure sustainable global growth.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A stronger yuan is part of the policy mix that Beijing needs to increase domestic consumption and help ease global imbalances, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.

The comments by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s managing director, add to a drumbeat of demands that China scrap its currency’s peg to the dollar, reinstated 16 months ago to help the country’s exporters weather the global recession.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Through a mixture of good fortune and well-executed strategy, South Korea has been better placed than Japan to catch a lift from China’s heady growth and leave the global financial crisis in its rear-view mirror.

But the advantage of greater Chinese exposure will become more dubious in coming years as the Asian giant cranks up its own value-added production in electronics, shipbuilding and automobiles, turning from South Korea’s customer to competitor.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s reluctance to let markets play a freer hand in setting the value of the yuan, also called the renminbi, is a festering irritant that both the United States and China want to keep from getting out of hand.

China says it manages the yuan’s exchange rate against a basket of currencies, but if there is a basket, the dollar is far and away the heaviest component. The history of China’s “managed float” regime divides neatly into two parts: July 2005 to July 2008, when the yuan gradually rose 21 percent in a crawling peg to the dollar; and July 2008 to the present, when the yuan has been virtually repegged at about 6.83 to the dollar.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s economic growth is likely to speed up this quarter, but the government will stay the course on its fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy, senior officials said on Monday.

Despite the emphasis on policy continuity, an unmistakable shift toward greater optimism in China’s official rhetoric has led analysts to conclude that Beijing is thinking about how to start unwinding its ultra-loose pro-growth policies.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s economic growth picked up last quarter as expected as a combination of breakneck investment and buoyant bank lending more than made up for a slump in exports.

But the 8.9 percent growth rate fell short of some of the more optimistic predictions in the market, and the government promptly said it would stick to the ultra-loose policies it has been following for the past year.