• China to make Shanghai global yuan hub by 2015
• Factbox: Who’s where in China’s financial sector
• China Says It Curbed Spill of Toxic Metal in River
• China Eyed as Next Educational Frontier

Source: Reuters By Kazunori Takada and Samuel Shen

(Reuters) – China intends to establish Shanghai as the global centre for yuan trading, clearing and pricing over the next three years as part of broader plans to make the commercial hub an international financial centre by 2020.

The plan for Shanghai’s financial innovations through 2015, published jointly by the country’s economic planning agency and the Shanghai government on Monday, set goals on a wide range of areas aimed at further developing Shanghai, though some analysts said many of them appeared ambitious.

“This anticipated pace of development looks a bit quick to me,” said Frances Cheung, a strategist at Credit Agricole in Hong Kong.

China wants to transform Shanghai into an international financial centre on par with the likes of New York and London by 2020. That goal was set in 2009 by the State Council and analysts have taken it as a broad deadline for liberalizing the currency.

The state economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, outlined a series of goals under the 2015 yuan plan.

These included making the daily yuan mid-point published by the central bank in the onshore yuan market serve as the benchmark for both domestic and foreign yuan trading markets.

Currency traders interpreted the statement partly as a message from Beijing that the yuan’s movements, which have increasingly been influenced by the offshore market over the past few months, should be decided by the government.

“There have been recent developments that have put Hong Kong’s offshore market in the spotlight from time to time, such as its pricing of the yuan quite differently from the onshore market,” said a trader at a European bank in Shanghai.

“In this sense, the NDRC statement is published at a sensitive time and means the government once again wants to emphasize that it has the final say in the value of the yuan.”

The plan also aims to make the government-backed Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (Shibor) the benchmark for yuan credit everywhere and targeting to more than double the annual non-forex financial market trading volume to 1,000 trillion yuan by 2015.

While the plan lacked details on how China would achieve these targets, analysts were skeptical on the feasibility of some of the planks in the platform.

“Shibor is not even a very well established benchmark onshore,” Cheung said. Markets currently use the government’s seven-day repurchase rate as the lending benchmark.

Analysts said the NDRC’s plan gave no fresh insight into how quickly China would liberalize its capital account, a crucial step in Shanghai’s attempt to become a global money hub.

China has taken a series of measures over the past two years to invigorate the offshore yuan market in Hong Kong as part of a longer-term plan to promote the use of the yuan overseas and make it a fully-convertible and international reserve currency along with the U.S. dollar.

Earlier this month, Britain said it was teaming up with its former colony to secure London a top spot as an offshore trading centre for the yuan.

The NDRC’s plan would not threaten Hong Kong’s current position as the main offshore yuan centre, analysts said.

“Promoting Shanghai as an onshore yuan centre complements Hong Kong’s growing role as an offshore yuan center, and should help to strengthen the circle of onshore-offshore yuan flows underpinning the yuan trade settlement process,” said Donna H J Kwok, economist at HSBC in Hong Kong.

China will also encourage overseas companies to sell yuan-denominated shares in its domestic stock markets, but the plan did not give a detailed timetable.

Authorities have been discussing launching a so-called “international board” on the Shanghai stock exchange for listing foreign companies’ shares, seen as a centerpiece for the 2020 goal, but the city’s mayor said this month that the time was not currently right for its launch.

Shanghai will explore M&A opportunities involving overseas stock exchanges to increase its global clout, the NDRC’s plan said without elaborating.

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) – China’s economic planning agency and the Shanghai government have published a plan laying out the next few years of financial innovation in Shanghai, with the aim of turning it into a global financial centre by 2020.

Shanghai, however, still faces a struggle in attaining that goal. One of the disadvantages China’s most populous city faces is that China’s key economic policymakers and most top local and foreign banks are based in the capital city of Beijing.

Below is a list of key financial institutions in China and where they are based.

BEIJING

- The People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The central bank has its market-related operations headquartered in Shanghai but the top policymakers, including the governor, are based in Beijing.

- The State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the currency regulator, which is a unit of the central bank.

- All three financial industry regulators — the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

- The National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful central planning agency responsible for formulating economic and social strategies.

- All the top four state-owned banks: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China.

- China headquarters of most of the major Western investment banks, including JPMorgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

SHANGHAI

- The Shanghai Stock Exchange, the country’s biggest bourse.

- The Shanghai Futures Exchange, the country’s biggest commodities exchange.

- China Financial Futures Exchange, the country’s only such futures market. Currently there is only one product being traded — the CSI300 Index Future for 300 Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed firms.

- The PBOC’s Shanghai head office, which is in charge mainly of the central bank’s market-related functions, such as its bill sales and overseeing the interbank market.

- China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), an interbank market under the central bank, where trading in the yuan and other currency pairs, lending and borrowing rates, and government bonds takes place.

- Bank of Communications, the country’s fifth-biggest lender.

- The locally incorporated commercial banking units of a number of major Western banks, including Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland.

- Morgan Stanley has moved its China headquarters to Shanghai from Beijing.

Source: New York Times By Andrew Jacobs | Photo: China Daily

BEIJING — Officials in southern China appear to have averted environmental calamity by halting the spread of a toxic metal that had threatened to foul drinking water for tens of millions of people, the state media reported Monday.

Officials said they had successfully diluted the concentration of cadmium, a poisonous component of batteries, that has been coursing down the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The spill, which first occurred two weeks ago, prompted a rush on bottled water in several downstream cities and prompted worries that the contamination could reach as far as Hong Kong and Macao.

The cadmium, a substance used in the production of paint, solder and solar cells as well as batteries, has been traced to discharges from a mining company in Guangxi that has since halted production, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said.

Cadmium poisoning can cause kidney and liver damage and weaken bones.

According to officials in the city of Liuzhou, workers neutralized the cadmium contamination over the weekend by dumping tons of other chemicals into the river. The chemicals, polyaluminum chloride and sodium hydroxide, are supposed to bind with the cadmium and then settle to the river bottom. City officials said they would later dredge the river sediment.

Despite what appears to have been a disaster avoided, the episode highlighted China’s continuing struggle against contamination of its waterways. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has acknowledged that half the nation’s rivers and lakes are unfit for human contact, and news media reports of chemical and oil spills are commonplace here.

Although the central government has invested more than $3 billion to improve water quality in recent years, officials estimate that more than 300 million people still do not have access to clean drinking water.

Cadmium poisoning has been a persistent problem, especially among those working at battery plants or living near them. Last year, a study by Nanjing Agricultural University found that 10 percent of the nation’s rice crop contained excessive cadmium levels. In several southern provinces, 60 percent of rice samples were found to exceed the national standard for the heavy metal, researchers found.

Beyond stricter enforcement of existing antipollution regulations, environmental advocates say Chinese officials must embrace greater transparency when it comes to accidents like the one that fouled the waterways in Guangxi. Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, said that by concealing news of the spill for nearly two weeks, officials had allowed the damage to spread.

“Only when fish started dying did they publicly acknowledge there was a problem,” Mr. Ma said. He also criticized the initial cleanup efforts, saying that officials upstream had hastened the cadmium’s reach by releasing water from a dam while officials downstream were struggling to contain those same waters in a reservoir.

On Monday, officials in Liuzhou proclaimed that water from the Longjiang was safe to drink, but residents of Liuzhou, a city of three million, were unconvinced, or at least confused.

“We get a text message on our phones every few hours from the city government telling us the cadmium level at three places on the river, but I don’t know what the numbers mean,” said Zhang Ying, who works at a supermarket in the city.

Liao Ming, the owner of a local cafe, said that he would stick to bottled water for now but that he would probably continue using tap water to bathe. “You can’t be too picky when you are Chinese,” he said in a telephone interview, noting that his neighborhood’s air was regularly tainted by discharges from a local paper factory. “If you go down that road and get serious about this kind of stuff, you won’t have time to live.”

Source: Wall Street Journal By Andrew Browne

SHANGHAI—If there was ever a need for business schools in China, it’s now.

Breakneck economic growth has far outstripped the supply of management talent. Meanwhile, Chinese companies in both the private and state sectors are responding to government incentives to “Go Out” and compete against the best companies in the world—while juggling fierce competition, rapidly changing technology and shifting macro-economic forces at home.

No wonder some of the world’s most prominent business schools are eyeing China as the next educational frontier.

China Europe International Business School got to China early. That gives it a head start in terms of faculty and facilities. Its new pitch: “China Depth Global Breadth,” marrying insight into how China works with an international perspective that attracts students from China and around the world.

Dean John A. Quelch, a veteran of the Harvard Business School and London Business School, insists that despite economic turmoil in Europe, the CEIBS brand in China remains untarnished. “Germany is held in very high regard,” he insists. Besides, he adds: “People in China take the long view.”

Mr. Quelch talked with Andrew Browne in Shanghai. The following interview has been edited.

WSJ: Like everybody else in China, CEIBS seems to be investing massively in infrastructure. Tell us something about your expansion plans.

Mr. Quelch: The Shanghai campus will double in size by the end of 2013. We also have a campus that we opened in Beijing in 2010 and we currently have operations in Shenzhen that may convert into a fully fledged campus within the next two to three years.

We also have an appetite for going west, and looking at that hundred million people in the Chengdu-Xian-Chongqing triangle, who will eventually want their own business school and will not necessarily want—or be able—to fly to Beijing or Shanghai.

The reason why Stanford exists is because Harvard always thought that Californians would be happy to come east to Boston, and never imagined they’d want their own Harvard, a.k.a. Stanford.

WSJ: The No. 1 complaint of foreign companies in China is lack of management talent. Isn’t that a huge opportunity for you?

Mr. Quelch: First of all, China’s pace of expansion has outrun the speed with which managers can experientially develop themselves, and so our role is to be an accelerant. We take experienced or high-potential young managers, and we accelerate the speed with which they can assume more management and leadership responsibilities.

Second, because we cannot serve everybody—obviously—the admissions criteria that we apply and the rectitude of our admissions policies is extremely important to our overall economic impact.

WSJ: What’s the mix of students between college graduates and mid-career managers?

Mr. Quelch: We focus on more senior executives even compared with a Harvard Business School. We graduate 1,000 people a year, roughly, 800 of them are executive MBAs; average age 40. The other 200 are MBAs; average age 30.

You have to have an extremely strong teaching faculty—very practical, very experienced—to be able to command the sustained attention and respect of 40-year-old business people.

We are the No.1 revenue-generating business school in executive education in Asia built around our unique ability to deliver both “China Depth and Global Breadth.”

WSJ: How do the changes in the CEIBS syllabus over the years reflect the shifting dynamics of the Chinese economy?

Mr. Quelch: Initially the focus was on functional competency [in] finance, accounting and marketing etc. Now the emphasis is on integrated general management and problem-solving across functional silos. Teamwork and leadership in fast-growth markets are stressed in our curriculum.

WSJ: Lack of integrated management is said to be one of the weaknesses of many Chinese companies? Why is that?

Mr. Quelch: The main reason is that China is run by engineers [who] typically have strong skills in finance and accounting and economics, but with less developed skills in the areas of leadership, change management, marketing, to some extent strategy as well.

So the soft skills, as we refer to them in the States, are the ones which are underdeveloped in China. The hard skills are well-developed. And so our curriculum places considerable emphasis on overlaying soft skills on the foundation of hard skills that many students bring to the classroom.

WSJ: Isn’t part of the problem that state-owned enterprises have many of the same kinds of rigid hierarchies that you have in the Communist Party?

Mr. Quelch: That may be the case. But there’s one thing that I’ve discovered in China: no-one—and I’m talking about the state sector—gets promoted for breaking the rules, but no-one gets to the top if they just follow the rules. So there is an art in China to taking new initiatives but doing so in a manner that is not destabilizing.

WSJ: But can that system generate true innovation?

Mr. Quelch: I think you can, if you throw a considerable amount of money behind it. But certainly a major challenge in the state-owned sector is to achieve innovation.

In every country the public sector is different from the private sector, whether it’s the U.K. or the U.S., there’s an approach, a culture and a style that is different, norms that are different. But in China I think that the gap is wider, certainly than it is in the States, and it’s almost a case of natural selection where people come to a fork in the road in China and either go to the state sector or to the private sector. And the mental mind-set associated with each is more substantially different than it is in the U.K. or the U.S.

The innovation in China is much more likely to be generated out of the private sector, even though the state sector is hugely well-endowed with resources that could fund innovation.

WSJ: What advice would you give to Chinese companies headed overseas?

Mr. Quelch: Chinese companies should not go abroad as Chinese companies. They should go abroad as companies with an important differentiated value offering that consumers will be happy to pay for—and the country of origin is irrelevant.

WSJ: When will we see the emergence of global Chinese brands?

Mr. Quelch: I think that Chinese companies will add value initially in the B-to-B (business-to-business) sector, not the B-to-C (business-to-consumer) sector. Many people in China are eagerly awaiting the day when the first truly global Chinese brand enters the top-10 ranking of the world’s most valuable brands. I think that’s probably at least a decade away.

But Chinese companies like Huawei, ZTE—these companies have extremely good technology and know how to invest in technology acquisitions and, increasingly, they are acquiring or hiring non-Chinese to help them become global players. Those are the companies that are likely to be at the forefront of Chinese value-added overseas. Yes, there will be a Lenovo, there’ll be a Haier, there’ll be a Geely—we’ll all, as consumers, be interested in following the fortunes of these B-to-C companies, but I think the B-to-B space is where Chinese companies are really going to excel.

You look at Sany at the moment: it’s a very promising long-term competitor to Caterpillar.

WSJ: You say that Chinese companies are increasingly hiring foreigners and becoming diverse. Can you give examples?

Mr. Quelch: If you go to the U.K. website of Huawei, you will find that it’s all about Basingstoke. It’s not about Huawei as the global brand; it’s about Huawei as a company that is in Basingstoke.

This is where the Chinese are going to move faster than the Japanese because a major brake on Japanese global expansion ended up being the shortage of talented Japanese who were interested in, or linguistically able to, operate in international markets.

But the Chinese are much more outgoing, and perhaps because they’re coming 30 years later there are many more millions of Chinese who are English-language capable.

My guess is that whereas when a Japanese company made an acquisition the foreign executives immediately hit the equivalent of a glass ceiling, in the case of foreigners in a Chinese company, it’s going to be easier for them to move up the ranks.

What will really make a difference in that regard is reciprocity. If and when, for example, Sam Su of Yum Brands becomes the first Chinese CEO of a Fortune 500 company born in China then they will accept a free flow of non-Chinese executive talent throughout their organizations.

WSJ: What was the biggest surprise for you working in China?

Mr. Quelch: The biggest surprise is that there are no weekends in China. I’ve always been a very hard-working person, but I have been amazed at the degree to which on Saturdays and Sundays I find myself involved in professional activities.

The way I explain it to my friends in the U.S. is that you cannot achieve 10% GDP growth per year by working a 35-hour week – even if you’re as smart as the Chinese.

I remember Jack Welch famously held meetings on Saturdays with his people. But I think for many Chinese this is an historic moment of opportunity – a once-in-a-lifetime, maybe a once-in-a-millennium moment in time that no one wants to waste. So many Chinese display a relentless resolution to work hard today for themselves, their families and a better China.

• China should punish Philippines over US offer: report
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• Traditional Weddings On The Rise

Source: AFP

BEIJING — China should impose “sanctions” against the Philippines after it offered to allow more US troops on its soil, state media said Sunday, amid growing tensions over disputed waters in the South China Sea.

Manila said Friday it planned to hold more joint exercises and to let more US troops rotate through the Southeast Asian country — an offer welcomed by the United States as it seeks to expand its military power in Asia.

China has not yet officially responded to the announcement, which was made during the country’s week-long holiday for the Lunar New Year. The foreign ministry on Sunday did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.

But an editorial in the Global Times, known for its nationalistic stance, said Beijing “must respond” to the move by using its “leverage to cut economic activities” between the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries.

China also should consider “cooling down” business links with its smaller neighbour, according to the editorial published in the Chinese and English versions of the newspaper.

“It should show China’s neighbouring areas that balancing China by siding with the US is not a good choice,” it said.

“Well-measured sanctions against the Philippines will make it ponder the choice of losing a friend such as China and being a vain partner with the US.”

China and the Philippines, along with Vietnam, have rival claims to parts of the South China Sea, home to some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and believed to hold vast deposits of fossil fuels.

Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia also have claims in the South China Sea.

Manila and Hanoi complained repeatedly last year of what they said were increasingly aggressive acts by China in the decades-long rift.

The alleged acts, which included a Chinese naval ship reportedly firing warning shots at Filipino fishermen, fuelled fears among some nations in the region about China as its military and political strength grows.

The US has been looking to increase its military presence across the Asia Pacific in a strategic shift that has angered China.

US President Barack Obama said in November the United States would deploy up to 2,500 Marines to northern Australia. The following month a US admiral wrote that the US expected to station several combat ships in Singapore.

Source: By Sebastien Blanc (AFP)

CHENGDU, China — Sitting in a teahouse in Chengdu’s Tibetan quarter, a nervous young monk spoke of how police arrests of innocent people were adding to the climate of fear in China’s Tibetan-inhabited regions.

The Lama temple where the monk lives is a 15-hour drive away, high up on the Tibetan plateau in the southwestern province of Sichuan where rights groups say police have fired on demonstrators three times in the past week, killing at least three and leaving dozens wounded.

The 28-year-old, whose name is being withheld to protect him, was not in the areas where the killings took place and told AFP he learned of the shootings through friends.

But drinking milky Tibetan tea and fingering his prayer beads in the teahouse in Sichuan’s capital Chengdu, his nervousness betrayed the tense atmosphere in the restive province where a series of self-immolations had already prompted an increase in security.

“They have arrested many people who have done nothing. This has only increased the discontent,” he said.

According to Tibetan exiles living in India, at least 136 Tibetans have been arrested or disappeared into police custody this month in Sichuan, which borders Tibet.

“We love peace and we hope for peace,” the monk said, adding that mandatory “re-education” classes, often dominated by political and patriotic indoctrination, have been forced on his monastery.

The government has said two Tibetans were killed in clashes in the towns of Seda and Luhuo, with one shot dead by police who responded after a violent mob attacked them.

Another Tibeten protester was shot dead in Rangtang county, rights groups said Friday, but a local government official denied there had been a protest.

The unrest comes at a time of growing tensions in Tibetan-inhabited areas, where at least 16 people in less than a year — four this month alone — have set themselves on fire to protest against China’s rule.

Outside the teahouse, dozens of uniformed and plain clothes police were out on the streets, seeking to stop any conversations with locals.

Chinese authorities have stopped foreign journalists from going to the affected areas, making independent attempts to verify the situation there nearly impossible.

Several hours earlier, police detained two AFP journalists while trying to enter a town in Aba prefecture, where much of the recent anti-Chinese unrest has occurred.

“The region is inaccessible due to the mudslides,” police told the journalists before escorting them on the six-hour drive back to Chengdu.

The day before, the two journalists were stopped on another road leading into Tibetan-inhabited areas and forced to turn back “because of snow”.

In Chengdu, a huge modern city in the throes of an economic boom, Tibetans are a small minority among the population of 14 million, most of whom are ethnic Han Chinese.

But relations between the two communities are not openly discordant.

Suo Lang Wa Zhang, a 19-year-old Tibetan who lives in Chengdu, said she has many Han Chinese friends and does not rule out the possibility she could one day marry a non-Tibetan.

“Tibetans in rural areas do not have the same perspective on life that Tibetans in the cities have,” the young woman, who moved from Tibet, said.

She said she never wanted to see a repeat of the violent anti-Chinese riots that started in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in 2008 and spread to other regions.

Her friend San Dong Jin Mei, 20, a student in a business school, who unlike many older Tibetans speaks fluent Mandarin, appeared equally integrated.

“I hope to live a happy life and improve my standard of living,” she said.

The two women hope to one day return to Lhasa, a two-day train ride away.

But in Lhasa the police presence has also been stepped up in recent days, according to Free Tibet, a rights group that regularly denounces “cultural genocide” and suppression of civil liberties in China’s Tibetan-inhabited regions.

“Chinese authorities are using intimidation and surveillance of ordinary Tibetans to instill a culture of fear and stop people from speaking out,” said the group’s director, Stephanie Brigden.

Communist authorities in Beijing routinely deny such accusations, insisting that Tibetans enjoy religious freedom, while enormous efforts have been made to improve their well-being.

They blame the Dalai Lama — Tibet’s spiritual leader who fled China for India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule — for fomenting the unrest and trying to split Tibet from the rest of China, a claim he denies.

Source: Reuters By Yara Bayoumy

(Reuters) – Standing on what was once Ethiopia’s oldest maximum security prison, the new African Union headquarters funded by China is a symbol of the Asian giant’s push to stay ahead in Africa and gain greater access to the continent’s resources.

Critics point to an imbalance in what they see as the new “Scramble for Africa.” But the prospect of growing Chinese economic influence is welcomed by African leaders, who see Beijing as a partner to help build their economies at a time when Europe and the United States are mired in economic turmoil.

And Africans are hoping for more Chinese largesse.

“The future prospects of our partnership are even brighter,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Saturday at the new headquarters’ multi-storey amphitheatre, where an African heads of states’ summit will take place Sunday and Monday.

“China – its amazing re-emergence and its commitments for a win-win partnership with Africa – is one of the reasons for the beginning of the African renaissance,” he said.

The brown marble and glass monolith was fully paid for by China, right down to the office furniture, and cost $200 million. The office complex and almost 100 metre (330 foot) tower is Addis Ababa’s tallest building by far.

For the past decade, Africa has recorded economic growth of an average of 5 percent but its under-developed infrastructure has in part hindered its capacity to develop further.

Chinese companies are changing that. They are building roads and investing in the energy sector, and are active in areas such as telecoms technology.

China’s most senior political adviser, Jia Qinglin, said trade between the two partners had grown to $150 billion, and the unveiling of the headquarters was a “milestone” in the ties between China and Africa.

As the biggest consumer of iron-ore, China has a relentless hunger for African minerals and energy.

Beijing now appears keener to flex its diplomatic muscle in the continent. It has also contributed $4.5 million for the African Union peacekeeping force battling Islamist militants in Somalia.

Outside the complex, hundreds of Chinese support staff, delegates and officials snapped pictures of their country’s most ostentatious presence yet in Africa.

Critics point to land grabs and mistreatment of African workers on Chinese-funded projects. Even when it comes to job opportunities, in some instances China brings in teams of workers and technical experts.

Yet African officials insist they aren’t being manipulated by China, and say the relationship is not based on aid but on trade and development.

“There are people who still consider Africans like children who can be easily manipulated. The good thing about this partnership is that it’s give and take,” the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ambassador to Washington, Faida Mitifu, told Reuters.

Source: Bloomberg News By Aaron Kirchfeld

Sany Heavy Industry Co. (600031), the construction-equipment maker run by China’s richest man, agreed to buy German concrete pump maker Putzmeister Holding GmbH in what they said is the largest Chinese-German transaction yet.

Sany and Chinese private equity company CITIC PE Advisors Ltd. will buy 100 percent of Putzmeister for an undisclosed price, according to an e-mailed statement today. Aichtal in Germany will become Sany’s new headquarter for concrete machinery and Norbert Scheuch will remain in his position as the head of Putzmeister under the Chinese owner.

Putzmeister, which has 3,000 employees and sales of 570 million euros ($751 million), provided concrete pumps to quell the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan last year and the Chernobyl meltdown in the 1980s. Chinese companies are increasingly hunting for European targets. Chinese solar-panel maker LDK Solar Co. plans to buy Germany’s Sunways AG (SWW) and Italian luxury-yacht builder Ferretti Group was sold to Shandong Heavy Industry Group-Weichai Group.

“With this merger Putzmeister and Sany will create a new and global market leader for concrete pumps,” said Liang Wengen, chairman and founder of Sany, in the statement. “Putzmeister will remain as an independent brand with its own management within the Sany group.”