China, Economy | featured news

Tony Clift's family has plowed the rich black soil of Australia's Liverpool Plains for six generations. The thought of selling never crossed his mind — until a Chinese company came to town. Shenhua Watermark Coal offered to buy farms at unheard-of prices. The decision wasn't easy, Clift says. His pioneer ancestors settled the land in 1832. But farming is a business nowadays, and selling his 6,500 acres (2,600 hectares) made business sense.

Shin Cheol-soo no longer sees his future in the United States. The South Korean businessman supplied components to American automakers for a decade. But this year, he uprooted his family from Detroit and moved home to focus on selling to the new economic superpower: China.

China's vast manufacturing sector saw expansion accelerate in November for the first time in 13 months, preliminary results from a factory survey showed, a sign that the pace of economic growth has revived after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.

Stocks were higher Monday after last week's steep losses on upbeat economic data from China over the weekend.

The man in line to oversee China's massive but rapidly slowing economy for the coming decade speaks English and comes from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas than their predecessors....

China's trade surplus widened in October as export growth accelerated, the latest encouraging sign for the world's second-largest economy.

China's economy will likely "look good" early next year, but the medium- to long-term outlook is worrisome as the country loses its labor-cost edge, a state researcher said.

A survey of manufacturing conditions in China showed marked improvement in October. Analysts said the reading reflected the effect of a steady drip of stimulus measures introduced by Beijing.

Chinese Internet users who watched live streams of Monday’s U.S. presidential debate heard President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney criticizing China with some of their toughest language of the campaign – which many Chinese assume the candidates will dial down once the election is over.

New economic data from China on Thursday showed that the world’s second-largest economy after the United States expanded at its slowest pace since 2009 during the third quarter of this year — though surprisingly strong data for the month of September also showed that the deceleration may, for now at least, have come to an end.