Menu

Many Asian countries will need to reform their pension systems in order to deliver sustainable and adequate retirement incomes for today’s workers, according to a new OECD report.

Asia is critically dependent on energy imports as they only produced 35% of their oil requirements in 2006. This makes the region very vulnerable to rises in energy prices and the last two years have brought hardship to many nations.

After ten years of development, China's DVD player market has entered a mature period. The sales volume of China's DVD player market maintained growth during 2003 and 2006, but the growth rate has slowed down. The sales volume of China's DVD players had its first drop in 2007, and the market in 2008 continued this trend. In 2008, affected by RMB appreciation, financial crisis, intellectual property fees and patent fees, China's DVD product export experienced unprecedented tests: high labor and expensive raw material costs, the price of DVD players were challenged again, and climate and natural disasters restricted DVD players' transportation and sales.

From January to November, the industrial enterprises above designated size (all state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises with an annual sales over 5 million yuan, same as follows) reached 2,406.6 billion yuan, rose by 4.9 percent over the same period of the previous year.

New orders have dropped sharply and prices have plunged to the point where deflation may become the Chinese leadership's next battle, the results of the latest Xinhua Finance/MNI China Business Sentiment Survey indicate.

As everyone knows, China's economy has been badly impacted by the international financial tsunami. The enterprises dependent on overseas markets are bearing the brunt of the crisis, especially those small and medium sized export-oriented businesses located in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. In the face of such difficulties, how can the small and medium sized enterprises change their online marketing methods in 2009?

Young people in Japan are finding it increasingly hard to get stable jobs and the Japanese authorities should expand vocational training schemes and increase social security coverage for young non-regular workers in order to help them, according to a new OECD publication.

comScore, Inc. released its rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties and site categories in Japan for October 2008, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. Business/finance sites saw visitation growth in October due to the global financial crisis, while retail sites saw gains due to the upcoming holiday shopping season and seasonal purchases.

Total investment in fixed assets in urban areas stood at 12,761.4 billion yuan from January to November, a year-on-year rise of 26.8 percent. Of which, state-owned and state-holding enterprises invested 5,336.5 billion yuan, surging 21.6 percent; real estate development valued at 2,654.6 billion yuan, went up 22.7 percent.

Value-added of the industrial enterprises above designated size (the enterprises with an annual income over 5 million yuan) was up by 5.4 percent year-on-year, or 11.9 percentage points lower than that in the same period of 2007.