California Literary Review

A small Chinese carmaker with ambitious plans: WITH a model line-up that includes the Wingle, Sailor and Socool, and a corporate action plan to “attack the consciousness like a wolf while sensing danger like a rabbit”, it is easy to poke fun at Great Wall Motor, based in Hebei Province, south of Beijing. The carmaker’s output of 108,000 vehicles in 2007 is puny by global standards—about half what Toyota builds in a week. Yet there is nothing modest about Great Wall’s ambition. [Economist]

China to modernise nuclear weapons capability: One of the world’s leading arms control experts has said that the Chinese have realised that their nuclear weaponry has fallen behind those of other major powers and might not survive a first strike. [Telegraph]

India’s Bharti Airtel may buy South Africa’s MTN: According to the Financial Times, Bharti has indicated it would be willing to pay about $19 billion for 51% of the company. That would make it the heftiest overseas acquisition ever made by an Indian firm, more than Tata Steel paid for Corus, a British steelmaker, and seven times the amount India invested in the whole of Africa over the ten years to 2004. [Economist]

Tiger economies are snapping at US heels: China and India are moving toward becoming the biggest economies in the world: with 2.4bn people, or 40 per cent of the world’s population and annual GDP growth rates of between 8 per cent and 10 per cent, experts say that they could one day overtake the US. Professor Pieter Bottelier, of the Centre for Strategic International Studies, says: ‘If these two countries continue to grow at the current rate, they will overtake America, although that probably won’t happen for a number of decades.’ [Guardian]

Chinese Power Firms Eye Kangaroo Country Juice: Intensifying China’s interest in commodities and energy assets in the land Down Under, the country’s largest energy companies may, according to a report, participate in the multibillion-dollar bidding process for a clutch of public utility assets in the state of New South Wales. [Forbes]