Word: wenzhou
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...official statistics. Police recorded 24,711 homicides last year, down from 28,429 in 2000. But the local media play up stories of wealthy Chinese getting kidnapped or killed. Last month, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Weekly ran a lengthy report on crimes against "moneybags" in the booming city of Wenzhou. It detailed the death of Lin Jing, a chemicals trader murdered by an employee who taped his eyes shut before garroting him with a rope. Other prominent abductees have included Chinese movie star Wu Ruofu and Jiang Yingwu, a regional manager of a popular chain of hot pot restaurants...
...Instead, China last month released a new circular, "Regulations on Religious Affairs," which, among other things, reiterates that all churches must be registered with the government. Most underground Catholics?China has about 5 million of them?have resisted. Police last month detained an underground bishop in Wenzhou city. And authorities have stepped up monitoring of underground congregations in the central province of Hebei, according to Catholics there...
...Informal finance isn't just for mom-and-pop shops. Wenzhou's biggest restaurant, the 200-table Golden Fields Village, opened in May and specializes in shark-fin soup, giant snails and stingrays. Owner Wu Jianguan started the business by borrowing $100,000 from banks by mortgaging his home. But that wasn't enough to pay for the floor-to-ceiling fish tanks and staff of 150 hostesses in purple evening gowns, so he borrowed five times more from friends at higher rates. The cornerstones of such informal lending are relationships far stronger than Wu's connections to the bank...
...International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private-finance arm. And increasingly, Beijing has been welcoming private capital that it barred in the past. In June, regulators approved the country's first two private-investment funds. Both plan to invest several hundred million dollars raised from private firms in Wenzhou. Such funds are still barred from lending, but managers expect approval in the future...
...Beijing has even made Zhejiang's healthy government-run banking system, which lends heavily to private companies, into a national model. Wenzhou was the first city to allow banks to ignore government caps and lend at whatever rate the market would bear. Higher rates meant the banks were better rewarded for the risks of lending to small job-creating firms. On Oct. 28, Beijing finally granted the same right to all of the country's banks. The city of Taizhou even has China's first fully private bank, the Taizhou City Commercial Bank. Regulators have refused to approve...