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Citizens in Zhengzhou buy pork at a local supermarket, Jan 27, 2019. [Photo/IC] Major pig breeding firms posted robust sales and higher net profits last year as pork prices surged and the uptrend is likely to continue this year, industry experts said. An African swine fever outbreak had led to a shortage of more than 10 million metric tons of pork in China, or at least 20 percent of China's total pork output in 2019. It will take about six months for a recovery in the pig production capacity and breeding of new pigs. The shortage has helped pig breeders achieve strong earnings and created more billionaires in the sector. Qin Yinglin, founder of Muyuan Group, a Henan-based major pig breeder, became the richest man in the food sector last year. With a personal fortune of 117.38 billion yuan ($16.9 billion), he was the only one from the food sector in the Top 10 of China's Richest 2019 list of Forbes. In 2019, Muyuan netted sales of 19.66 billion yuan, up 48.17 percent on a yearly basis. The valuation of the Shenzhen-listed company is now more than 200 billion yuan, the highest among pig breeders in the country. "Since June last year, pig breeding has started entering a profit-earning period. After October, the income of pig breeders reached a new high," said Zhu Zengyong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "Affected by the pig recovery cycle, pork supplies will be tight in the first half of this year, and pork prices will remain high. Prices are expected to decline in the second half, while the whole-year average price is foreseen to be still higher than last year," he said. "With higher slaughter rate, the revenue from pig breeding will be higher than last year," he said. Guangdong-based Wens Foodstuff Group Co Ltd, China's largest pig breeder, is expected to achieve net profit of 13.85 billion yuan to 14.3 billion for 2019, up 249.97 percent to 261.35 percent on a yearly basis, according to its latest earnings forecast. Last year, the company netted sales revenue of 39.55 billion yuan, up 20.03 percent year-on-year. It sold 18.52 million pigs, down 16.95 percent year-on-year, while the average selling prices stood at 18.79 yuan per kg, jumping 46.57 percent year-on-year, the company said. Meanwhile, New Hope Liuhe, a listed company of China's major feed producer New Hope Group, also posted strong sales last year. From January to November last year, New Hope Liuhe sold 3.14 million pigs and achieved sales of 7.02 billion yuan. In November, the breeder sold 395,800 pigs, up 66 percent year-on-year. Its net income in the month reached 1.45 billion yuan, soaring 291 percent year-on-year, according to the company.

FUZHOU -- A senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official has called for promoting the spirit of the Gutian Meeting held 90 years ago, as well as the implementation of the spirit of the Gutian military political work meeting five years ago. Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks Saturday at a meeting marking the 90th anniversary of the landmark Gutian Meeting in Longyan, East China's Fujian province. The Gutian Meeting explored a glorious path of building the Party with ideological work and enhancing the political loyalty of the armed forces, ushering the people's military onto a booming historical journey, while the Gutian military political work meeting laid out the general plan of improving the political loyalty of the military in the new era, said Huang. Sharing similar spirits and purposes, the two meetings are both milestones in the history of Party and military building, he said. Huang stressed continuous efforts to uphold and strengthen overall Party leadership and firmly uphold the authority of the CPC Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership. He also called for promoting the revolutionary spirit and advancing the great social reform through self-reform. The meeting was presided over by Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and director of the Political Work Department of the CMC. Around 1,200 people, including officials of the CPC Central Committee, local officials of Fujian, veterans, family members of veterans and martyrs, and others, attended the commemoration.

For those wishing to be social butterflies rock the dance floor or make a video on Tik Tok, China's rising nighttime economy offers some help - many aspiring beauty stylists are waiting to give people the "Cinderella" treatment. In Changsha, a central Chinese city known for its energetic nightlife, beauty styling for "night-goers" is a niche yet booming business luring many young make-up artists to choose "night shifts." At 9 pm, hours before the midnight club-going peak, dozens of makeup shops were already buzzing on a discreet alley behind Jiefang West Road, a major destination for the city's night owls and club-goers. In Meimiao Studio, 19-year-old Luo Jiabing is applying makeup and styling the eyebrows of one customer to complete their late-night look. The 40-square-meter shop receives 50 to 70 customers from 5:00 p.m. to 11 p.m. every evening. A half-hour service can cost between 35 and 100 yuan ($5-14). "'Night make-up' is usually heavier to suit the dim lighting in the night clubs," he said. "Most of our clients are women, but influenced by male beauty bloggers on Tik Tok, more men are now seeking our professional services." Zhu Dejun, an official with Tianxin district, where Jiefang West Road is located, said there are about 100 makeup studios around the road, which employ more than 500 practitioners. Ma Zeping, manager of U+nail, another shop for make-up and manicures, explained how booming night activities have supported a large number of shops specializing in makeup. "People come for our makeup services before going to a bar, on a date or even before taking photos for their social media," said Ma, whose customers range from white-collar workers to corporate executives. "Some clients even come with pictures of celebrities from the internet, and ask us to mimic the make-up," she said. In August, the State Council of China issued a guideline with 20 measures to support consumption, including supporting the nighttime economy, which refers to business activities in the service sector between 6 pm and 6 am. Consumption is playing an increasingly important role in China's economy, contributing as much as 60.1 percent to the country's GDP growth in the first half of the year. Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, is leading the national trend with its rich leisure and makeup culture. Excavations of a Han Dynasty tomb suggests that a noble lady living there over 2,000 years ago wore wigs and makeup. In recent decades, the city of 8 million people has built a sprawling industry on its nightlife. Jiefang West Road, in downtown Changsha, has more than 200 bars and KTVs, often experiencing traffic jams between 2 am and 3 am. Zhu Yuanhong, deputy party secretary of Tianxin District, said developing the nighttime economy is an inevitable choice for Chinese cities to upgrade their economy, citing a booming nighttime economy in other metropolises like New York, London and Paris. Luo, a newbie in the trade, has high expectations of both his career and the industry. "We occasionally receive training from senior artists to improve our skills. The best of us have the chance to be hired by stars and celebrities," he said.

Think tank report inspires Guangzhou's future of business environment By CHEN HONG | China Daily | Updated: 2019-12-06 10:39 Experts share insights into how to improve a city's business environment at a forum in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on Dec 4, 2019. [Photo provided to China Daily] Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, has made substantial progress in improving its business environment. But the city government needs to boost reform, efficiency and the legal environment and optimize the allocation of resources, according to a think tank report. The Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, the only comprehensive research institute on humanities and social sciences in Guangzhou, released the report on Wednesday. It examines the city's business environment and provides solutions to make it better. "The city government has set a clear target of creating a business environment with global competitiveness, or an excellent environment that is stable, fair, transparent and predictable," said Zhang Yueguo, president of the academy. He said a city's business environment is an important measure of its governance capability and performance, which is determined by the satisfaction of market entities and the public. "The business environment must be better and better, with no boundary, because people's demands and needs will keep rising when civilization is advancing and society is developing," he noted. In the report, several indexes indicate consistent improvement to the business environment of Guangzhou. The number of newly-added market entities in Guangzhou increased by 4.75 percent year-on-year to 221,700 in the first half of 2019. Of this, companies numbered 162,400, accounting for nearly 73 percent. It meant the city had nearly 900 new companies a day from January to June this year. During the same period, the foreign fund that had been utilized reached about $4.1 billion, up 8.2 percent from a year before. Meanwhile, about 1,500 projects made an accumulative investment of roughly 247.8 billion yuan ($35.2 billion) in the first half of 2019, accounting for 55 percent of the annual target. Correspondingly, fixed assets investment surged by 24.8 percent, a record in six years. Private investment increased by more than 40 percent, higher than the average level of the country during the same period. It surpassed Beijing, which stood at 33.6 percent; Shanghai, 38.4 percent; and Shenzhen, 12.3 percent. Liu Lizi, vice-president of the Guangzhou Urban Strategy Institute under the academy that conducted the research, said government policies have led reform of the business environment. The city government announced a guideline in March to further optimize the business environment. It listed 43 measures to solve the issues local companies and the public are most concerned about. One of the measures, Guangzhou will build a domestically leading smart governance platform based on its digital government framework. The platform will be able to share data from and consolidate services of different departments, Liu said. As a result, the companies pay fewer visits to government departments for approvals of their investment projects. To streamline the procedures and improve user experience, the government listed 10 areas that are key to improving the business environment. They include business registration, construction permit, real estate registration, tax payment, cross-border trade, approval to get electricity, water and gas, loan issue and intellectual property right protection. Liu said all the government departments have worked out many innovative measures to solve problems for companies. New demand emerges When the barriers are gradually removed as the government's efficiency improves, companies will seek ways to lower costs and increase profits. "The companies are inclined to choose cities where they can get talent, technologies and opportunities with relatively low costs and high efficiency," Liu noted. The research team then put all the elements that would affect the costs and profits into eight categories, which it believed can evaluate the business environment better. The categories include environments for government services, financial market, legal guarantee, social costs, human resources, technological innovation, market demands and international interconnection, according to the report. When comparing Guangzhou with other four leading cities-Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou-the report found that Guangzhou needed to improve its market access, government credibility system and exposure of government decision information. Other improvements should be made to strengthen the financial market and innovation environment, policies to attract top-level talent, generate more industry-leading companies and increase foreign capital and foreign trade, advised the report. Yin Tao, vice-president of the academy, said there are several aspects to consistently optimize a business environment. They include how to make clear the relations among the government, enterprise and the market, how to create a uniform and fair legal mechanism and system and how to ensure the stability, consistency and accuracy of policies, Yin said. Yao Yongda, president of the private company association of the city's Tianhe district, said the government cares about private companies and has created many policies to support their development. He said he hopes the government can set up a long-standing system to communicate with the companies so that they can learn about the needs of the companies and help them solve problems. Bao Yajun, a researcher from Peking University, said government is playing a critical role in building a better business environment. "It needs to break the barriers of different government departments and enable them to coordinate," Bao said. "The government departments should work to meet the needs of companies."