Although China's insurance regulator later allowed companies to cut their guaranteed rates, many unprofitable policies festered on China Life's books.
Most analysts consider China Life the country's most attractive life company because it has a wider distribution network and stronger brand recognition than its competitors.
By March 2003, China Life's underwriting syndicate expanded to include Citigroup Inc.
Meanwhile, China Life's Chairman Yang Chao says it also has plans to become a financial holding company and has been buying stakes in a number of China's banks and other financial institutions to further that aim (See story "Ready to Deal").
China Life controlled half of the country's life-insurance market, which has been growing at more than 35% a year.
Life for China's tens of millions of homosexuals has improved markedly since then, especially in big cities.
But life in China's big cities was already quite unlike that when those films were made, and there has been more change since.
ECONOMIST: Modern-day life is now the focus of the best films from China
ChinaCache will fall short of doubling its annual revenue for the first time in 2009, Xu says, instead of increasing revenue between 75% and 85%--figures that sound disappointing only in China's larger-than-life Internet world.
When China's central bank cut interest rates seven times between 1996 and 1999, China Life found itself paying out more to policy holders than it could earn through bank deposits.
Active engagement and economic ties helped bring about China's reforms, and they continue to improve life for ordinary Chinese.
The conference comes a day after China's football authorities banned 33 players and officials for life after they were found guilty of fixing matches.
At a time when the luxury vehicle market is stalling in the U.S. and Europe, China is becoming an extraordinary life line for the majors from Tokyo to Detroit.
China's coastal urban middle classes have been bingeing on everything from life insurance to cars and computers.
That's because over half the investment portfolios of both Ping An and China Life are in bonds and other fixed-income assets, while only 10% is in equities.
China Life had been negotiating earlier this year to buy AIA and AIG's aircraft-leasing arm, but ultimately the deal fell through.
In any case, the holy grail in China could shift away from property development as the country's consumers demand a better life.
Its depiction of a status-conscious businessman who falls for the simple life also struck a chord with audiences who are beginning to question China's materialistic society.
And its economy, though it has now been overtaken in size by China's, remains home to a huge industrial apparatus with the innovative clout to make life easier for its elderly citizens.
Beijing Daily says three astronauts will head out to China's orbiting space station this summer and spend two weeks testing the station's systems for supporting life.
This American Life also published a popular story based on Mike Daisey's account of his visit to China in January 2012.
The rising middle class in China is different from that in the U.S., but they each have their version of quality of life and aspirations for the future of their children.
In 1999 People's Insurance was split into four independent units, one of which focused on life insurance and was named China Life.
What might be seen as part of an everyday life in the U.S. or Europe might be seen as a luxury in India or China.
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