The headlines are buzzing today with news that Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) will formally close its China-based email service, in the latest sign that the company may soon withdraw from China completely.
Foxconn, the contract manufacturer whose biggest customer is Apple, is preparing genuinely representative labour union elections in its factories in China for the first time, a powerful sign of the changes in the workshop of the world demanded by an increasingly restive workforce.
FORBES: Apple's Foxconn To Have Independent Union Elections: Not That It Will Make Much Difference
In another positive sign for the U.S. auto industry, General Motors took the top spot in China sales in 2011, displacing Japanese automaker Toyota to take a dominating share of what the Detroit automaker called its biggest international market.
FORBES: China Auto Sales: GM Sold One Car Every 12 Seconds In 2011
Even so, partner Michael Li, who joined KPCB China in 2007, left this February to sign on with Tsing Capital.
Although the pace of reserve accumulation in China has increased this year, there is no sign of rising inflation.
In one sign of the times, a small producer of vegetables called China Green Holdings Ltd. saw investors request 1, 600 times as many shares as the company had to offer before it was listed on the Hong Kong exchange.
In recent weeks, many in the US and in China have discussed whether the current IPOs of technology companies are a sign that there is a bubble forming again.
FORBES: Things Never End Well, Otherwise They Would Never End
The first sign of trouble came in December 2011, when Haitong Securities, the second largest brokerage firm in China, called off its planned IPO.
FORBES: Wealth Management for China's Richest: An Industry With a Great Future
But to be fair to both sides, I also question the wisdom of the idea that the current pullback in stocks is a sign that market players are concerned about the economy (or Greece, China, etc.).
Turning again to overseas trading, in a sign of continuing investor worries about Chinese shares following a spate of of governance problems, China Auto Rental reportedly announced yesterday that it would postpone a planned U.S. offering on due to pricing issues.
FORBES: Lujiazui Breakfast: News And Views About China Stocks -- April 26
This downsizing is already sign-posted by U.S. inability to compete in trade, where a single company in China employs a million people produces the vast share of products for Apple and components for Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Intel and Motorola.
Last September, in a sign of tentative warming between the two sides, Michael Griffin of NASA paid the first trip to China by a head of the American government's space agency.
In a sign of its economic ambitions, the government later appointed a former captain of industry as its ambassador to China.
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