Oriada

Air China announced yesterday that, faced with weak public demand, it is slashing the size of its Shanghai IPO by 40%. 

This may be bad news for the Chinese stock market which, after years of uncertainty, finally seemed to be sorting itself out.  A one-year moratorium on IPOs ended in May, and since then  12 companies have raised almost 40 billion yuan on the Chinese market, compared with only 5.7 billion in 2005.  The weak response to the listing of China’s largest airline may indicate that the market has become saturated.

On the other hand, it may also demonstrate a new-found maturity in the market, as investors become smarter about their investments and eschew unattractive offerings.  Investors had already been complaining that Air China’s share price was far too high, compared to both its valuation and the value of its shares when it listed in Hong Kong.

There are a slew of high-profile domestic IPOs lined up before the end of the year, the most notable being ICBC (the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China).  ICBC is reportedly aiming to raise 10 to 15 billion from a listing in Hong Kong in the Autumn, to be followed by a large offering in Shanghai.  

The China Securities Regulatory Commission is adamant that, despite fears of market saturation, the schedule for listings won’t be changed, although it seems that moves are afoot to reform the IPO pricing system.

So says Danwei, reporting that a Canadian print-on-demand company called Newspaperdirect is claiming to have inked an agreement with Beijing-based Founder Easiprint that will allow it to print and distribute foreign newspapers in China.  Newspaperdirect says that this agreement will allow it to print and distribute a host of famous newspapers from its stable, including the NYT, WP, WSJ and more. 

 If true, this would be huge news, and a sea-change for foreign publishing in China.  It is, however, hard to fathom that these newspapers will be popping up on newsstands across the country any time soon.  After all, it is just a few months since the Chinese version of Rolling Stone had its licence revoked after publishing only one issue.

Until recently, foreign publications that wanted to launch on the Chinese market had to set up a "joint venture" with a local publisher and use that publisher’s licence to publish their magazine.   But at the moment even that avenue is now closed, since the government announced  an indefinite moratorium on these joint venture publications earlier this year.

 Nevertheless, according to Newspaperdirect, we’ll be able to get international newspapers at the corner store as early as this month.  Seems unlikely.

The Olympics will kick off exactly two years from today.  Despite the highly public dismissal of Liu Zhihua, the Beijing official in charge of Olympic construction a few months ago,  it seems that the city’s Olympic projects are on, or ahead of schedule.  The major concern, however, is that authorities are losing their much vaunted battle to have a Green Olympics, particularly with regard to air quality.  China Daily reported that the city recorded a record 29 "blue sky" days in July, but only because it was raining on 27 of those days.  Yes, apparently rainy days are classified as "blue sky days". 

Organising Committee VP Jiang Xiaoyu was all over the media yesterday promising that the  targets would be met.  He has even promised that the weather will be fine for the Opening Day ceremony, stating simply and, it would seem, in all seriousness, that he reckons the chance of rain in Beijing 731 days from now is "30 to 40%".

Meanwhile, the Guardian is carrying an interesting Reuters story about Chen Chengda, a Chinese Olympic footballer in the 1950s and 60s, the course of whose entire career was dicated by the political turbulence in China after the founding of the PRC.