China business news digest

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Your daily digest of the biggest business news in China, translated and summarized every day.

MIIT: Data consumption continued to boom in 2014

Internet data consumption continued to expand at a rapid rate last year, with average household mobile data usage expanding by almost 50 per cent to reach 200MB a month, according to figures published on the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's website yesterday. 

As of the end of last year, China had 249 million fixed line phone users and 1.29 billion mobile phone users. 

The number of broadband users passed 200 million last year, with over 82 million internet users accessing a connection with peak download speeds in excess of 8MB/sec.

In terms of mobile downloads, there were close to 97 million accounts using 4G connections at the end of 2014.

(Economic Information Daily)

Daughter of Lenovo founder takes over the wheel at Didi Dache

Liu Qing, the daughter of Lenovo founder and all-round Chinese business leader Liu Chuanzhi, was appointed president of Didi Dache, at the company's annual meeting yesterday.

The Harvard graduate, who currently serves as COO of the taxi-hailing app company, will take up the newly created position of company president.

Liu Qing joined Didi Dache in July last year and formerly worked for Goldman Sachs (Asia) investment bank division.

(The Paper)

Ambitious Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei economic plan to be announced before March

Expectations are building that an economic development and cooperation plan covering Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei could be announced before the end of February, according to a report carried by The Paper citing a report in yesterday's Economic Information Daily.

The report also quotes an unnamed local political representative as saying "People will be excited by its contents".

The overall blueprint for the economic plan was reportedly recently approved by higher authorities and could be officially announced by the end of the month.

The plan will have large implications for industry in the three government regions, and will likely identify which industries will be the earmarked for 'transformation'.

(The Paper)

Guo Qingping to become PBOC Deputy Governor?

PBOC assistant governor Guo Qingping is set to be promoted to Deputy Governor reports 21st Century Business Herald, citing multiple sources. 

According to the paper, Guo has held a string of positions in various provincial branches of the PBOC as well as serving as chief of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Current deputy governor Li Dongrong is expected to retire to make way for Mr Guo.  

Bank of Shanghai chairman Fan Yifei is also rumoured to be under consideration for the role of Vice President of the PBOC.

(21^st Century Business Herald)

China jails former Agricultural Bank of China vice president 

The former vice president of the Agricultural Bank of China has been sentenced to life in prison for accepting over 30 million yuan ($6.2 million) in bribes.

According to the official Weibo account of the Jiangsu High People's Court, former party member Yang Kun has been stripped of his political privileges and his personal property has been confiscated.

According to the decision made by a Nanjing court, Yang used his position of power to take bribes totalling approximately 3 billion yuan.

Agricultural Bank of China is one of China's “big four” commercial banks, alongside ICBC, Bank of China, and China Construction Bank.

(The Paper)