China Scraps Export Tax Rebate

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

06/23/2010

China Scraps Export Tax Rebate

China is ending tax rebates on some exports - a move business experts say is aimed at tackling overcapacity and easing trade tensions before the G20 summit.

China's Ministry of Finance says more than 400 goods, including some steel products, non-ferrous metals, corn starch and chemicals will no longer receive export tax rebates, starting next month.

This is the first time China has removed tax breaks for exports since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in September 2008.

Many business experts say the move, which comes a few days after China ended its currency's peg to the dollar, is part of an effort to reduced overcapacity as exports continue to stabilize.

Read more at VOA News