Bloomberg News reports: "China has for the second time this month raised the possibility of taxing foreign-exchange transactions as record capital outflows from the world's second-largest economy put pressure on the yuan... The last time SAFE said it was considering imposing a levy on yuan trading was in early 2014, when the authorities were having to stockpile dollars to prevent fund inflows from driving the yuan up too sharply. The tide of money has since turned and the nation's foreign-exchange reserves tumbled $329 billion in the first nine months of this year, having been little changed in 2014 and jumped by a record $510 billion in 2013."
The Washington Post reports: "Apple's 19 offices and 24 stores in China are now carbon neutral, the company announced, thanks to the completion of 40 megawatts worth of solar capacity in Sichuan Province. But that's just the start - the company also said that it plans to build 200 additional megawatts worth of solar projects across country, so as to begin to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of the companies in its supply chain. A megawatt is equivalent to a million watts, and the company calculates that this is enough electricity to power 265,000 Chinese homes for a year. Most ambitious of all, the company is also joining with its business and manufacturing partners in China to install still more solar and other renewables - a total of 2 gigawatts worth of planned capacity. That will be led by 400 megawatts of solar installations by Foxconn, whose factory in Zhengzhou manufactures iPhones.
The New York Times reports: "Prime Minister David Cameron and his chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have muted public criticism of Chinese political, military and human rights behavior since 2012, and during Mr. Xi's visit here over the past several days, they have highlighted how increased trade and investment can create more British jobs...In a paper last December for the European Council on Foreign Relations, François Godement, a noted French expert on China, called for more European Union unity on human rights. The weakness of European efforts, he said, stem from 'China's use of its economic leverage, Europe's current crisis of confidence and the crowding out of Chinese human rights issues by pressing geopolitical concerns closer to Europe.'"