Reuters reports: "Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group has bought U.S. film studio Legendary Entertainment for about $3.5 billion, turning its chairman into a Hollywood movie mogul as China's richest man steps up a drive to diversify his business empire overseas....The move makes Wanda the first Chinese firm to own a major Hollywood studio - a sign of the country's growing power in the global movie world, industry watchers said...Attending Tuesday's Beijing news conference, Legendary's Tull told reporters that he would continue to run daily operations, and that Wang had been 'insistent we run operations and continue to run things the way we always have.'"
The Wall Street Journal reports: "China defended recent test flights to a disputed reef in the South China Sea as sovereign activity, rebuffing Vietnam's criticisms that the flights were unannounced and contravened international rules on aviation safety. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Monday that China's aviation regulator had notified its Vietnamese counterpart about the flights Dec. 28 and that a follow-up technical briefing with diplomats occurred two days later. Mr. Hong said, contrary to Vietnam's assertions, that the flights are exempt from international civil-aviation rules because they were 'totally within China's sovereignty.'...Aviation experts said the dispute centers on whether China's test flights—carried out using state-owned commercial airliners—qualified as 'state flights.'...The Convention on International Civil Aviation, of which China is a signatory, said its rules don't apply to 'state aircraft,' which are defined as 'aircraft used in military, customs and police services.'"
The New Yorker reports: "The renewed turbulence in China's stock markets—on Monday, the Shanghai exchange closed down more than five per cent—highlights the dual challenges facing the government in Beijing.The first task is restoring some stability to the country's notoriously volatile markets. The second challenge, which is of much greater importance, is fixing the Chinese economy, which, for a couple of years now, has been looking a bit like Wile E. Coyote—stepping off a cliff and hovering in the air for a while, legs pumping furiously to defy gravity.... After more than two decades of tremendous growth, practically everybody acknowledges that China faces some serious problems: chronic overcapacity in many manufacturing industries; very high levels of debt, particularly in the corporate sector; the aftermath of a real-estate bubble in some parts of the country; and a rapid demographic transition that means the working-age population is now declining....China optimists—the sensible ones, anyway—don't diminish the scale of the task. Rather, they note that the Chinese government has been well aware of the problems for years and has been making some progress....In any case, we will be reading a lot more about what happens in China this year."