Establishment of Tianjin Climate Exchange

On September 25 2008, Tianjin Climate Exchange (TCX) was set up in the Tianjin Binhai New Area, which is a joint venture between Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the municipal government of Tianjin and the asset management unit of Petro China.

The establishment of TCX is regarded as China's first comprehensive platform for trading emissions under the Clean Development Mechanism. The real exchange is expected to be started up before the end of this year, which means that enterprises can buy and sell legal emissions rights on this platform in a similar manner as they would trade securities in a stock exchange. By means of this kind of market and financial measures, the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) is strengthened, which will definitely promote environmental protection and emission reduction in China.

TCX concentrates on the trading and services of primary pollutants’ emissions such as sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide as its business scope. Meanwhile, TCX shall adopt a membership system. The membership is classified into emitters, credits providers and bidders.

by UBILLA & CIA

Measures on enhancing the supervision of construction industries in China

In order to regulate the development of the construction industries and remedy the problems during the implementation of the recent RMB4 trillion government stimulus package, the general office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued "Zhong Banfa" Document No. 27 on July 9th, 2009, which stated the harms and specific measures to settle the problems mentioned.

The main problems identified are as follows:

• Money-for-power deals and commercial bribery exist generally;
• Some officials in local governments abuse powers to operate approval and give priorities to individuals and entities illegally;
• Some intermediate agencies provide service by violating the corresponding laws and regulations;
• The funds for construction from the central government are embezzled for non-construction use;
• The quality of the some construction facilities can not satisfy the criteria.

The specific measures mandated are as follows:

• Local government should practice self-examination to eliminate the corruption and protect the normal market rules in the procedure of approval, land sales, tending and bid of construction projects;
• A more transparent construction project information system should be established to prevent officials from abusing their powers to acquire personal gain;
• The authorities should supervise the operation of the intermediate agencies more strictly and carefully;
• The superior government should inspect the use of stimulus fund and qualities of the facilities more strictly;
• More relating laws and regulations should be drafted and issued for the implementation of this project.

Meanwhile, foreign-invested design and construction companies are also required to have the up-to-date qualifications and licenses in line with their business scope in China. In other words, these kinds of foreign companies can not be immune from the supervision in the light of construction regulations

by UBILLA & CIA