Suntech Power ousted its biggest competitor in the solar industry, FirstSolar, to become the largest supplier of photovoltaic (PV) modules in the world last year. The company shipped 1,522 megawatt ( MW ) of PV modules in 2010, comfortably ahead of the 1,411 MW First Solar shipped across the globe.

China will relax a decades-old ban on travel to Taiwan by individuals under a pilot scheme starting June 28, the government said Sunday, responding to growing demand amid a thaw between the two sides.

The 20th Intersolar Europe has opened its doors today in Munich. While the trade show floors are still quite empty, word on the street is that, spurred on by China's progress, India is getting ready to significantly ramp up its photovoltaic market. Automation is the watchword.

A teenager in China has sold one of his kidneys in order to buy an iPad 2, Chinese media report.

Plans to build 8th-generation and 10th-generation LCD production lines have ground to a halt, according to Sharp president Mikio Katayama.

Hon Hai Precision Industry has said its polishing workshops in China resumed operations this week as the company investigates a deadly combustible-dust explosion at one of its plants.

Canadian Solar Inc said it would build a 600 megawatt photovoltaic cell production factory in Suzhou in Eastern China, a day after the solar panel maker announced plans to set up a wafer plant in the same area.

South Korea's Samsung SDI aims to increase total annual revenue to 13 trillion won ($12.1 billion) in 2015, more than double last year's 5.1 trillion won, the company said on Wednesday.

Rampant piracy means Microsoft's revenues in China this year will only be about 5% of what it gets in the US, even though personal-computer sales in the two countries are almost equal, CEO Steve Ballmer told employees in a meeting.

Sky Solar has named Amy Zhang, Suntech's former CFO, as its new CEO and executive director, succeeding founder and chairman Weili Su, who will focus on company's strategic development and promoting its advanced technologies.

China has called on Taiwanese companies to ensure work safety after a deadly explosion last week at a plant operated by Foxconn where Apple's iPad2 was being assembled. An initial investigation showed that the accident may have been caused by an explosion of combustible dust in the polishing workshop.

Spreadtrum Communications has launched two low-cost multimedia chipsets for multimedia-rich mobile phones. The SC6610 and SC6620 possess Spreadtrum's highly integrated design, and combine PMU, multimedia accelerator, touch screen controller, backlight controller, 16M/32M pSRAM and up to four SIM card interfaces into one chip.

Taiwan's currency advanced 0.8% to NT$28.511 against its US counterpart as of 9:24 a.m. local time, according to Taipei Forex. It touched NT$28.495 earlier, the strongest level since October 1997.

n early March, China's National People's Congress approved its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). This plan is likely to go down in history as one of China's boldest strategic initiatives. In essence, it will change the character of China's economic model -- moving from the export- and investment-led structure of the past 30 years toward a pattern of growth that is driven increasingly by Chinese consumers. This shift will have profound implications for China, the rest of Asia, and the broader global economy.

A Chinese manufacturing index declined in April from March, indicating that growth may moderate in the world's second-biggest economy after the government raised interest rates and allowed faster gains in the yuan.

Despite past political tensions, enterprising Taiwanese had long been doing business in China. However, it was only until after a financial memorandum of understanding was signed in 2009 that Taiwanese banks were able to follow suit.

Lawmakers in China are revising the income tax law to narrow the wealth gap and to encourage more domestic consumption. The amendment will raise the threshold for personal income tax from CNY2,000 to CNY3,000 a month (from US$304 to US$456).

Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest flat panel maker by revenue, said that it will invest KRW541.1 billion (US$501 million) in a joint venture in China that will develop the company's 7.5G LCD panel plant.

It may seem strange this has not happened before - Chinese students make up some of the largest groups of foreign students in many countries, including the US and UK.

The reserves increase as Beijing buys dollars and other foreign currency to restrain the rise of its yuan as export revenues and investment pour into its economy. In freer trading, that flood of cash would push up the yuan's value against the dollar, making Chinese exports more expensive abroad.

Zoom Technologies has signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents.

Intel has designed a handset that may be manufactured by China's ZTE, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The phone, based on a version of Intel's Atom microprocessor, may go on sale in China.

The deficit for the first three months of 2011 stood at US$1.02 billion, according to the latest data by the General Administration of Customs. China has said that it is working towards increasing domestic demand and becoming less reliant on exports to sustain its growth.

Hui Xian, a real estate investment trust, is selling yuan-denominated shares to investors in an initial public offering (IPO) at the end of April. The offer comes at a time when demand for investment products in the Chinese currency has been growing.

LDK Solar has announced a business investment of approximately US$40 million to establish a new manufacturing plant in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province (China). This new manufacturing facility will have capacity to supply two million 2-inch equivalent pieces of sapphire wafers per year and be positioned to capture the growing opportunities in the LED industry.

European companies in China ranked Shanghai as the most attractive city to locate their Asia-Pacific headquarters as the Chinese city provides companies with direct access to the region's biggest market, according to a survey.

China has offered to send earthquake rescuers and extended its "deep sympathy and solicitudes to the Japanese government and people" on Friday, marking some of the first sober words exchanged between the two nations in months. Last fall relations between Beijing and Tokyo reached their worst point in years.