Nokia will launch a digital music service in China, in a high-risk move to make inroads into the world's largest mobile phone market where sales have been crippled due to Internet piracy.

China-based Huawei is considering negotiating a "mitigation agreement" with the US government - as Alcatel of France did when it bought Lucent in 2006 - in order to show its willingness to co-operate with the US. It is making the lobbying push in preparation for a potential bid for a unit of Motorola.

"If the NDRC tells me I have to move to China or I'll close the China market to you, then I'll consider that," said TSMC chairman and CEO Morris Chang. NDRC refers to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's powerful economic planning agency.

Several scholars, rights activists and journalists working on China and Taiwan issues have reported that their Yahoo e-mail accounts have been hacked into, in the latest internet incident involving China since Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese site.

Taiwan and China will hold the second round of talks on a broad cross-strait trade agreement in Taipei on March 31 and April 1, to discuss which sectors will be among the first to enjoy favorable tax terms under the planned pact, according to Taiwan's semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation.

Ford Motor has signed a US$1.8 billion deal to sell its Volvo brand to Geely in a move seen as emblematic of the shift in the global car industry's centre of gravity from the US and western Europe to China.

China has overtaken the US for the first time in the race to invest in wind, solar and other sources of clean energy.

In recent years, many top universities in Taiwan have seen lecturers leave for China, attracted by the vibrant development there and more attractive packages. And Hong Kong universities are eyeing not just Taiwanese students, but also lecturers.

China Unicom doesn't use Google search boxes on its phones and only works with companies that abide by Chinese law, according to Lu Yimin, president of the telecom company.

IBM has launched a new predictive analytics software lab in Xi'an China. The lab will help IBM's clients see patterns in vast amounts of data and forecast trends before they occur for improved decision making and competitive advantage.

"Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks," said a government official.

China's Alibaba is in talks with one of its investors, Japan's Softbank, to form a tie-up to help merchants from their online marketplaces sell into each others' markets, according to a source familiar with the situation.

SMIC, China's top contract chipmaker, is planning to raise up to US$500 million through a private equity placement or overseas convertible bond, two sources with knowledge of the issue told Reuters on Friday.

Two of China's top chipmakers and Intel's lone China factory are all running at or near full capacity, as China's sector rebounds more quickly than the rest of the world, according to senior executives at the three firms.

China-based Vimicro International, which has posted two consecutive annual losses, may break even in 2010 as economic recovery bolsters its domestic sales, according to company chairman John Deng.

BYD has massive expansion plans for 2010 and would consider building a plant in the US, the company said a day after announcing annual profits had tripled. The automaker will put aside 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) this year to grow its business.

BYD, a Chinese car and battery maker backed by US billionaire Warren Buffett, said on Sunday its fourth-quarter net profit rose 500% thanks to robust car sales primed by tax incentives from Beijing.

Canon expects China's camera market to become the world's largest as early as 2015, overtaking the US, its head of the business said. The world's biggest camera maker is doubling the number of outlets and boosting its marketing workforce in the Asian nation.

China's exports jumped by 46% in February compared with a year ago, raising hopes of a strong recovery in global trade.

Japan enjoyed its biggest on-year increase in exports in almost 30 years last month. The value of exports rose 40.9% in January 2010 from a year earlier, the fastest pace since February 1980.

Putting all this into long-term perspective, the current problem offers a glimpse of the likely more massive labor shortage issue that China is set to face in the next few decades as its single-child policy keeps accelerating the aging of its still-enormous population.

Brian Hicks, who co-manages the Global Resources Fund at US Global Investors, said reports continue to show demand for copper, particularly in China, remains high. China is one of the largest importers of copper.

The share of exports of the Big Five of 1999 fell to 34% in 2009. That loss of nine percentage points was matched by a similar gain for China, India and South Korea, with most of the gain going to China.

The emergence of the world economy from the worst slump since World War II spurred businesses in Taiwan, where exports equal half of GDP, to boost production and hire more workers.

Snowstorms shut 30 highways across China, disrupting travel on a day when more than 66 million people were expected to take to the roads for the nation's biggest festival of the year.

German exports in 2009 were equivalent to US$1,121.3 billion which compared with the US$1,201.7 billion exported by China. China's goods exports also suffered badly last year, falling by 16% over the course of the year, the first time they had declined since 1978.

SMIC would announce a new investment by China's Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Holdings Co., which would continue to invest money in the company through 2010, the source said, declining to be more specific.

"Foreign firms have expressed a willingness to increase investment or make new investments in Taiwan" once the island signs the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China to remove bilateral tariffs, Ma told reporters at a news briefing to promote the pact. He didn't make any forecasts about the potential value of such investments.