Word of the day

“Pacific: 1. adj. peaceful in character or intent.” So says the venerable Oxford English Dictionary. But it looks like Citic Pacific, the Hong Kong-listed arm of China International Trust and Investment Corp, is more familiar with the second definition, “of or relating to the Pacific Ocean,” because that is approximately the size of the hole made when its shares fell 55% in Hong Kong yesterday. The company had been downgraded by several ratings agencies after announcing huge potential losses from bad currency bets. Losses are less likely to loom, at least, for Chinese factories after the government announced higher export tax rebates, which had been widely expected. Unfortunately, as we pointed out yesterday, higher rebates don’t mean more people will be buying – and that’s something that Chinese regulators are going to have trouble fixing. They might start with improved product safety. After the whole kerfuffle with melamine, we had been hoping it would be a while before we saw any more product safety problems, but now it seems that cribs are the latest China-made product to face recalls. The Chinese National Furniture Association is suggesting that design, rather than manufacture might be the issue here, but the details remain unclear. What’s rather clearer are the opinions of pro-independence protesters in Taiwan who shoved Vice Chairman Zhang Mingqing of the mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait to the ground in the southern city of Tainan. Encouragingly for pacific cross-Strait relations, the office of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou condemned the attack.