Images: The factory of the world!

China's consumer price inflation will probably pick up in the coming months as resource prices rise and consumption gathers steam, a government think-tank said in a report recently.

Seemingly effortlessly, China has amassed the world's biggest stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, is overtaking Germany as the biggest exporting nation and now has a car market bigger than America's.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called on domestic companies to keep up their confidence in coping with the global financial crisis, during a tour of the wealthy but export-dependent Yangtze Delta.

Tight cotton supply in China, the world's largest consumer, after the government sold all of a planned release of its reserves has driven local futures to a record high.

China and the United States have agreed to further collaborate and do research in the health sector and in the control of diseases, especially pandemics.

Airbus expects China to need up to 3,000 new large aircraft over the next 20 years, helping support worldwide demand in the face of current economic uncertainties, its chief executive Thomas Enders said recently.

Diamond Standard Footwear Ltd, which employs 800 workers, produces a total of 120,000 pairs of shoes every month for export to Japan, the United States and the European Union.

The pace of Chinese manufacturing growth slowed in June as government steps to cool the red-hot property market and restrain bank lending combined with uncertainty over export prospects to dampen sentiment.

Workers at the Japanese-owned electronics factory in northern China have been on strike for two days, extending the ripple of industrial unrest that has hit manufacturers, China's official news agency said.

Honda interim workers and workers (R) confront a group of people who claimed to be representatives of the workers union but were not recognised by the workers at the Honda plant in Foshan at the southern Chinese Guangdong province.