➲ RMB trade 

The Bank of China has opened trading in the yuan currency to U.S. customers. The bank's New York Branch now lets companies and individuals buy and sell the yuan through accounts with its U.S. branches, although U.S. businesses and individuals can also trade the currency through Western banks. The bank said it offers yuan savings, demand deposit and time deposit accounts to business customers in New York and Los Angeles. A savings account requires a minimum balance of the equivalent of $5,000.

➲ Excess liquidity

China's foreign exchange reserves rose to a record $2.85 trillion at the end of 2010, an 18.7 percent increase year-on-year, sparking concerns about the country's already excessive liquidity. Yi Gang, Vice Governor of the central bank and head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said China would increase the flexibility of its currency exchange rate in 2011 to reduce the trade surplus and inflationary pressures caused by ample liquidity. Analysts said as the yuan's value rises, the reduced trade surplus and possibly lower inflows of speculative capital from overseas would help ease the problems caused by excess liquidity, ranging from inflation to asset bubbles.

➲ Rural power

A statement issued after a recent State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao said China would continue to expand and upgrade its rural power grid networks in the next five years to meet the increasing demand. Safe, environmentally friendly, and technologically advanced rural power networks are expected to cover most of the nation's rural areas during the country's 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15).

➲ Nuclear output

The No.404 factory under the China National Nuclear Corp. has made a breakthrough in spent nuclear fuel reprocessing technology, which is able to boost the usage rate of uranium materials at nuclear plants 60-fold and potentially solve the problem of its supply shortage. Experts believe that the extending usage rate of the strategically important resource helps the country to meet its growing demand. China aims to increase its nuclear power capacity to 40 GW by 2020 compared to just more than 9 GW of nuclear capacity at present.

➲ Infrastructure

Louis Paul Motaze, Cameroon's Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development (MINEPAT), met with visiting Chinese Vice Minister of Transport Gao Hongfeng in January 2011. Gao said China would move beyond building the Kribi deep seaport to explore more possibilities for cooperation to help improve Cameroon's transport infrastructure. Gao's first visit to Cameroon was a follow-up action to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation 2006, during which the Chinese Government decided to take the development of infrastructure of African countries, including Cameroon, as a top priority in the Sino-African economic cooperation.