Pyramid crackdown

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) of China has launched a one-year-long nationwide crackdown on pyramid selling in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Security.

The crackdown will mainly focus on Guangxi, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan and 10 others regions where pyramid selling is particularly rampant, a SAIC spokesperson said last Wednesday.

The campaign will particularly target organizations engaged in cross-regional pyramid selling, the recruitment of students into such activities, and organizations that misrepresent reality to recruit their members, accommodate them in dormitories and force them to engage in pyramid selling, the spokesperson said.

Pyramid selling was outlawed in China in 1988. Years of crackdown, however, have failed to completely weed it out.

China-US dialogue

High-ranking Chinese and US officials will meet twice a year for wide-ranging discussions on their economic relationship, the first such mechanism between the two nations.

The establishment of the China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue was jointly announced by Vice-Premier Wu Yi and visiting US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in Beijing last week.

The dialogue will focus on bilateral and global strategic economic issues of common interest and concern; and both sides intend to meet twice a year in alternate capitals, according to a joint statement.

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