Panasonic may sell Sanyo digital camera business: source

TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp may sell its Sanyo digital camera business to Japanese private equity fund Advantage Partners by the end of March, a source familiar with the plan said.

A final decision on the sale will be made by the end of the year, the source said on condition he was not identified.

Advantage Partners will pay several hundreds of millions of yen for the business, which makes digital cameras for other companies, including Olympus Corp, the Nikkei business daily reported earlier.

Panasonic declined to comment saying it had not announced the plan.

The Japanese company aims to sell 110 billion yen ($ 1.34 billion) of assets, including buildings and land by the end of March to boost free cashflow to 200 billion yen for the business year. The company expects an annual net loss of close to $ 10 billion as it writes off billions in deferred tax assets and goodwill.

Panasonic acquired rival Sanyo, a leading maker of lithium ion batteries and solar panels, in 2010. Sales of compact digital cameras are under pressure from increasingly powerful smartphones.

Panasonic’s shares gained as much as 4 percent in early trading in Tokyo, compared with a 0.5 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index. ($ 1 = 82.3900 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Reiji Murai; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Hugh Hefner's Engagement Ring to Crystal Harris Revealed

By Mike Fleeman

12/11/2012 at 07:00 PM EST

The wedding's back on – though it may be a good idea to save that gift receipt.

Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."

And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."

Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.

Whether that still happens remains to be seen.

This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.

Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris

David Livingston / Getty

The onetime Playmate of the Month then ripped Hef's bedroom skills, calling him a two-second man, to which Hefner replied, "I missed a bullet" by not marrying her.

A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

Read More..

DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.

No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.

That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.

Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."

Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.

Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.

Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.

"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.

Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.

Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.

Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.

The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.

"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.

Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.

Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.

Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.

Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.

"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.

Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.

___

Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

Read More..

Asian shares rise, Fed outcome pressures dollar

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Wednesday buoyed by strength in global equities markets, firmer economic sentiment in Germany and hopes of a deal from U.S. budget talks, while the dollar came under pressure ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy decision.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> gained 0.5 percent to a 16-month peak. The index has hit successive 16-month highs since December 5.

Australian shares <.axjo> were up 0.4 after touching a nearly 17-month high on the back of Wall Street gains and higher iron ore prices.

"Definitely the momentum is to the upside," said Stan Shamu, a market analyst at IG Markets. "Everyone seems to be pricing in a fairly positive outcome to the fiscal cliff negotiations as well."

South Korean shares <.ks11> inched up 0.2 percent, shrugging off news of North Korea's rocket launch, but profit-taking on large caps limited gains.

"North Korea is no longer an economic match for the South, so, short of a full-scale conflict, the North's actions will have little impact on the KOSPI," Im No-jung, chief economist at IM Investment & Securities, said of the Seoul stock market.

North Korea launched the second rocket this year on Wednesday just before 10 a.m. and may have finally succeeded in putting a satellite into space, the stated aim of what critics say is a disguised ballistic missile test.

Japan's Nikkei share average <.n225> rose 0.5 percent after hitting a 7-1/2-month high earlier, led by gains in tech shares and other exporters on the weak yen. <.t/>

The dollar remained broadly under pressure on expectations the Fed will take further monetary easing step, pushing the currency down to a three-month low against the Australian dollar. The euro popped back above $1.3000, pulling away from a two-week low of $1.2876 plumbed Friday.

The Fed is expected to announce it will buy $45 billion per month of longer-dated Treasuries beginning in January on top of the $40 billion in mortgage-backed security purchases it announced in September. The new buying will replace the Fed's current program, Operation Twist, which expires at the end of December.

"Although the view that the Fed will shift to outright Treasury purchases is now very widely shared by market participants, we do not believe it has been fully reflected into markets or in positioning," said Vassili Serebriakov, a strategist at BNP Paribas.

"Accordingly, dollar weakness is highly likely should the Fed shift to outright U.S. Treasury purchases."

Against the yen, the dollar steadied at 82.54 yen. The Japanese currency has also been pressured by expectations for more easing from the Bank of Japan, which meets next week.

Data on Wednesday showed Japan's core machinery orders rose 2.6 percent in October from the previous month, up for the first time in three months but below a 3 percent rise forecast, highlighting how uncertainty over the global outlook continued to weigh on business investment and the broader economy.

Investors also closely followed developments in U.S. budget talks to avert the "fiscal cliff," some $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to start in January, which economists have warned could send the U.S. economy into recession and drag down the fragile global economy.

Negotiations to avert the "fiscal cliff" ahead of a year-end deadline intensified as President Barack Obama and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone on Tuesday after exchanging new proposals, in a possible sign of progress ahead of the end-of-year deadline.

A group of high-profile chief executives urged President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday to strike a deal, reflecting mounting urgency to resolve the issue with time running out.

U.S. crude futures inched up 0.2 percent to $85.96 a barrel and Brent rose 0.3 percent to $108.37.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Lu Yueyang in Canberra, Somang Yang and Joyce Lee in Seoul and Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Read More..

European Union Officials Accept Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO — Besieged by economic woes and insistent questions about its future, the European Union accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with calls for further integration and a plea to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln as he addressed a divided nation at Gettysburg.

Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

Leaders of the European Union member countries attended the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony at City Hall in Oslo on Monday.

The prize ceremony, held in Oslo’s City Hall and attended by 20 European leaders as well as Norway’s royal family, brought a rare respite from the gloom that has settled on the European Union since the Greek debt crisis exploded three years ago, unleashing doubt about the long-term viability of the euro and about an edifice of European institutions built up over more than half a century to promote an ever closer union.

Unemployment — now at over 25 percent in Greece and Spain — and sputtering economic growth across the 27-nation bloc are “putting the political bonds of our union to the test,” Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said in his acceptance speech. “If I can borrow the words of Abraham Lincoln at the time of another continental test, what is being assessed today is whether that union, or any union so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The European Union, said Mr. Van Rompuy, will “answer with our deeds, confident we will succeed.”

“We are working very hard to overcome the difficulties, to restore growth and jobs,” he continued.

Aside from economic misery, the most serious threat to the bloc so far is growing pressure in Britain for a referendum on whether to pull out of the union. The British prime minister, David Cameron, did not attend the ceremony, but most other European leaders showed up, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the French president, François Hollande, who sat next to each other and whose countries, once bitter enemies, have been the main motors driving European integration.

Mr. Van Rompuy’s comparison of the European Union to the United States is likely to irritate critics of the European Union, who reject efforts to push European nations to surrender more sovereignty in pursuit of what champions of a federal European state hope will one day be a United States of Europe.

Just how far Europe is from such a goal, however, was made clear by the presence of three Union presidents in Oslo. In addition to Mr. Van Rompuy, whose European Council represents the leaders of the union’s member states, there was José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the bloc’s main administrative and policy-making arm, and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament.

Instead of the customary Nobel lecture delivered by the winner, Mr. Van Rompuy and Mr. Barroso each read parts of what Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, described as “one speech but two chapters.”

Hailing the European Union for helping bring peace to Europe after repeated wars, Mr. Jagland said, “What this continent has achieved is truly fantastic, from being a continent of war to becoming a continent of peace.”

Mr. Barroso spoke of the horrors of past wars and tyranny and Europe’s efforts to overcome them through the building of supranational institutions, which began in 1951 with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community by France, Germany and four other countries. But he also cited the current conflict in Syria, describing it as a “stain on the world’s conscience” that other nations have “a moral duty” to address. The European Union’s member states are themselves divided about how far to go in supporting opponents of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

The decision to honor the European Union with the Nobel Peace Prize stirred widespread criticism in Norway, whose citizens have twice voted not to join the union. On the eve of Monday’s award ceremony, peace activists and supporters of left-wing political groups paraded through the streets of Oslo, carrying flaming torches and chanting, “The E.U. is not a worthy winner.”

Many peace activists say they have no problem with European integration but question whether the union has lived up to conditions laid down by Alfred Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish industrialist who bequeathed the peace prize and four other Nobel Prizes.

Read More..

Google’s Gmail service suffers disruption

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Several Google Inc Web products, including the popular Gmail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents on Monday.

Google confirmed that “service disruptions” had affected Gmail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google’s Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses.

By 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time (1.10 p.m. EST), Google’s Apps Dashboard monitoring service reported that Gmail and Drive service had resumed. The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media on both coasts in the U.S. and other major markets, from the United Kingdom to Brazil.

Some users additionally reported that the outage had affected Google Docs, the company’s word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, Google’s Internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly.

“We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services,” Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. “For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing.”

Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, Gmail is one of Google’s most popular and important product offerings. The search giant, which has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month that the package will no longer be free to business customers.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Andrew Hay and Nick Zieminski)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Hayden Panettiere Splits with Scotty McKnight

12/10/2012 at 07:50 PM EST

Hayden Panettiere and Scotty McKnight

Splash News Online

Is there a tear in her beer?

Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.

This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years.
– Julie Jordan

Read More..

Surprise: New insurance fee in health overhaul law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

"Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it," said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.

Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.

The program "is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all," the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to "contributions" without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.

Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.

The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama's expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.

But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don't provide coverage.

"This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount," said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.

Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama's law take effect.

But employers already offering coverage to their workers don't see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

"It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs," said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The fee will be assessed on all "major medical" insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That's because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.

The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.

It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.

Read More..

Asian shares edge up; Fed move, fiscal cliff in focus

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher while the euro steadied on Tuesday, but prices were capped as investors waited for the U.S. Federal Reserve's policy decision later this week and any progress in U.S. budget talks.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> nudged up 0.2 percent. The index has hit successive 16-month highs for the past four sessions.

Australian shares <.axjo> gained 0.4 percent to their highest in nearly two months on a strong resources sector, which was supported by a rise in metals and oil prices and hopes for the Fed to further ease monetary policy.

Hong Kong shares <.hsi> rose 0.4 percent to a 16-month high but Shanghai shares <.ssec> fell 0.5 percent.

"The market continues to trade sideways in an environment where headlines seem to have lost bite. Poor liquidity conditions as we approach the end of the year seem to keep portfolios on a tight leash around their benchmarks," said Barclays Capital analysts in a research note.

Japan's Nikkei share average <.n225> was the region's other laggard, slipping 0.3 percent to around 9,506 as investors became cautious over signs that the market is overbought after a 10 percent rally in the past month and took profit on export-focused firms. <.t/>

"The 9,500-level is still an important psychological line for both support and resistance purposes," said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.

U.S. Treasury prices edged higher on Monday on worries about U.S. budget wrangling, Italy's political rumbling and expectations of further monetary easing by the Fed.

At the end of the two-day meeting which begins on Tuesday, the Fed is expected to announce it will buy $45 billion per month of longer-dated Treasuries beginning in January to replace the current Operation Twist program, which expires at the end of December.

Under the program, it sells shorter-dated U.S. government debt and buys longer-dated Treasuries to extend the duration of its balance sheet.

Such views weighed on the dollar and helped to underpin the euro, which traded at $1.2937, off Monday's low of $1.2880.

The dollar firmed 0.1 percent to 82.40 yen as the yen has also been pressured by expectations for more easing from the Bank of Japan, which meets next week.

The euro was also supported as Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti played down market fears over his decision to resign, saying there was no danger of a vacuum ahead of an election in the spring.

"I think people at this point are not sure whether there really will be the risk of Italy not pursuing its fiscal reforms pursued under Monti. So it's hard to really price that news in yet," said Takao Hattori, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo.

FISCAL WORRIES

European partners urged the next Italian government on Monday to stick to Monti's reform agenda, after his decision to resign early and Silvio Berlusconi's return to frontline politics rattled financial markets.

Monti had earned market confidence over the past year in indebted Italy, as he spearheaded a reform agenda to rescue the euro zone's third-largest economy from the threat of a Greek-style collapse.

His earlier-than-expected departure raised concerns about the prospects for Italy's fiscal reforms, lifting Italy's benchmark 10-year bond yield up to 4.83 percent, the highest in more than three weeks, while driving Italian shares <.ftmib> down more than 2 percent.

Investors also worry about the impact on neighboring Spain, which is struggling with high debt and studying the need for outside help.

Fiscal worries in the United States have also weighed on investor sentiment, limiting their activity as trading winds down towards the year-end holiday season.

Economists have warned that a failure by Congress to avert the "fiscal cliff," some $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to start in January, could send the U.S. economy back into recession, further weighing on the fragile global economy.

The White House and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's office held more negotiations on Monday on ways to break the budget stalemate, but neither side showed any public signs that they were ready to give ground. The talks picked up pace after Boehner met with President Barack Obama on Sunday, raising hopes of progress.

U.S. crude futures were little changed at $85.56 a barrel and Brent eased 0.1 percent to $107.28.

Trading was subdued in Asian credit markets, with the slight rise in stocks helping to narrow the spreads on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index marginally by 1 basis point.

(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Read More..

Changing of the Guard: Signals in China of a More Open Economy

Carlos Barria/Reuters

In November, Xi Jinping made his official debut as party chief at the 18th party congress, which military officers attended.

BEIJING — In a strong signal of support for greater market-oriented economic policies, Xi Jinping, the new head of the Communist Party, made a visit over the weekend to the special economic zone of Shenzhen in south China, which has stood as a symbol of the nation’s embrace of a state-led form of capitalism since its growth over the last three decades from a fishing enclave to an industrial metropolis.

The trip was Mr. Xi’s first outside Beijing since becoming party chief on Nov. 15. Mr. Xi visited a private Internet company on Friday and went to Lotus Hill Park on Saturday to lay a wreath at a bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping, the leader who opened the era of economic reforms in 1979, when Shenzhen was designated a special economic zone. Mr. Deng famously later visited the city in 1992 to encourage reviving those economic policies after they had stalled following the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.

“Reform and opening up is a guiding policy that the Communist Party must stick to,” Mr. Xi said, according to Phoenix Television, one of several Hong Kong news organizations that covered the trip. “We must keep to this correct path. We must stay unwavering on the road to a prosperous country and people, and there must be new pioneering.”

In the months before the transition, there were widespread calls, including from people close to Mr. Xi, to adopt more liberal economic policies and even to experiment with greater political openness as a way for the party to maintain its rule. Without much success so far, reformers have long been encouraging the leadership to move toward a more sustainable growth model for China, one that relies more on domestic consumption rather than infrastructure investment and exports, and where state enterprises play less of a role.

Mr. Xi, known as a skillful consensus builder, has kept his ideas carefully veiled throughout his career, but his trip to Shenzhen is the strongest sign yet that he may favor more open policies. In a speech in Beijing on Nov. 29, Mr. Xi spoke of the “Chinese dream” of realizing the nation’s “revival,” which, besides being a call for renewal, also signaled strong nationalist leanings.

Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revered senior official handpicked by Mr. Deng to help shape the new economic policies and oversee the creation of the Shenzhen zone. Mr. Xi’s mother lives in Shenzhen, and he visited her on his trip, according to Hong Kong news reports.

“If he indeed went to Shenzhen, that means he intends to make reform a subject of priority,” said Li Weidong, a liberal political analyst. “That would really be a phenomenon.”

Mr. Li cautioned, though, that the so-called reform policies that followed Mr. Deng’s 1992 southern tour, in his view, “ended up being fake” because China’s boom resulted in widespread corruption and the expansion of state enterprises at the expense of private entrepreneurship.

When Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, became party chief in 2002, he was seen by many as a potential reformer, but his tenure was marked by conservative policies. For his first trip outside Beijing as party chief, Mr. Hu went in December 2002 to Xibaipo, a hallowed site for the revolution, where he reiterated a speech given by Mao Zedong.

Over the weekend, video footage from Phoenix Television showed a line of minibuses and police cars winding its way through Shenzhen. Mr. Xi and other officials walked outdoors in dark suits. The party’s official news organizations did not immediately report on the trip, but some prominent mainland Chinese news Web sites cited the Hong Kong reports.

Mr. Xi’s early moves as party leader seem aimed at emphasizing national “revival,” a theme he highlighted when he appeared on Nov. 29 with the party’s new seven-man Politburo Standing Committee in a history museum at Tiananmen Square. According to People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece, Mr. Xi stood in front of an exhibition called “The Road to Rejuvenation” and said, “After the 170 or more years of constant struggle since the Opium Wars, the great revival of the Chinese nation enjoys glorious prospects.”

He added: “Now everyone is discussing the Chinese dream, and I believe that realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream of the Chinese nation in modern times.”

The emphasis on a “Chinese dream” is particular to Mr. Xi, and could prove to be a recurring motif throughout his tenure. The notion of a grand revival — “fu xing” in Mandarin — has been popular with Chinese leaders for at least a century, but Mr. Xi appears to be tapping more deeply into that nationalist vein than his recent predecessors, perhaps recognizing that traditional Communist ideology no longer has popular appeal.

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

Read More..