Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with words development+world. 2 news.

CHINA Unicom Ltd, the smaller of the nation's two mobile-phone operators, rose to the highest in Hong Kong trading in almost a month after a report said the country's top economic planning agency supported a breakup of Unicom. The shares gained 3.6 percent to HK$17.36, their best performance since November 30, at the end of trading yesterday. The National Development and Reform Commission said allowing China's fixed-line carriers to acquire Unicom's mobile networks is the most efficient plan for the industry, the Shanghai Securities News said yesterday, citing a research report by the country's top planning body. China, the world's largest mobile-phone market by users, is expected to reorganize the industry by breaking up Unicom into two operators to be run by the fixed-line companies. China Mobile Ltd controls two-thirds of the nation's wireless subscribers and is adding customers at four times the pace of Unicom. "The government is concerned China Mobile is much too

RAPID urbanization as well as robust demand for homes will continue to boost the country's real estate industry in 2008, industry analysts said. Wei Bo, a property analyst with Central China Securities Company, sees three main factors as being responsible for the strong demand. "New demand from the country's urbanization progress, growing requirement for larger and better homes among the Chinese, as well as rising investments caused by the appreciation of the Chinese currency and the existing negative interest rates, will probably help the real estate industry's fortune for another year," Wei said. "We expect the industry to maintain its high pace of development and give it a 'better than broad market' rating." China is seeing probably one of the largest urbanization in the world. According to an earlier forecast by the United Nations, between 16 million and 22 million people will migrate from rural places to urban areas in the country each year from now