Business news for Tue, 25 Dec 2007 & with word commerce. 3 news.

A NEW online textile export license system began operation in China yesterday, just days before a quota system for shipments to the European Union is to expire, sources in the Ministry of Commerce told Xinhua. The online application system "is one of a series of measures taken by China to better regulate the textile export market and avoid a surge of Chinese clothing exports to the EU like the one in 2005," Zhao Qiuyan, a senior analyst with the China Trade Remedy Information Website, under the ministry told Xinhua. After international textile quotas expired in January 2005, Europe was swamped by low-priced imports from China. That surge led Chinese and EU authorities to sign the Memorandum of Understanding on China-EU Textile Trade, which renewed quotas on China's textile exports to the EU in June 2005. But that pact will expire at the end of this year. The two sides agreed in September to set up a bilateral system to monitor Chinese exports of T-shirts, pullovers,

SICHUAN Changhong Electrical Co acquired a controlling stake of Huayi Compressor Co through an auction yesterday to become the compressor maker's biggest shareholder, Changhong said in a statement today. The country's second-largest television maker paid 234 million yuan (US$32 million) for 29.92-percent stake in the Jiangxi-based Huayi which produces compressors for air conditioners and refrigerators, it said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Changhong's net profit in the first nine months of this year totaled 340 million yuan, jumping 39 percent from a year earlier on the booming electronics market. The TV maker has grabbed the lion's share of government-financed home appliance sales in rural areas. China promised to give farmers subsidies, about 13 percent, for buying household electrical appliances, in a bid to stimulate sluggish rural consumption and reduce the rising trade surplus, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce said over the weekend.

Bank of Commerce Holdings, the parent of banks in Roseville, Yuba City and Redding, recently announced a stock buyback plan.