-China’s inflation probably increased in October as food prices continued to rise. While many believe that China’s inflation will be short-lived the central bank is taking no chances and over the weekend raised the reserve ratio requirement in all banks by 0.5 percentage points to 13.5%, which is the ninth time this year the ratio has been raised. A report out today by ICBC suggests that the reserve ratio will hit 15% in 2008. Considering that it has been raised nine times this year, that doesn’t seem like much of a prediction but rather a foregone conclusion.

-Not wanting to miss out on all the action related to the A-share market, Baidu just launched a finance section (beta version) which carries detailed information about A-shares. It also includes an English section that provides limited info on A-shares.

Not only has Baidu been busy launching a financial news section for its site, but founder Robin Li is rumored to be considering a follow-on listing in HK after seeing Alibaba/s great success.

-Somehow these two articles are connected: “China May Earn $15 Billion From Sale of Carbon Emission Credits” and “China to become biggest carbon polluter this year”. This will likely become a bigger and bigger issue starting in 08.

-More evidence of China’s ravenous appetite for commodities, or at least Sinotrans thinks so. Sinotrans plans to offer shares in the HK market; capital raised will be used to quadruple dry bulk shipping capacity to as much as 5 million dead weight tons, up from its current capacity of 1.3 million dead weight tons. This will be done by purchasing more vessels.