German chemicals firm Celanese is building a plant to produce acetic acid in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Reuters reported. Rudi Gredl, executive vice president, said that demand in China for acetic acid, which is used in the manufacture of film, textiles, latex paints and glue, was expected to grow by 10 per cent a year. The plant will come on-stream in 2005 or 2006 and will be capable of producing 600,000 tonnes of acetic acid a year.
Also in Nanjing, BASF of Germany is building a US$2.9bn ethylene complex in partnership with China's top refiner Sinopec. Celanese already has a cellulose acetate joint venture in China, and another that will produce polyacetal engineering plastics will soon be built in Nantong, Jiangsu province.
Microsoft fends off Linux During a visit to Beijing in late February, Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, signed an agreement that allows China to control access to the Windows source code and other technical data, South China Morning Post said. Market watchers saw this as a move by Microsoft to stem the popularity of opensource and cheaper software such as Linux.
A survey by International Data Corp found that 95 per cent of Chinese enterprises had Windows running on their desktops and laptops, while 4 per cent were using Linux. However, Linux usage in a client operating environment will grow by 39 per cent yearon- year, compared with 11 per cent for Windows, the survey predicted. Linux server usage would increase by 41 per cent and Windows by just 8 per cent.
The Ministry of Information Industry last year showed its support for Linux-based systems by setting up an open-source alliance. Government departments in Beijing and Guangdong have recently awarded contracts to Linux vendors such as Red Flag, Thiz and Kingsoft.