China's legions of mobile phone subscribers swarmed to a new high of 443 million at the end of September, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Information Industry.

China's commercial hub Shanghai racked up 165.6 billion U.S. dollars of foreign trade in the January to September period, nearly 70 percent of which was contributed by foreign-invested companies, said the municipal statistical bureau on Tuesday.

A Chinese official Tuesday urged the country's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) directly controlled by the central government to invest cautiously in high-risk financial derivatives like futures and options.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and the Beijing Investigation Team from the National Bureau of Statistics declared Sunday that the prosperity index of Beijing enterprises in the third quarter grew continually, reaching 142.1 percent, the highest on record. However, they also revealed that the shortage of capital is becoming an obstacle for the development of businesses in Beijing.

Non-performing loan ratio for major Chinese commercial banks dropped to 7.6 percent, down 1.3 percentage points over the beginning of the year.

China has become the world largest producer and consumer of fertilizer, said the China Agricultural Production Means Circulation Association on Tuesday.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) announced here Tuesday it has signed a memorandum of understanding on mutual cooperation with the U.S. NASDAQ bourse.

Zimbabwe has won the right to host the 2008 International Travel and Tourism Conference, a gathering of global players in the tourism industry owing to its aggressive marketing strategy, an official said on Tuesday.

Secretary for Economic Development and Labor Stephen Ip said Tuesday the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is concerned about alleged tourism trade malpractice and will meet with the industry to review the regulatory framework.

The gold price in Hong Kong went down 87 HK dollars to 5,352 HK dollars per tael on Tuesday, according to Bank of China (Hong Kong).