SHANGHAI – General Motors Corp Chief Executive Fritz Henderson announced the company will introduce “Caraoke” to the Shanghai auto show, a spokesman said on Friday.

The move follows an incident at the New York Auto Show last week as folks upset about General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC getting billions in federal loans complained about it to the presenters.

Female product specialists were shouted at by show-goers offended by the bailouts and other perceived peccadilloes of Detroit automakers.

Kerri Moss, a recently laid off teacher trying to make a buck as a presenter for Jeep, said in an interview with The New York Times, “I try to explain that we’re not involved in corporate decisions, so complaining to us doesn’t make a lot of sense. And if that doesn’t work, I tell them we’re doing the best we can.”

“Caraoke should lighten things up,” said Henderson, adding that music might get potential buyers singing along with GM.

Automakers have emphasized in recent years that the presenters aren’t just pretty young things in short skirts and spike heels adorning the sheet metal. The presenters study up on such things as internal combustion, heavy torque and energy saving air conditioning before taking up an attractive pose beside the product.

At the Shanghai Auto Show, they will be practicing their music scale in preparation to sing along to classic tunes including “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor and Queen’s “I’m in Love With My Car”.

Henderson took over at GM less than a month ago after the White House fired former chief Rick Wagoner; the former has until the end of May to present the struggling automaker’s viability plan.

He is scheduled to update the media on GM’s restructuring later on Friday in the first of a series of updates designed to provide perspective on the situation at the company.

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ATLANTA, GEORGIA – Cyberspies broke into U.S. corporate computers and gained access to information related to the several of the world’s top secret recipes Tuesday. In separate interviews, three executives of MacDonald’s, KFC and Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn said that the breach appeared to originate in China, though they couldn’t be sure because identities and locations can be easily hidden online. The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a statement saying the allegations were “fabricated.”

The recipes have since been published and widely circulated. Food analyst Ed Johnson said he was surprised that no one had discovered the secrets before now. “Take the Big Mac’s secret sauce: 1/4 cup Miracle Whip; 1/4 cup mayonnaise; 2 tablespoons, heaping, French salad dressing (the orange stuff); 1/2 tablespoon  sweet relish; 2 teaspoons, heaping, dill pickle relish (Heinz dill relish also works; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon dried, minced onion; 1 teaspoon white vinegar; 1 teaspoon ketchup and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Christ, why didn’t I think of that myself? It’s much simpler than discovering KFC’s secret formula, or new hybrids strains of corn.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese media attempted to throw more doubt on the idea that China was behind the break in, which gained access to three of the most closely-guarded secrets in the U.S. history. The state-run Global Times newspapers, launched this week, said other nations were more likely to be behind the break in because their hackers are more advanced. “Just from a technical point of view, on the global scale hackers in the U.S., Russia, and Israel are at a higher level than those in China,” it said. It added, “If the U.S. believes Chinese hackers were able to steal highly-sensitive food secrets, that is too ‘high a view’ of China.”

The Global Times story was widely picked up on the Chinese Internet. The argument generated much discussion on China’s Internet. “Hackers as good as this are from the U.S., not China!” said one commenter on the popular Sina news website. Another netizen said on another popular site, Netease: “I believe what the Internet safety experts said: Chinese hackers are not good enough to do this.”

The subject has been a sore one for weeks. Earlier this month the New York Times, quoting current and former food industry leaders, reported that hackers in China and elsewhere had broken into computers at Coca-Cola’s Atlanta headquarters and obtain a list of ingredients in the soda maker’s Zero Coke product. Chinese officials have hotly denied such activity, saying the accusations are part of internal U.S. struggles among various security departments.

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SHANGHAI – Self-styled financial guru Jian Fan, 36, has exchanged his 900 square meter villa in Pudong for a nine square meter cell in a Shanghai prison. Otherwise known as the city’s “Oracle of Omaha”, a nickname on unauthorized loan from Warren Butfet, Jian was long known for saying, ” The word ‘loser’ is not in my vocabulary.”

Now, according to Jian, after losing more than 20 million yuan, three wives, six homes, eleven luxury vehicles and from four to eight years of freedom subject to time off for good behavior, he is adding the L word to his vocabulary.

“I am a dirty, rotten loser,” said Jian from his 3×3 meter cell in Shanghai Provincial Prison. “Can I spell the word? Just try me.”

In 2006, Jian formed Shanghai Xinglue Investment Co Ltd “an international investment company that had long been engaged in stock investment in the United States,” and “the operation group members came from the Wall Street.”

In 2007, Jian spent nearly RMB 400,000 to have dinner with well-known stock investor and financial professor Jim Rogers, and later claimed his company had had a long-term strategic cooperation with Rogers.

At the height of his career, he held training classes charging from RMB 5,000 to 8,000 a month. Offering stock investment service to his students, he encouraged them to send money to his accounts for investment in stock index futures and gold futures.

He later began recruiting clients for his stock investment services, targeting middle-aged and elderly people.

“Those old geezers would attend my lectures on ‘Success Strategies For Winners’ and some would say the ‘L’ word and I’d smack their stupid faces,” said Jian. “’You’re not losers!’ I would tell them. ‘You haven’t lost anything yet.’ Well, they have now and so have I.”

Unable to obtain good head in prison, Jian intends to develop “Success Strategies For Sucking,” a DVD series he plans to produce upon his release in 2017 or sooner. “It’s a three-point plan that works. It goes: One, open your mouth; two, insert object without it touching your teeth; three, repeat 44 times.”

Jian’s failure on the outside was so widespread that even those around him and those who learned from his Success Strategies have become losers.

“He ruined my life,” said Shi Lipo, a 64 year-old grandmother from Anhui.

Shi followed Jian’s investment advice and squandered her life’s savings attempting to realize her dream of owning her own family-style dumpling restaurant. After losing her all her money, she had to sell the family home, put her children and grandchildren in foster care and become a masseuse on Nanjing Street to pay off creditors.

According to Jian, there’s no hope for those who’ve tried his success strategies. “They will lose everything, just like me.”

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SHENZHEN – China’s securities watchdog issued guidelines last Thursday that pave the way for the launch of a new financing platform for innovative startup companies.

Based in Shenzhen, the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) is being patterned on New York’s Nasdaq, with an emphasis on smaller, cash-strapped technology companies that show solid growth potential. It will seek to attract those companies with lower listing thresholds than the main boards in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The regulator will begin accepting applications from candidates after issuing related rules and setting up a review committee, the spokesperson said, without revealing the launch date of the new board. Indeed, GEM officials have already received thousands of applications from start-up companies hoping to gain access to market financing.

A leaked memorandum lists some of the ideas that have garnered a “no thanks.”

1. Furtilizer – an online music service the name of which is a pun on fertilizer. According to the memo, while GEM concurs that fertilizer makes things grow, it is also translates as ‘a pile of shit’.

2. Prophilactic is a social network product for stamp enthusiasts. It sounds like a marketable product, but the attention-getting name has been rejected for its sexual connotations.

3. wavee is a community-powered, social search engine that personalizes results according to users’ interests. The name is a pun on ‘wavy’, but uses the web 2.0 standard of two ‘e’s. Rejected because the name is “silly’.

4. Ghostship is an e-commerce service that delivers goods within a couple of hours of ordering. GEM thinks the business’s name may frighten its customers.

5. Layoffbook.com.cn – this is a social network for the unemployed, so this name is contextual and even slightly witty. Rejected for its unwieldy attempt to copy the FacebookMy name and the potential of the network to generate anti-government hostility.

6. uStalkr – a web application that allows users to create a lifestream tracking all their RSS feeds for services they use, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, etc. It creates a time line of your activities. However, the name could attract stalkers of another type.

7. Gangsterr – a community where you can track Triad members, find out what services they offer, their cost and location. It’s on this list because it’s a lame use of the “ster” cliche (Friendster, Napster, Dogster, etc).

8. hookapipe is an online store for sharing opium-related products, targeted at overseas consumers for Yunnan’s biggest export commodity. GEM stated that while it’s appropriate for its target audience, the product is still illegal in most overseas markets.

9. pjork is a service allowing users to create and sell content. It’s a meaningless word, a naming tactic that has become common in web 2.0 – pretty harmless really. Rejected because it sounds too much like “hork”.

10. Primo Pipipip – Picture in Picture (PiP) has been available for many years now. Just why the engineers at Prima thought it was a good idea to add two additional picture levels puzzled GEM officials. Normally within the TV’s PiP feature one program is displayed on the entire TV screen, and another program (or programs) is displayed in individual smaller squares on the screen. Primo’s addition to the clutter is even smaller squares inside the smaller PiP squares. Even if it were useful for something it is nearly impossible to see anything on the jumbled screen and you might as well just listen to the radio.

11. Yang’s Mobile Smelephone
The designers of Seahorse’s Mobile Smelephone 1688 series obviously thought the product would fit nicely in consumers’ olfactory alley. The phones release an aroma rather than a ring when an incoming call is received. While the fragrances currently available sound pleasant enough (strawberry, milk tea, barbeque pork buns, etc.) the smell can be sometimes overpowering and if the phone is within two feet of the person’s eyes when an incoming call is received the eyes will temporarily burn, water and swell. Rejected by officials who tested the product.

12. E-quine – An electronic thoroughbred horse that works like a mechanical bull, the purpose of which is to teach people to ride race horses. The mechanical horse would be aimed at the mass market but could also be used by jockeys in training, according to the business plan.

Fears that the GEM might set the stage for destructive competition against the Chinese mainland’s primary stock markets are overblown, analysts told Chinaspike yesterday.

“The introduction of the new board won’t drain much capital from the main boards, but it may dampen interest in some of those markets’ smaller chips that have high valuations,” said Gu Guixian, an analyst at Wenfu Securities Co.

Investors seemed to agree. The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks yuan-denominated A shares and hard-currency B shares, inched up 0.64 percent to 2,373.21 points yesterday after the announcement of the GEM guidelines by China Securities Regulatory Commission.

A securities commission spokesperson said that the GEM in an important measure to help China build multi-level capital markets and promote the development of innovative companies with high growth potential.

Financial institutions have become more cautious to provide loans to startups since the world financial crisis began; so the GEM will offer a new financing channel for smaller companies trying to survive tough times, FX Investment Consulting Co said in a report.

The board is a key measure in promoting China’s economic growth as smaller firms account for 99 percent of all companies in the country and provide 75 percent of all jobs, the report said.

The guidelines also highlighted the supervision functions of the new board such as ordering companies to publish their prospectuses on Websites appointed by the commission, inform investors about risks and receive punishment for faulty profit forecasts.

Despite the lack of a specified startup date, the regulator said the guidelines will go into effect on May 1.

China began planning for the GEM more than 10 years ago, but the process was halted after the global dot-com bubble burst in 2000.

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BEIJING – In the wake of massive losses, the Chinese government has voiced support for up to USD 50 billion in bailout funds for the mainland’s U.S. fast food industry.

Throughout the People’s Republic, the credit crunch and slumping economy have depressed U.S. fast food sales to levels not seen in about two decades. Once-mighty McDonald’s says it could run out of cash by next summer. Pizza Hut has a slightly better prognosis, but only because it introduced a spicy duck with green onions pizza in 2006.

Meanwhile, Taco Bell is playing its financial status close to the vest. But the company’s chief exec, Bob Nardelli, said last week that it would be “very difficult” to survive without Uncle Hu’s assistance.

Though a number of Chinese citizens said they’d reluctantly support a ‘burger’ bailout rather than see the companies disappear, most said this would be rewarding failure after decades of mismanagement and poor decision-making.

“Bailout” was the magic word Tuesday as McDonald’s had to give away millions of free kiddie meals because a Chinese netizen stumbled on an online promotion the company scrapped.

Tim Fenton, president of McDonald’s 37-country Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA) division said Wednesday that the company prepared an Internet coupon for an ad campaign that was considered in December but not approved.

He says someone apparently typed “bailout” into a McDonald’s promo code window and found it was good for a free kiddie meal.

Word about the code spread quickly on the Web and 24 million free meals were handed out before it was deactivated Wednesday morning.

Shanghai-area franchise owner Zhou Lipeng says his 82 stores gave away more than half a million meals, but that McDonald’s promised to reimburse him.

As a result of the losses, McDonald’s announced that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Threatened with massive job losses, the Chinese government quickly announced that bailout funding would be available before the end of the week.

Following the announcement, a McDonald’s spokesperson stated that the company is temporarily halting its ‘Open Door’ policy, launched last year to encourage Chinese consumers to visit McDonald’s and understand what it is all about. Consumers could tour the kitchen and ask questions about menu, quality, preparation, etc.

The policy will be replaced with a new ‘Ask Me’ program which invites customers to query crew members (or the company through its www.AskMe.com.cn Web site) about the use of its tax monies. This, McDonald’s executives say, is especially important in a country where transparency issues are of great public concern.

To further establish the brand’s transparency, nutrition information is available from in-store materials and soon will be on product packaging as well. It’s not something Chinese consumers requested, rather a way to further position McDonald’s as open and customer-friendly, Fenton said.

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