Rio Executives, Stern Hu, an Australian, and three Chinese colleagues, have spent seven months in custody after they were arrested last July. They were originally charged for a capital offence of obtaining confidential state secrets.

Greece's debt crisis and probable credit tightening in China prevailed over the stock market, and share prices in HK fell as a result. The market in Hong Kong has been affected by the negativity in China and Greece.

Hang Seng Index fell 0.25 percent. Turnover declined to HK$61.7 billion ($$7.9 billion) from HK$65.9 billion on Wednesday.

While acknowledging the impediments posed by burgeoning inflation, the World Bank in its quarterly estimate of Chinese economic conditions raised its growth forecast of the giant Asian economy from previous 9 per cent to a 9.5 per cent.

The Chinese state radio on Tuesday reported that U. K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband has warned not to pressurize China regarding the issue of currency exchange rates. This was stated two days after Premier Wen Jiabao said that external pressure on the currency was obstructing Beijing currency improvements.

The probability of Google closing its China site Google. cn, in view of the rising hacking and censorship in the country, are now high, the analysts at Analysys International have expressed the fear of a heavy loss in terms of technological advantages.

On Saturday, the Financial Times reported that the world’s leading search engine, Google is now “99.9%” sure to shut its Chinese search engine after a long battle with China over censorship.

Google has decided to remain silent on this issue and refused to give any details on discussion with the Chinese Government.

China's central bank cited that a stronger yuan won't help curb the imbalance in trade between China and the U. S. after President Barack Obama repeatedly called for the Asian nation to move to a "market-oriented exchange rate."

China is rejoicing yet again, with official figures revealing that the country's exports managed to climb by 46% during the month of February. Not only has this been a good news for China, but the whole world, as the rise signifies a strong recovery in global trade after the deep slump which had been a result of the global financial crisis.

Reports have revealed that the United States is closely studying whether it can legally challenge the restrictions that China imposes in terms of Internet that recently ended up hurting Google and various other US companies operating across the country. On Tuesday, however, a top US trade official stressed that better result would be yielded if direct talks are carried out with Beijing.

China Southern Airlines Co., the nation's biggest carrier, reported a rise to the biggest levels since June 2008 in Hong Kong trading following the announcement of plans to sell at least 10.75 billion Yuan ($1.6 billion) of new shares to pare debts.