By Rhonda Zygocki

SAN RAMON, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Investment in Africa is on the rise as global companies are recognizing the vast opportunities that the continent has to offer.

According to a recent report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in partnership with Chevron Corp. CVX +0.23% , public capital accounted for 71% of financial flows to the developing world in 1960. Today that figure is 9%. While aid makes a tremendous difference, it’s the private sector, through its flows of capital, technology, and knowledge, that has become a vital force in the development of Africa.

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Like other developing regions around the world, Africa is too vast and its countries are too diverse to follow a single script, but the lessons we have learned from more than a century of operating in this energy-rich region can be applied by other companies interested in investing in this growing market.

Most importantly, we have learned the value of investing in local supply chains and how this helps improve economic conditions in the countries where we operate. Increasing private sector investment in local supply chains helps raise business and manufacturing standards, which can help promote fair competition, a stable fiscal and contractual environment, revenue transparency, and rule of law. It is also is a catalyst for job creation, the rise of a skilled workforce and economic diversification.

Rhonda Zygocki
Multinational companies can derive great benefit from engaging with local suppliers that can serve their needs, so it is in their interest to spend the time to qualify them. By doing so, these companies are helping to develop local businesses that can produce to international standards and codes of conduct.

Positive effects

At Chevron, we have seen many of our local suppliers expand from serving us, to serving others in our industry as well as other industries. As these local businesses grow, the positive economic ripple effect multiplies.

Businesses should also make it a priority to convene and work with local organizations, national leaders, local/regional officials and other stakeholders to address challenges in ways that are scalable and enduring.

For example, Chevron supports the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a country-driven initiative that strives to improve governance in countries rich in oil, gas, and mineral resources by creating and implementing uniform standards of revenue transparency. Twenty-one African countries have joined EITI; Chevron has contributed to this success through its long-standing membership on the International Board and its work with host governments.

Finally, companies should also recognize that economic and international development partnerships between the private and public sectors are not merely philanthropic endeavors — they are critical business investments.

Over decades of experience, our approach to community development has fundamentally shifted from donors to partners; from building bricks to building capacity; from short-term projects to multi-year endeavors, and from shared ceremonies celebrating a launch to shared progress that celebrates results.

Time and money

Corporations should approach these programs as a collaborative member of the community, not just a corporate donor. Our social investment experience has convinced us the private sector can play a valuable role in breaking the cycle of poverty and disease, while supporting economic development at a scale that can be felt at the national level.

Angola is a good example. The country experienced an important turning point on April 4, 2002 with the end of a 27-year civil war. The war had caused more than 4 million people to be displaced and the country’s infrastructure was in ruins. Angola’s president invited Chevron to help the country rebuild. By forming public-private partnerships with organizations like USAID and the United Nations Development Program, Chevron was able to pioneer a groundbreaking program aimed at catalyzing economic diversification and growth. The program helped rebuild commercial farming and launch the country’s first microcredit bank. Today, Angola is a more peaceful and prosperous nation, with a budding entrepreneurial culture and civil society.

If the last 100 years operating in Africa have taught us anything, it is that to invest in Africa is to partner with Africa. Forging strategic on-the-ground relationships can result in more streamlined business operations and increased returns in the future for both multinational corporations, host nations and their people. Now more than ever, the American private sector must seize the opportunity to fuel long-term economic and business success while helping to improve Africa’s security, stability, and a better quality of life.

Rhonda Zygocki is executive vice president of policy and planning for Chevron Corp.

By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — European stock markets climbed on Monday, with banks and resource firms in the lead, after growth data from China met analysts’ expectations and fueled investor optimism.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index XX:SXXP +0.37% gained 0.2% to 296.80, after closing out Friday with a 2.7% weekly gain.

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Shares of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB SE:SEBA +2.45% added 2.5% after the bank reported a stronger-than-expected rise in second-quarter profit.

French supermarket company Carrefour SA FR:CA +2.41% picked up 2% after analysts at Barclays lifted the firm to overweight from equal weight.

The broader European stock markets mirrored gains in Asia, where Chinese stocks had a strong trading day after the release of gross-domestic-product data on China. The National Bureau of Statistics said the economy grew 7.5% in the second quarter, weaker than the 7.7% expansion recorded in the first quarter, but matching expectations in separate surveys of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters.

The report came after China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei on Friday suggested the country’s economy would fall short of its targets and that the growth rate could average 7% this year, according to Xinhua news agency. The agency, however, over the weekend corrected the 7%-growth comments.

“The Chinese finance minister on Friday tried to guide the market expectations lower by saying that growth was going to be a little slower this year, so markets were relieved when the data came out today,” said Richard Perry, chief market strategist at Central Markets in London.

“But if we look at the fact that Chinese growth is still falling it’s not a massive positive reading. I think markets are taking it a little too positive, especially at the open,” he added.

Reuters
China’s economy grew in line with expectations in the second quarter data show on Monday.
Resource firms, which tend to rise on solid growth expectations from China, advanced in Europe after the data.

Heavyweight miner Rio Tinto PLC UK:RIO +1.02% AU:RIO +0.05% RIO -2.72% climbed 1% in London, and energy group BG Group PLC UK:BG +0.51% added 0.4%.

The FTSE 100 index UK:UKX +0.49% traded 0.4% higher at 6,570.15, on track to close at a six-week high.

In France, the CAC 40 index FR:PX1 +0.54% rose 0.4% to 3,870.71, shaking off a sovereign ratings downgrade from late Friday. Fitch Ratings downgraded the country’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing the high level of government indebtedness of the euro-zone nation.

Banks posted some of the biggest gains in Paris, with shares of Société Générale SA FR:GLE +1.11% up 1.2% and BNP Paribas SA FR:BNP +0.66% 0.9% higher.

Germany’s DAX 30 index DX:DAX +0.28% added 0.2% to 8,227.41

Sara Sjolin is a MarketWatch reporter based in London. Follow her on Twitter @sarasjolin.

By Saptarishi Dutta, Shreya Shah and Aditi Malhotra

Hindu couples performed marriage rituals during a mass marriage ceremony in Kolkata, March 17.
From the time most Indian men and women cross into their twenties, their near and dear ones are devoted to finding them “a match.”

Increasingly, many of these helpers turn to popular marriage portals, like shaadi.com.

But you can never have too much help, which is why one government body has dabbled in matchmaking as well.

The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, an association under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, which is in charge of education, has a page devoted to “unmarried” teachers.

The association runs public schools meant for the most part for families of federal employees that move often, though in some cases other local children attend as well. The body runs hundreds of schools around the country.

A disclaimer on the page states, “People are requested to verify facts themselves before taking any decision.”

Officials of the association, which is part of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, couldn’t be reached for comment.

India Real Time undertook the arduous task of seeing how effective the site was by calling many of the names on it. It turns out the list has led to at least one successful marriage.

Om Prakash Sachdeva, who teaches music, said he had his name added to his list in November 2010, and that he got about 20 phone calls from interested parties as result.

“I used to check the list everyday to see whether there was a suitable partner for me,” he said.

Among the calls he received was one from his future father-in-law – on the very first day his name was put online. “My father-in-law is fond of computers,” explained Mr. Sachdeva, who is from the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

Mr. Sachdeva got married in May 2011, for which he remains grateful to the list.

Others on the page appear to have married the old-fashioned way, through word of mouth.

Arbind Kumar, a 48-year-old schoolteacher in the eastern state of Jharkhand, had also asked for his name to be put on the list in 2012 soon after his first wife died. This July he got married to a 22-year-old woman his family found who lives in their village.

Mr. Kumar explained why he thinks the association wants to help the unmarried wed.

“They want to get their staff married so they concentrate more on their work,” he said. Now that he is married again, and has someone to cook meals for him, he said, he is able to focus more on teaching.

Others haven’t had luck with either method.

R.K. Nair, father of 29-year-old Deepti Nair, says they put her details on the list in 2011 and that the scheme is to match up likeminded, unattached teachers. Ms. Nair teaches math and science to primary school students in Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh in central India.

So far they haven’t succeeded in making a match, but not for want of suitors. The family received around 15 proposals of marriage, but the offers were turned down. “It was the issue of height and weight or age,” her father said.

For them it hasn’t been as useful a tool as they’d hoped.

“The list is not being updated,” he added. “Sometimes people are transferred, and it’s not changed on the list,” he said.

But if you were hoping to use the list to find a match, be prepared for disappointment.

Many of the numbers are no longer valid.

And yet others named on the list may no longer be available. Take Mr. Sachdeva.

Although he has been married for over two years, his name hasn’t yet been removed from the list.

“Even today I get calls at times,” said Mr. Sachdeva.

Follow India Real Time on Twitter @IndiaRealTime.

As the numbers pile up showing China’s sizzling growth cooling down, industries world-wide—from German paper-cutter makers to Indonesian palm-oil exporters—are confronting an altered landscape of winners and losers.
The ones that benefited the most from China’s rise are now being hurt. Others, aiming at China’s 1.3 billion consumers, are faring better.
Growth in China, the world’s second-biggest economy after the U.S., has been slowing since 2007’s peak, but that slowdown has accelerated recently.
China’s second-quarter gross domestic product released early Monday showed the economy expanded 7.5% from the year earlier, slower than the 7.7% growth in the first quarter.
That matches the government’s full-year growth target of 7.5%, a rate that would make this year the slowest since 1990. Some economists figure China will grow even slower than that.
Maruli Sitorus, 40 years old, a palm-oil plantation owner in North Sumatra, Indonesia, says his income has been halved over the past year as prices for palm oil—used in cooking oil and fuels—have slipped. “Clearly weak demand from China is affecting us,” he said.
China is trying to pull off a tricky rebalancing. It hopes to reshape its economy to be less reliant on construction and heavy industry, and more reliant on consumer spending. This is sparking optimism among industries such as car makers and food producers.
To boost domestic consumption, the government has raised minimum wages to put more money in people’s pockets and loosened controls on interest rates to give household savers better returns. It has tilted tax and land incentives toward industries that cater to consumption, such as food and autos, and away from heavy industries suffering from overcapacity, such as steel making and ship building.
China also said Monday that industrial output rose 8.9% in June from a year earlier, compared to a forecast of 9.1% and lower than May’s 9.2% growth. Fixed-asset investment also disappointed slightly, with 20.1% growth in the first half compared to a forecast of 20.2%. Consumer spending was a bright spot, as retail sales accelerated to 13.3% in June, compared with 12.9% growth in May. But disposable income growth for urban households slowed, to 6.5% year-on-year in the first half, down from 9.7% growth in the first half of 2012.
SK Group of South Korea this month signed a $160 million deal to establish an electric-car-battery joint venture in Beijing. “Most of our China projects are targeting consumers in China, not re-exports to other countries,” said spokesman Jung-min Yoo. “We’ll benefit from China’s new growth model.”
China’s economic growth is still strong, compared with much of the world. But recent single-digit expansion rates are a notable comedown from a 14.2% peak in 2007.
The deceleration is particularly hard on commodities producers—the biggest beneficiaries of China’s boom. A Standard & Poor’s study of more than 90 of China’s biggest companies found they will cut total capital expenditures this year for the first time in at least a decade. Investments in factories, assembly lines, smelters and telecommunications links tend to create big demand for raw materials that China imports.
Mr. Sitorus, the palm-oil plantation owner, had to slash the number of workers on his 25-hectare farm to six from 12 and put off fertilizing his fields and fixing his truck. “I have to be really frugal and have given up thinking about buying a new motorcycle or car,” he said.
China’s slowdown has hit people like Anthony Walsh. He is managing director for Ausco Modular, an Australian company that builds temporary camps for mine workers in places like Karratha, a mining town on Australia’s northwest coast.
“If you had a room in Karratha, 12 months ago you’d have filled it in a second,” he said. Today, a fifth of rooms once occupied by miners flown in from Australia’s east are empty. Rents are down 20%.
“The truth is that the China resources boom is over,” Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said Thursday in a speech. The unemployment rate in Australia, a mining powerhouse, is 5.7%, its highest in four years.
While China’s slowing growth hurts in places like Australia, it also means lower energy and raw-materials prices for the rest of the world. This, in turn, has tempered inflation, which has helped make it possible for central banks to stimulate struggling economies.
By contrast, makers of consumer goods—home appliances, clothing, food and the like—and companies that sell sophisticated equipment to businesses are more focused on China’s increasingly prosperous population of shoppers. Dienes Group, based outside Cologne, Germany, makes industrial knives used in machines such as paper cutters. Sales to China have tripled from 10 years ago to around €3 million, or about $3.9 million.
China now accounts for as much as 8% of Dienes Group’s €40 million in revenue. “Unless they completely fall apart, they will increase per capita GDP, and that will create more demand,” said Bernd Supe-Dienes, a managing partner.
In South Africa, demand for chromium and manganese is down. But officials are hoping that will be offset by rising demand for food. “We are more and more dependent on how their stomachs turn when they get out of bed in the morning,” said Theo de Jager, deputy president of Agri SA, a farmers’ association in South Africa.
The U.S. hasn’t felt China’s slowdown in part because demand for some of the top exports to China—airplanes and high-tech computer goods—has remained strong.
China is set to contribute 13% of global economic activity this year, compared with 5% in 2006. So even at a slower growth, China’s effect world-wide is significant.
A more serious decline in China’s growth rate would reverberate around the world. One risk is that Chinese firms, which are reluctant to lay off workers, would be forced to cut staff, hurting spending at home and undercutting the goal of shifting toward a consumer-driven economy.
Consumer demand has remained strong. However, observers caution that China’s shift is in the early stages and that investment growth has continued to lead the economy. Meaningful progress in rebalancing toward consumption could take years.
Asia’s top clothes retailer, Japan’s Fast Retailing Co., said Chinese shoppers’ appetite for its Uniqlo brand clothes remains strong. The casual-clothes chain is picking up its pace of new-store openings in China.
“As far as we are concerned at least, consumer spending has not been affected,” Chief Financial Officer Takeshi Okazaki said Thursday.
Sales of cars have stayed strong, rising 12% in the first half of the year to 10.7 million vehicles. Auto makers predict solid sales for the rest of the year in China.
Chinese are spending outside China as well. The number of Chinese tourists venturing abroad has doubled to 83 million from 2007 to 2012. That is one reason Thailand is expanding three of its airports.
In Australia, weak commodities exports have pushed the Australian dollar down 15% against the U.S. dollar, boosting tourism there by making it cheaper for foreign visitors. Chinese arrivals to Australia this year through May are up 19% to 334,000, compared with the year earlier period.
Russ Elliot, manager of the Reef Gateway Apartments in Cairns, a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, said local and foreign visitors to the hotel are up 20% from last year.

-Tom Orlik, Patrick McGroarty, Rhiannon Hoyle, George Nishiyama, In-Soo Nam, Brenda Cronin and Brian Blackstone contributed to this article.
Write to Alex Frangos at alex.frangos@wsj.com and Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@wsj.com

By Michael Kitchen

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Chinese officials said Monday they had detained four executives from British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC UK:GSK -0.06% GSK +0.09% in connection with a bribery probe, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The report quoted a senior Chinese security official as saying Glaxo transfered 3 billion Chinese yuan ($489 million) through travel agencies since 2007 and allegedly received bribes from those agencies. Glaxo previously said it was conducting its own investigation into allegations some of its China-based staff had offered bribes to health-care providers in return for prescribing Glaxo products.

July 12, 2013 5:42 AM

Airline Seats Available for Elite Fliers Only
Most passengers don’t get the full picture on open seating until the day before they fly

By SCOTT MCCARTNEY

When airline customers try to choose seats while purchasing tickets, what they see may not be what they can get.
Airlines routinely block coach seats for a variety of reasons, reducing the pool of available seats to reserve free of charge in advance when you book a trip.
On many flights now, 30% to 40% of coach seats are held back by the airline for premium customers, people with special needs or available only for a fee. Facing what look like, but often aren’t, high odds of getting a lousy seat at check-in, sitting apart from children or even getting bumped from an overbooked flight, many travelers feel pressured to pay for a reserved seat.
That pressure has increased as airlines have expanded the number of seats they block from early assignment and added more rows of extra-legroom coach seats, which are offered free or at a discount to elite-level frequent fliers but sold to others. Airlines say all the seats they block or assign for a fee are opened up shortly before departure and customers without advanced seat assignments almost always get accommodated. There is a higher risk of getting involuntarily bumped off flights if you don’t have a seat assignment, but it is rare.
Doug Berg, a frequent business traveler from Detroit, was surprised to see the only spots open in coach were Economy Plus seats with extra legroom for a United Airlines flight from Denver to Spokane, Wash., in May. He had a seat for his Detroit-to-Denver leg, but didn’t realize his travel agent hadn’t been able to reserve a seat for the flight to Spokane until he went to check in online and print boarding passes.
Worried he might get bumped, which would have been a huge problem, since it was a night flight and he had to be at work at 7 a.m. the next day, he paid United an extra $44 to reserve an Economy Plus seat.
At the airport, kiosks showed lots of available free seats in the economy section of the Boeing 737. At the gate, Mr. Berg polled fellow passengers about when they got their seat assignment and learned many reserved coach seats a few hours before departure. Mr. Berg felt ripped off because it appeared United had created an artificial shortage.
“Either seats are available or they are not,” he said. “It frosted me having paid a fee to get an assigned seat to ensure I would get to Spokane while there were seats in my class available.”
Mr. Berg wrote to United to complain and the airline responded saying if he sent documentation, the airline would refund the $44.
I had a similar experience on a recent United Express regional jet flight. At booking, no seats were available to reserve. Two days before departure, two Economy Plus seats became available, and I paid $39 to grab one. The next day, 24 hours before departure, 10 seats opened for free seat assignment.
United says customers with tickets but no seat assignment almost always get seats at check-in. Seats without extra legroom open up as customers decide to pay the fee for Economy Plus and elite-level customers get upgraded to first class or to Economy Plus. Silver-level frequent fliers, for example, don’t get Economy Plus seats free of charge until 24 hours before departure. As they get moved to open Economy Plus seats, “traditional” coach seats open for passengers without seat assignments.
On average, United says, 22% of its economy seats are Economy Plus. But that runs up to 40% on some planes. When there is little demand for Economy Plus, a significant percentage of passengers may face the anxiety of no seat assignment.
“In the hugely overwhelming majority of situations, people will get a seat assigned before departure,” United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said.
American Airlines blocks a large number of coach seats, both with extra legroom and without, to make them available to customers with top-level status in its frequent-flier program on every flight. Those seats show up on seat maps as occupied for customers without elite status, leading them to conclude seats are scarce. This prompts a portion of them to pony up.
Two weeks before its July 16 departure, American Flight 34 from Los Angeles to New York showed only two middle seats in the back of the airplane available, plus 11 Preferred seats—regular coach seats toward the front without extra legroom—available for a $56.44 fee. Logging in with elite status, however, showed the same flight had far more regular coach seat availability. Flight 34 actually had 12 open window seats and nine open aisle seats.
A week later on Tuesday, the seat map available to non-elites showed only one available middle seat, 38E, in the back of the Boeing 767-200, plus the same 11 Preferred seats at $56.44 each. But elite-level customers saw a total of 41 of 128 coach seats empty.
American says it doesn’t think blocking open seats from view pressures customers into paying for extra-legroom or Preferred seats. The number of seats blocked for elite-level customers varies with demand and “a large percentage of specific seat assignments are still available to all customers at no additional cost,” spokeswoman Cameron King said. “And for our customers who value additional legroom, a certain type of seat or the ability to reserve a specific seat, we have made products available for them as well.”
Unlike American, Delta Air Lines shows the Preferred seats it has held back for elite customers, but doesn’t allow regular customers to book them until 24 hours before departure. At that time, Preferred seats are offered for a fee to nonelite-level customers.
US Airways also blocks seats for elite-level customers and labels them Preferred. The airline sells what it calls Choice seats in rows near the front of the cabin for $5 to $99 one-way that don’t have extra legroom but do have early boarding privileges. On the whole, US Airways says 9.5% of its coach seats are labeled Choice. Preferred, Choice and exit-row seating, which is sometimes sold for a fee, account for an average of 30% of coach seats on the airline’s planes.
Those seats open up to customers without seat assignments who don’t want to pay starting 24 hours before departure, US Airways said.
Consider US Airways Flight 12 from Phoenix to New York on Wednesday. Two days before departure, a seat map showed only 12 Choice seats available for purchase. A day later, less than 24 hours before departure, nine coach seats, five of them middle seats, were available free of charge. Also, 11 Choice seats remained and two exit-row seats opened.

Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

Every morning, much of Penang sits down to a bowl of koay teow th’ng: wide rice noodles in any combination of duck, pork or chicken broth with floating fish balls and hunks of meat, all garnished with crispy browned garlic.

The dish, thought to be an iteration of a noodle soup introduced to the island by Chaozhou immigrants, may well be the island’s most popular. So ubiquitous is it between 7 a.m. and noon that at least seven koay teow th’ng stalls operate simultaneously within a three-block radius of my George Town home.

Yet I rarely see tourists among the throngs of eaters. Most visitors to Penang, even those well versed in local street foods – Malaysians and Singaporeans excepted – seem unaware that the dish exists.

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It isn’t the only Asian street food to be loved by locals but ignored by visitors. Tourists pound Bangkok’s pavements in search of the perfect pad thai but pass on koay teow lad naa, flat rice noodles stir-fried with black soy and doused with mild gravy. Travellers to Hanoi seek out pho, yet overlook northern Vietnam’s bun ca, rice noodles in a dill-fragrant tomato and seafood broth with fish. Perhaps the best example of a hometown favorite unloved by (mostly Western) foreigners is congee in Hong Kong.

“I’m not flying all the way to Asia to eat rice porridge,” an acquaintance responded recently when I advised her to seek it out during her three-day stay in the SAR.

I’ve often wondered what makes some local specialties sing in the eyes of visitors while others go neglected. Some suffer from the Plain Jane Syndrome: a combination of monochromatic appearance and deceptively simple preparation that reduces surface appeal. To the uninitiated, congee appears to be little more than a creamy near-paste of overcooked rice; it’s only natural that many would pass it over in favor of golden egg noodles garnished with succulent pork.

And then there is what Leela Punyaratabandhu, a food writer whose cookbook of classic Thai dishes will be published next year, calls the Intimidation Factor. She observes that just as many visitors to Penang shun koay teow th’ng stalls, so do tourists tend to avoid Thai wet-dry noodle shops.

“If I were a foreign visitor to Thailand … I wouldn’t know how and what to order,” she says, noting that knowledge of how a bowl of noodles is composed and what ingredients are commonly available are prerequisite to confidently customizing an order (sample instructions: “fat cellophane noodles, dry, fish balls, no crispy wonton, no beansprouts”).

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But maybe the biggest reason some dishes, no matter how well-loved on home turf, never achieve global street-food fame is rooted in an imprecise alchemy of migration and marketing. By all rights pho, a deceptively simple combination of broth, rice noodles, meat and bean sprouts, should take a back seat to a dish like bun rieu, an intoxicating crab and tomato soup featuring cloud-like “dumplings” of crab fat. But as Australian food writer and street-food tour leader Mark Lowerson points out, the large number of pho shops opened overseas by Vietnamese emigrants mean it’s “rare for a tourist to come to Vietnam not knowing or having tried it somewhere.”

The dish’s popularity overseas has even looped back to influence how Vietnamese at home advise visitors. Proud of what Mr. Lowerson describes as “Vietnam’s most renowned contribution to world cuisine,” most are likely to name pho as the top must-try dish.

There are lessons here for travelers in search of great, but underrated, street foods. First, forget what you know of the local cuisine from restaurants at home. Second, don’t be daunted by the challenge of ordering with inadequate information. Finally, don’t be fooled by appearances – they’re not always an indicator of taste.

Readers, what are your favorite under-the-radar street foods? Share your tips in the comments.

Robyn writes about food and travel. She’s lived in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur. Two years ago she moved to Penang — for the hawker food, of course. Follow her on Twitter @EatingAsia

Stories of travel in Chinese airports are a horror genre in their own right, and with good reason: When it comes to on-time arrivals or departures, the country’s airports are literally the worst in the world.

According to FlightStats, which tracks airport statistics, Beijing’s airport ranks dead last among the world’s top 35, with fully 82% of flights failing to leave on time. Second worst was Shanghai, at 71%.

Such chronic tardiness has led to periodic passenger meltdowns and even physical altercations. Last year, the country’s Civil Aviation Administration was prompted to issue a circular urging officials to maintain better order and ensure that overexcited passengers who vent their rage by “smashing counters and rushing onto runways” are punished.

Even Hong Kong, which prides itself on its efficiency and speedy turnarounds, ranked 29th among the top 35 international airports, with only 64% of flights departing on time. That’s down from 22nd in January, when 77% were on time.

A spokesman for Hong Kong’s airport authority said that “inclement weather or the operation of airlines” might account for the increase in delays. He also cited a rise in traffic as well as bottlenecks at airports in mainland China, which he said is the destination of 10% to 20% of flights departing Hong Kong. “Of course if there are problems there they will be delays in our airport as well,” he said.

Most flight delays aren’t as punishing as the one in Shanghai last year that stranded Newark-bound United Airlines passengers for three days. Still, 42% of Beijing’s delays were considered “excessive,” defined as 45 minutes or more. And 5% of all flights were simply canceled.

Aviation experts cite military control of China’s skies as one difficulty for civil aviation. Former Hong Kong Dragon Airlines flight attendant Clare Fung, who teaches at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University, said the airport woes are largely the result of poor air-traffic control. Another issue, she said, is that unlike U.S. airports or, say, London’s Heathrow, China’s airports are largely government-controlled. “It’s difficult to improve, to be honest, because the industry is not so commercially oriented,” Ms. Fung said.

That fact can make the reason behind delays less transparent, she said. “When I was flying, we’d always encounter severe delays flying through China, but they’d never tell you the real reason,” she said.

On one occasion in 2006, Ms. Fung recalled, her colleagues were stuck on a flight that sat awaiting takeoff on a Shanghai runway for six hours—without electricity. Eventually, some passengers felt faint and ambulances had to be called, she said.

Air travel in China has boomed, with domestic traffic in February up 13% from a year earlier, even after factoring out the boost from the Lunar New Year, a peak travel period. And during the country’s week-long “Golden Week” holiday period last fall, the number of tourists visiting China’s top tourist sites jumped by 21% to 34 million.

“More and more airlines want to fly in and out of China, more and more people want to fly,” said Ms. Fung. “The development of the aviation industry just can’t support the fast development of the tourism industry.”

—Te-Ping Chen. Follow her on Twitter @tepingchen.

Like China Real Time on Facebook and follow us Twitter for the latest updates.

By Wilawan Watcharasakwet

MAEKLONG, Thailand – The smattering of food stalls and noodle shacks here in Maeklong just south of Bangkok isn’t known as the “Risk Your Life Market” for nothing.

The Talad Sieng Tai market, some 78 kilometers away from Thailand’s capital, is a big hit with foreign tourists because of the railway line that runs through the center of it. Hordes of visitors come each day to marvel at the trains that pass throng of stalls eight times a day, narrowly scraping past soup huts, butchers shops and vegetable displays as vendors scramble to remove awnings, baskets and umbrellas out of the engines’ path just in the nick of time.

It’s a popular location for Thai beer adverts and as setting for local food and travel television shows, where pundits try out the barbecued frogs and other delicacies sold here. After being featured on CNN and on television shows as far away as Germany, rising numbers of visitors are descending on the market to video the trains and, hopefully, step out of the way before the engines pass by in a sort of slow motion, mechanized version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Pete Haines, 47 years old, from Australia. “I’ve been to many countries but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Wilawan Watcharasakwet/The Wall Street Journal
Trains run through a Thai market eight times a day, prompting vendors to quickly pull back awnings and goods, while tourists calculate just how much time they have to safely snap a picture. See more photos. Video.
But with hundreds of visitors now flocking to this 300-meter-long stretch of the train tracks, local vendors worry that somebody will get hurt, prompting Thai authorities to shut down the market and forcing them to find some other way to make a living.

“If something bad happens to the tourists, it will become a big deal and we’ll be in trouble because the market might get closed down,” said Thassanee Chaimongkol, who sells vegetables from her spot next to the narrow tracks, which are owned by the State Railway of Thailand.

The chief of the local railway 100 meters away, Pattana Wongmujarin, insists that safety of the tourists’ is the vendors’ responsibility. Like in other parts of Asia, from India to the Philippines, state-owned railway lines are important commercial hot-spots, a chance to buy and sell in high-traffic areas without the burden of paying rent.

“We can’t stop this. The market is well established and it’s now become a tourist destination,” Mr. Pattana says. “But I’ve always insisted to vendors that if there is any damage to the track or the train, somebody needs to take responsibility.”

In some ways the inundation of visitors to Maeklong shows how Thailand is struggling to accommodate the surging numbers of tourists flocking to this exotic Buddhist kingdom. The hit Leonardo di Caprio film “The Beach” about a band of travelers trying to create their own idyll on a southern Thai island ironically led to throngs of motor boats visiting the setting for the film, Phi-Phi island, on day-trips. More recently, a Chinese comedy called “Lost in Thailand” contributed to a fresh wave of visitors. MasterCard has predicted that Bangkok would attract more visitors this year than any other city, including Paris, London and New York.

Local Thai vendors at Talad Sieng Tai are finding it hard to cope with the growing number of tourists, though, especially as they are struggling to make a living wage as it is. Many say they earn around $10 to $15 a day.

Some people who work in the market complain that they are poorly equipped to police the tourists, many of whom arrive in luxury buses and appear to pay little regard to the consequences for the market’s stall-holders if something goes wrong. “This is our workplace where we earn money to take care of our families,” said Ms. Thassanee, the vegetable seller.

There have been a few close scrapes already. When a reporter paid a visit recently, gaggles of tourists positioned themselves on the tracks to get the best shots on their cameras. As a train approached at a modest 10 kilometers an hour, the driver blew its horn several times to warn people to get out of the way, but many visitors ignored the warnings as vendors yelled “Get out of the way!”

One visitor forced the slow-moving train to stop when she failed to get out of the way in time. Others scrambled into food stalls and vegetable displays when the realized that they were in danger of being hit.

“She was lucky,” reckons Ms. Thassanee.

Seafood vendor Lek Pumpruksa recalls the day a tourist leaped out of the way of an oncoming train only to dislodge an awning that had been tied up out of the way. A pole suddenly swung forward, smashing a mirror on the train. Ms. Lek, 66 years old, said the tourist involved refused to pay for the damage and fled, leaving the hapless vendor to pick up the 3,000 baht, or roughly $100 bill.

Another vendor, Chonnicha Chaimongkol, describes another tourist who ran into a butcher’s stall as the train passed by, dislodging a heavy trolley that bounced back into another vendor’s leg, causing a severe cut.

“We’ve been told to take care of the tourists and make sure they are safe,” Ms. Chonnicha said. “But they are risking their lives by standing too close to the tracks.”

Some tourists, such as Mr. and Mrs. Pionteks from Germany prefer take the safer option and ride the train rather than trying to leap out of its path.

But while so far there is no official record of injuries at the Maeklong market, locals fear it could just be a matter of time before somebody does get hurt.

“No matter how fast they run, if they fall down, they won’t have any legs to run on,” said 75-year-old coconut seller Chei Satthabutr.

By Sara Sjolin

LONDON (MarketWatch) — European stock markets rose for a fifth straight day at the open on Friday, tracking gains in the U.S., where the S&P 500 index SPX +1.36% closed at a record high the prior day on upbeat Federal Reserve comments. The Stoxx Europe 600 index XX:SXXP +0.37% climbed 0.4% to 297.69, on track for a 3.3% weekly gain. Shares of Invensys PLC surged 16% after the software firm said it had received an indicative offer from Schneider Electric SA FR:SU -3.89% . Schneider Electric shares were down 3.6%. Among country-specific indexes, the U.K.’s FTSE 100 index UK:UKX +0.39% added 0.4% to 6,571.31, while Germany’s DAX 30 index DX:DAX +0.90% rose 0.6% to 8,211.25. France’s CAC 40 index FR:PX1 +0.24% picked up 0.4% to 3,885.07.

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