Beijing  - Japanese Prime Minister  arrived in China Wednesday for two days of talks that were expected to focus on issues including the global financial crisis and North Korea.

Aso was scheduled to meet Chinese leaders including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said before the visit.

Beijing - China and Peru on Tuesday signed a free trade agreement (FTA) that the Chinese government hailed as an "important signal" of closer international cooperation amid the global financial crisis. "With the global financial crisis looming, the China-Peru deal sends a positive message of deepening cooperation and tiding over difficulties," state media quoted Chinese Commerce Ministry official Zhu Hong as saying.

Beijing - China on Tuesday protested Vietnam's "illegal" appointment of a governor for the disputed Xisha islands in the South China Sea. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the Xisha islands and their adjacent waters," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement.

Vietnam's April 25 appointment of a chairman of a People's Committee for the islands - also known internationally as the Paracels, and in Vietnam as the Huyen dao Hoang Sa - was "illegal and invalid," Jiang said.

Beijing  - Germany's Allianz Group and US-based American Express have sold shares valued at up to 2 billion dollars in China's biggest commercial bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the companies said on Tuesday.

Allianz said it had sold 3.216 billion shares, or half of its stake in ICBC, to "a select group of investors through a private sale."

With China-based Skytone's Alpha 680 netbook sending ripples of excitement after its online spotting earlier this week by Computerworld blogger Seth Weintraub, Skytone's co-founder Nixon Wu has confirmed that the netbook is going through final testing process, and will hit the markets within three months.

Roughly priced at $250, the Alpha 680 will run on Google's Android operating system, and will make use of the economical and energy-efficient ARM processor - used in mobile phones, including iPhone - rather than the commonly-used Atom processor used in most netbooks.

Beijing - China suspended imports of pigs and pork products from Mexico and three US states Monday, following the death of at least 20 Mexicans from an outbreak of swine flu. The agriculture ministry and China's quality watchdog issued a joint notice suspending all imports of live pigs or products containing pork from Mexico and the US states of Texas, California and Kansas.

In another emergency notice issued Sunday, the health ministry reassured the public that there is no evidence to suggest people can contract swine flu by eating pork.