BizChina

Minor scuffles erupted outside Apple's flagship store in Beijing during the weekend as thousands of customers lined up to purchase the hotly anticipated iPhone 4.

Some would-be buyers waited all night for the chance to buy the equipment and a few anxious people lost their cool, causing police to be called to the store in Sanlitun Village.

It was the first time that the fourth version of the popular handset has been officially available on the Chinese mainland.

A number of people camped overnight while others waited in line for hours in order to be among the first in China to buy the phone, which went on sale in the capital on Saturday. Lines wrapped around the Apple store and filled much of the popular shopping plaza.

China's massive steel sector produced 2 percent more crude steel in the first 10 days of November than in late October, data from the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) showed on Thursday.

The country's average daily crude steel output stood at 1.601 million tons in the first 10 days of November, up from 1.564 million tons per day in the last 11 days of October.

The association's member producers, about 77 medium- and large-sized steel mills, produced 1.333 million tons each day during the November 10-day period, little-changed from late October.

CISA earlier expected the country's steel production to stay at low levels in November and December.

Huawei Technologies Co, China's biggest telecommunications-equipment maker, forecast it will beat Ericsson AB to become the top producer of gear for the next generation of mobile-phone networks.

"We have confidence we are better than others, we are better than number two," Ying Weimin, president of closely held Huawei's business devoted to the fourth-generation wireless technology known as long-term evolution (LTE), said in an interview in Hong Kong on Tuesday. "Globally, we believe we have the best market position."

The comments underscore growing confidence among Chinese equipment makers challenging Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks in the $38 billion market for phone gear such as routers and switches. Huawei and Shenzhen-based ZTE Corp are set to capture half of industry orders in five years, compared with about 30 percent now, because they've caught up with Western rivals in terms of technology, said Jim Tang, an analyst at Shanghai-based Shenyin Wanguo Securities Co.

China's gold consumption is set to rise by about four percent from a year earlier to 430 tons this year, said a senior executive of China National Gold Corp, one of the country's largest gold producers.

Sun Zhaoxue, the company's general manager, said that accelerating domestic output will reduce China's need to import.

"China's gold production has been gradually increasing and will continue to do so in the coming years, so imports could start to gradually fall," Sun told a conference in the port city of Tianjin.

Sun's view contradicts that of most analysts, who expect China's gold imports to rise in the coming years, as demand for bullion increases from both official and private investment purchases.