BizChina

China Unicom has launched a long-expected application store for users to download apps like games and Internet browsers to their mobile devices, making it the latest mobile carrier looking to reproduce the success of Apple’s App Store.

Mobile carriers, especially, are building their own takes on the App Store as they look for sources of revenue besides providing simple data connections, a business where tough competition drives down margins. Many carriers want to control their own download stores in addition to any offered by the makers of their customers’ handsets.

ZTE, a Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment and mobile phones, said this week it helped build the application service – called the WoStore – and that it will support “all open smartphone platforms” except the iPhone, as well as devices like tablets.

A Catholic priest’s willingness to speak his mind about Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong business leader who is one of the city’s biggest real-estate developers, has prompted meetings with a representative of Mr. Li and an unusual statement of “regret” from the church — though not from the priest.

It all started on Oct. 31, when Reverend Thomas Law of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong compared Li Ka-shing to the devil in a discussion criticizing property practices. After a Halloween party, the Rev. Law said that ghosts couldn’t compare to greedy property developers and mentioned Mr. Li as the “true devil that kills people.”

Starbucks Corp. signed a deal with the Chinese provincial government of Yunnan to set up its first-ever coffee-bean farm in the world to cater to a rapidly growing population of coffee drinkers in China amid a global battle for quality coffee beans.

In the southwest province steeped in thousands of years of tea production, the Seattle-based coffee chain is hiring and training local coffee growers. The hope is that Chinese-grown arabica beans, a bitter-earthy variety, will fill the cups of a culture that is acquiring a growing taste for coffee.

In a sign of the changing fortunes of the world's top two economies, China's biggest auto maker, SAIC Motor Corp., is negotiating to acquire a stake of about 1% in General Motors Co. worth about $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The U.S. auto maker also is prepared to sell more than $1 billion worth of shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. Combined, the sales would give foreign investors roughly 16% of the shares to be sold next week under an initial public offering of stock, and give them a stake of some 4% in the Detroit auto maker. GM declined to comment on the investment talks.

The issue of overseas investors buying GM shares in the company's IPO has been a sensitive one for the U.S. government, which plans to reduce its 61% stake in the auto maker to about 35% through the IPO.