Rosneft is set to take on Gazprom when Russia puts the Kovykta gas field on the block on Tuesday as the country's top crude producer aims to muscle in on the gas export monopoly's plans to supply China. Gazprom and state holding firm Rosneftegaz have been allowed to bid for the right to develop the Kovykta field, which is located near Lake Baikal and has reserves of 2 trillion cubic metres. That's enough to meet world demand for eight months.

China has required some small- and medium-sized banks to deposit more reserves at the central bank to rein in inflation and aggressive loan growth, the state-run China Securities Journal reported today, citing unnamed sources. The report said the punitive increase in banks' reserve requirement ratio, which took effect earlier this week, was mainly targeted at China's regional banks. But the report didn't name any banks. Though China has yet to announce an official lending target for this year, it has used various monetary tools to tame credit growth and inflation.

Now that it has passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, China is considering the next step as a world power: making its money a global currency, the International Herald Tribune reported. No one expects that to happen immediately. And even the Chinese government is wary of making some of the free-market moves that would enable the renminbi to take its place alongside the dollar, euro and Japanese yen as a fully convertible reserve currency. Still, over the last year Beijing has begun to gradually loosen its tight currency controls.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on a visit Monday to Latin America's biggest economy, urged Brazilian officials to help the U.S. pressure China to allow its currency to appreciate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Though officials in public shied away from specifics of any plan to coordinate calls for a stronger yuan, a person familiar with the discussions said Brazil and the U.S. may speak with a common voice on the issue in a coming meeting of the Group of 20 major economies.

China said Thursday that for the first time it would allow some cities to impose a property tax on homeowners in the hope of curbing speculation in the housing market and also reducing the government’s reliance on land auctions for income, the International Herald Tribune reported. China’s State Council, or cabinet, announced the decision a day after releasing a broader set of measures aimed at taming housing prices and preventing a property bubble from threatening the nation’s fast-growing economy.

China went from scooping up the most Japanese debt in a year to selling the most, exiting the world’s lowest yields as forecasters expect the yen to retreat further from the 15-year high seen in November, Bloomberg reported. The country sold a net 81.3 billion yen ($979 million) of Japanese bonds in November, Japan’s Ministry of Finance said yesterday. China had been set for the biggest yearly increase since at least 2005 before unwinding with net sales in three of the four months through November.

One of China's biggest cities is finalizing plans for a new tax on high-end residential real estate, state media reported, a long-discussed measure to escalate the fight against rising property prices that have fueled frustration among the country's urban middle class, The Wall Street Journal reported. The mayor of Chongqing, Huang Qifan, has recommended approval of the tax by the municipal legislature, and the Chinese Ministry of Finance has approved the tax in principle, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Sunday.

The Chinese-backed investor trying to buy 20 New Zealand farms -- most linked to the Crafar family -- has protected its deal by pushing the terms of settlement for the purchase of 16 farms in receivership out to September 30 this year, The National Business Review reported. Natural Dairy NZ Holdings told the Hong Kong stock exchange that its advisers needed time to consider the decision by two New Zealand cabinet ministers to refuse overseas investment approval for the farm sales.

China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang said China will sign $7.3 billion worth of deals with Spain on Wednesday, according to a Spanish official, after reiterating Beijing's pledge to back the crisis-ridden European nation's austerity measures and offer of potential support for Spain's future fundraising, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr.

Rising food prices helped push China's consumer price index to a two-year high of 5.1% in November, and nowhere are the pressures felt more deeply than with cooking oil, more vital in Chinese cooking than even rice, The Wall Street Journal reported. Rising oil prices mean daily hardship for Chinese on meager incomes. And though food represents only about one-third of the CPI, it accounts for about 75% of the index's recent rise. Such price challenges are a primary reason China's central bank abruptly raised interest rates twice in 10 weeks, most recently on Christmas Day.