Chinese sell-off

TIANJIN Simpson Household Electric Appliances, a Sino-Australian project that stopped production around the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, became the first joint venture to be auctioned off in China when the Bank of China's Tianjin branch bought it for 14.4m yuan ( pounds 1.4m).

The company, a venture between Australia Simpson, Tianjin Household Electric Appliances Industrial Company and the Bank of China's Tianjin Trust and Consultation Company, started operations in 1988. Debt-ridden, it stopped production in June 1989 and announced bankruptcy in January this year.