So Much for Sanctions: China, Iran Iron Out Oil Agreement

China has, at least for now, dashed any hopes that it plans to obey tighter U.S. sanctions against Iran after hammering out an agreement to resume some imports of Iranian crude.

State-owned Unipec, one of China’s top importers, reached an agreement with National Iranian Oil Co. earlier this week to renew an annual supply contract that had lapsed at the end of the year. During the negotiations, which dragged into February and were only resolved after a visit to Beijing by Iran’s deputy oil minister, imports fell by about 280,000 barrels a day and halved the amount of Iranian crude shipped to China in January and February.

China’s Anti-Social Financing

If you thought China’s new loan data for January was disappointing, check out Friday’s numbers for total social financing.

New total social finance – a measure that includes bank loans, off balance sheet lending and funds raised through the bond and equity markets – fell 45% compared to a year ago. That’s even sharper than the 29% fall in bank loans reported earlier in the month.

Why East Asian Students Are Superior

American parents looking to send their children to the world’s best schools might want to start looking East.

And we don’t mean the East Coast.

East Asia is now home to the world’s best primary and secondary schools, producing students who are able to outperform their counterparts in the Western world, according to a recent report from the Grattan Institute, a think tank based in Australia.

Breakfast With Former IMF China Hand Eswar Prasad

Eswar Prasad, once the International Monetary Fund’s top China hand, still finds open doors at Beijing’s top economic agencies.

The slender 46-year-old economist, who holds posts at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and Cornell University, is in Beijing and Shanghai to discuss a new report he and co-author Lei Ye wrote on the international role of China’s currency, the yuan (also known as the renminbi). At the same time, he’s holding meetings with officials from China’s central bank, banking regulatory commission and China Investment Corp., the country’s huge sovereign-wealth fund.

Mr. Prasad recently sat down for breakfast with the Wall Street Journal’s Bob Davis.

So This is What Proview’s ‘iPAD’ Looks Like

Proview, the company currently locked in a trademark battle with Apple in China over use of the name “iPad,” has released images showing a computer called the “iPAD” that it began producing in 1998. While’s Proview’s iPAD doesn’t look anything like Apple’s iPad, it does bear a striking resemblance to another Apple product.

Request for State Department to Explain China Gang-Buster Case

At least one member of Congress is demanding that the State Department release diplomatic cables from the recent Wang Lijun incident, in which the former Chongqing police chief appeared to take refuge inside a U.S. consulate earlier this month even as large numbers of security forces pursued him.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, requested that all communications between the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, the U.S. embassy in Beijing and the State Department in Washington be released by Friday to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Top China Stories from WSJ: Xi in Hollywood, iPads Off Amazon

Your daily roundup of the best of The Wall Street Journal’s China coverage:

Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping seeks to highlight the benefits of U.S.-China commercial ties in visits to Iowa and Los Angeles; Amazon removes iPads from its Chinese website; China is set to move past India as the world’s largest gold buyer.

What Iowa’s Wrestling Fans Thought About Xi Jinping’s Visit

Xi Jinping, China’s presumptive next leader, made a splash in Iowa on Wednesday and Thursday when he visited the small Mississippi River town of Muscatine, and then visited Des Moines for an agricultural forum and to tour a local family farm.

But if Mr. Xi was seeking attention from local residents, in Des Moines he faced potent competition: the annual high school wrestling state championships.

Delving into Dreamworks’ China Film Deal (Video)

In 2011 Dreamworks distributed ‘Kung Fu Panda 2′ in China, which allowed only 20 foreign films to be imported that year. Now, the animation company plans to announce a tie-up with two Chinese media companies. WSJ’s Deborah Kan speaks to Laurie Burkitt.

As Xi Charms Iowa, China Hedges Corn Ties With U.S.

While Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to Iowa this week pushed U.S. farms to the forefront of the bilateral agenda, a separate Chinese visit farther south could end up delivering a blow to the U.S. farmers who have been praising the jobs that China helped them create.

In a ceremony in Buenos Aires on Wednesday, the same day that Xi was visiting Iowa (the U.S.’s largest corn producing state), China’s food safety chief signed a deal with Argentina’s agriculture minister that effectively opens the Chinese market to Argentina’s corn exports.