The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.

China’s industrial enterprises posted an annual increase of 25.3% in profits in the first 10 months of 2011, 1.7 percentage points lower than in the first 3 quarters, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement on Sunday.

China’s official Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 49.0 in November, the lowest level since March 2009.

At the center of a firestorm early this year over copyright lawsuits from writers, China’s biggest search engine Baidu is attempting to reshape its image and business model through an agreement with the China Written Works Copyright Society.

The recently concluded patent auction is a successful practice in  exploring a new mode for technology transfer. Meanwhile, it sets a precedent in the competitive auction, in large patches, of intellectual property rights from the same technical field by domestic research institutes.

In his first public speech since being named as China’s top securities regulator, Guo Shuqing said on Thursday that supervision of the country’s securities market will focus on cracking down on insider trading.

The State Council, or China’s cabinet, has approved a regulation that aims to standardize bidding processes for construction and other business-related projects in order to rule out fraud and misconduct.

The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said Wednesday it will lower banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by 50 basis points for the first time in three years in order to replenish liquidity in the country’s banking system as inflation eases.