• Defying China, Taiwan elects William Lai Ching-te as president | Asia
• Rio Tinto sees Beijing’s stimulus driving iron ore demand as China receives Australia’s largest copper order in 4 years
• Apple gets deeper into China’s smartphone price wars with widening iPhone discounts, but rival Huawei stays above the fray
• Chinese city named and shamed for ‘white elephant’ tram as spending put under microscope
• Indonesia says ‘strong indication’ of safety violation led to fire at Chinese-owned nickel plant that killed 21 people
• China’s Xi Jinping lays out road map for becoming ‘financial superpower’ – but warns risk can throw efforts off-track
• China’s economy beat target with 5.2% growth in 2023, Premier Li Qiang tells Davos forum
• As China’s economy slows, Africa stands at a critical juncture
• Jimmy Lai trial: Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece calls Western politicians ‘shameless liars’, accuses them of glorifying Hong Kong tycoon
• Watched by strangers: China mother live-streams son, 9, doing homework, says he works 3 times faster
• China holds moral high ground as global leader, top diplomat says in push for alternative world order
• Japanese investors want China to restart visa-free entries into ‘most important’ market
• Former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s son Hu Haifeng promoted to deputy minister after serving a decade in regional posts
• China’s experimental ALS drug achieves unexpected results for patient
• Can China’s elderly become a silver economic lining?
• Tech war: Chinese chip-tool giant Naura forecasts surge in 2023 sales on strong local demand amid US export controls
• ‘Big Chip’: China is building a wafer-sized processor to beat US sanctions on supercomputers and AI
• Gifted China PhD holder who went from Wall Street to slums sees light at end of tunnel after 16-year homeless hell in New York
• Hong Kong’s leader receives ‘positive feedback’ from mainland Chinese authorities on possible resumption of multiple-entry permit scheme
• In Israel-Gaza war, Hamas fights with patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia and North Korea
• China’s private firms warned ‘days of runaway growth have gone’ amid debt crisis, urged to thrive overseas
• HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of China among lenders waiving fees for Hong Kong airport operator’s US$640 million retail bond
• Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific signs up 100 new mainland Chinese cabin crew as it rebuilds post-coronavirus
• ‘Just a game’: China firm tells employees to crawl along street in humiliating team bonding activity they ‘volunteered’ to endure
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• Hamas fights with a patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia and North Korea

Defying China, Taiwan elects William Lai Ching-te as president | Asia

https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/01/13/defying-china-taiwan-elects-william-lai-ching-te-as-president

Editor’s note: This piece was updated on Monday 15th January to include China’s response to the election results.

TAIWAN’S VOTERS chose William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as their new president on January 13th, ushering in an unprecedented third term for the pro-independence ruling party. It was a pivotal election that will determine the democratic island’s approach to Chinese threats over the next four years amid a simmering superpower rivalry between China and America.

“Taiwan is telling the whole world that between democracy and authoritarianism, we choose to stand on the side of democracy,” Mr Lai told his victory rally on election night. His victory is a sign that Taiwanese voters want to continue along the path set by the current president, Tsai Ing-wen, of asserting Taiwan’s status as a sovereign, democratic country—“the world’s Taiwan”, as Ms Tsai often says, rather than China’s Taiwan. That stance infuriates China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, recently called unification with Taiwan a “historical inevitability”. Chinese officials had tried to intimidate Taiwan’s voters by calling this election a choice between “war and peace, prosperity and decline”, and denouncing the DPP as separatists.

China is not happy with Taiwan’s choice. Chen Binhua, a spokesman for the government’s Taiwan Affairs office, issued a statement saying the election results showed the DPp “does not represent mainstream public opinion”, and that China remains set on “national unification”.

Since Ms Tsai came to power eight years ago, China has cut off communication with Taiwan’s authorities, blocked independent Chinese travel to Taiwan, and ramped up military pressure on the island. Most memorably, China sent missiles over Taiwan and enacted a mock blockade around the main island in August 2022 after a visit from Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of America’s House of Representatives. Chinese warplanes overflew the Taiwan Strait nearly every day, often crossing the median line, a de facto boundary between the two sides. China has also sent balloons flying over the island, and revoked some preferential trade policies for Taiwanese imports in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Mr Lai is known for having been more outspoken in the past than Ms Tsai on Taiwan independence. But during the campaign he promised to continue down her path of moderation, avoiding sudden moves such as declaring independence (Taiwan is already independent and so has no need to declare it, the DPP’s leaders now say). His running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s former representative to America and now its vice-president-elect, is also known and trusted in Washington as a firm but careful defender of Taiwan’s democracy. That is little reassurance to the Chinese Communist Party. On January 10th Mr Chen said Mr Lai would be sure to push for “separatist activity” and would create a “dangerous situation of high winds and urgent waves” in the Taiwan Strait.

Beyond his statement on election day, China did not immediately respond to the results. But given all the fuss its officials have made over Mr Lai, some kind of symbolic military action is likely. One flashpoint could come soon: America plans to send an unofficial delegation of former senior officials to meet the new president soon after the election. A senior Biden administration official says this is nothing new. The White House has been sending similar post-election delegations to Taiwan since 2000, and their purpose is to help keep cross-strait relations stable. But China could use the visit as an excuse to stir up trouble.

Another potential flashpoint is May 20th, Taiwan’s inauguration day. Mr Lai already caused controversy during his campaign when he said he hoped to see a Taiwan president enter the White House one day. American officials will be nervous about whether he might say anything else that strays from precedent in his inauguration speech. Meanwhile China will be keen to make Taiwanese citizens feel that they have entered more dangerous waters by electing Mr Lai. The government in Beijing failed to scare Taiwan’s voters into abandoning the dPP. It will now try to make them regret it. ■

Rio Tinto sees Beijing’s stimulus driving iron ore demand as China receives Australia’s largest copper order in 4 years

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3248655/rio-tinto-sees-beijings-stimulus-driving-iron-ore-demand-china-receives-australia-largest-copper?utm_source=rss_feed

Rio Tinto Group, the world’s top iron ore exporter, sees increased stimulus measures in China driving the broader economy into a gradual recovery this year.

China’s economy started to show signs of stabilising early in the fourth quarter as increased spending on infrastructure and manufacturing helped offset prolonged weakness in the beleaguered property sector, Rio said in a statement on Tuesday. Recovery in 2024 will be weighted toward the second half, with the real estate sector remaining weak, it said.

While prices of iron ore closed 2023 about 20 per cent higher, they’ve lost about 8 per cent so far this year amid lingering concerns about lacklustre Chinese demand as well as the nation’s struggling property sector.

The biggest metals-consuming nation’s disappointing post-pandemic recovery has put downward pressure on steel demand and iron ore prices.

“There is good demand for the materials we produce, and our purpose and long-term strategy make more sense than ever,” Chief Executive Officer Jakob Stausholm said in the statement.

Iron ore futures were 0.8 per cent lower to US$126.45 a ton in Singapore as of 1:22pm. Futures in Dalian and Shanghai retreated.

The company’s output of iron ore for the three months to December 31 fell 2 per cent to 87.5 million tons, Rio said in the statement. Bauxite production rose 15 per cent, aluminium was up 8 per cent, and mined copper grew 5 per cent, it said.

Rio needs to invest just to sustain its current level of production, particularly as it expects urbanisation in India and across parts of Asia to drive additional growth. Though the company forecasts China – home to the world’s largest steel industry – will soon hit a peak in consumption, the producer expects global iron ore demand will rise almost a quarter by 2050.

The miner reaffirmed previous guidance on iron ore shipments and metals output in 2024. The company expects to export between 323 million tons to 338 million tons of iron ore this year, after it shipped 331.8 million tons in 2023. Copper production is seen climbing to land within a range of 660,000 to 720,000 tons, up from 620,000 tons last year.

Can Rio Tinto’s Africa mine cut China’s iron ore reliance on Australia, Brazil?

For 2023, Rio produced 331.5 million tons of iron ore, up 2 per cent from the previous year. Bauxite production was flat for the period, while output of aluminium rose 9 per cent and mined copper edged up 2 per cent.

Rio’s majority-owned Dampier Salt Ltd. has entered into a sales agreement for the Lake MacLeod salt and gypsum operation in Western Australia with privately owned salt company Leichhardt Industrials Group for US$251 million, it said in the statement.

The producer will spend US$70 million to increase production at Gudai-Darri, its newest mine in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, Simon Trott, the company’s iron ore chief executive officer, said in October. It is also advancing work on future options including development of the giant Rhodes Ridge project, which could offer 100 million tons of capacity, he said.

The company last month announced it will spend around US$6.2 billion on development of the vast Simandou iron ore deposit in Guinea, a marathon project that aims to deliver high-quality material for steelmakers seeking to curb emissions. First production from its joint venture Simfer mine is on track to kick off in 2025 – faster than most analysts had forecast – with output expected to ramp up over the following 30 months to an annualised capacity of 60 million tons per year.

Australia exported 27,500 metric tons of copper ores and concentrates worth US$44.5 million to China in November, the most for any month since China imposed an informal ban in 2020, Australian customs data showed.

The exports, which were not reflected in Chinese data, raise hopes that China may be removing the ban imposed after Australian calls for an inquiry into the origin of Covid-19.

Until late 2020, Australia supplied China with around 80,000 tons of copper concentrate a month, accounting for 5 per cent of China’s total imports.

China has been gradually easing tariffs and unofficial bans against a range of Australian commodities since a new government came to power in Canberra in 2022.

Australian PM speaks out on ‘dangerous’ Chinese navy incident that injured diver

Reuters reported in November that Swiss commodity trader Trafigura had agreed to help Chinese smelters clear imports of copper concentrate from Australia.

Despite the wider easing, state-owned Chinese smelters that turn concentrate into copper metal had remained reluctant to buy from Australia.

Australian customs records show that Australia also exported to China 10,594 tons of copper concentrate in September 2022 and 10,934 tons in January 2023.

Chinese customs do not show any imports from Australia of more than a few kilograms since June 2021, when 11,404 tons was recorded as entering from Australia, according to data accessed using Trade Data Monitor.

Apple gets deeper into China’s smartphone price wars with widening iPhone discounts, but rival Huawei stays above the fray

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3248666/apple-gets-deeper-chinas-smartphone-price-wars-widening-iphone-discounts-rival-huawei-stays-above?utm_source=rss_feed

A price war in mainland China, the world’s largest smartphone market, has intensified amid widening discounts offered for iPhones by online marketplaces, as Apple unseated rival Samsung Electronics in annual industry shipments worldwide for the first time in 2023.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com on Monday touted deeper discounts of as much as 800 yuan (US$112.24) off on the latest iPhone 15 model in a post on WeChat, which was on the same day Apple offered to cut prices by up to 500 yuan on a range of models, including the iPhone 13 and its new handsets that debuted last September.

The latest iPhone markdowns have come as major Chinese smartphone vendors, including Xiaomi and Honor, knocked down prices on their various Android models in both online and offline retail campaigns. Huawei Technologies, which last year made a comeback in the 5G smartphone market, did not pursue a similar strategy.

Apple’s atypical discount drive on the mainland shows the US tech giant’s focus to gain ground in the world’s second-biggest economy amid sluggish global iPhone sales, which has seen the company hit by two ratings downgrades in the first week of this year.

“Apple faced more challenges in China compared to the rest of the world,” said Will Wong, senior research manager for client devices at IDC Asia-Pacific. “It not only faced competition from Huawei, but also a change in consumers’ sentiment that is now more cautious in spending.”

In the first week of the year, iPhone sales on the mainland were already down 30 per cent year on year, according to a Jefferies research note published on January 7. The brokerage indicated that there was “a big rise in discounts” for the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus models, while the newer iPhone 15 and 15 Plus models saw “a moderate rise” in discounts.

The iPhone’s total sales volume last year on the mainland was down 3 per cent from 2022, which translated to a 0.4 per cent decline in Apple’s market share, according to Jefferies.

Worries about smartphone demand have pushed Apple’s shares down this month, enabling Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company after ending the January 12 trading session in the US higher than the iPhone maker.

Microsoft overtakes Apple as world’s most valuable company at US$2.89 trillion

Still, Apple received some good news on Monday when research firm IDC reported that the Cupertino, California-based company topped global smartphone shipments last year to dethrone long-standing market leader Samsung.

Apple’s global smartphone shipments last year reached 234.6 million units that gave the company a record market share of 20.1 per cent, up 3.7 per cent from 226.3 million in 2022, according to IDC. Apple was also the sole smartphone vendor in the top-four rankings – including Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo – to record unit shipment growth in 2023.

On the intense global smartphone competition, the “overall Android space is diversifying within itself”, said Ryan Reith, group vice-president at IDC’s Worldwide Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers unit. “Huawei is back and making inroads quickly within China.”

Shenzhen-based Huawei’s return to the premium segment of the smartphone market was paved by its launch last August of the Mate 60 Pro 5G handset, powered by an advanced home-grown processor that defied US tech restrictions. The company’s new 5G smartphone and its advanced chip was hailed as symbolic of China’s victory in defying tough US sanctions, fanning strong patriotic fervour that translated into robust domestic sales.

Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro is a blow to US sanctions but battles remain, analysts say

Huawei, however, faces a supply shortage for the Mate 60 Pro because of production constraints. The popular 5G model is still subject to a reservation purchase scheme without immediate availability on the company’s official website.

As Apple and its Chinese rivals turn to price promotions amid the weak macroeconomic environment on the mainland, Huawei will need to rely on the strength of its brand name to weather these headwinds, according to IDC’s Wong.

“The production constraints seem like a hurdle to Huawei, but it may also be a marketing tactic [to create greater demand],” Wong said.

Chinese city named and shamed for ‘white elephant’ tram as spending put under microscope

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3248653/chinese-city-named-and-shamed-white-elephant-tram-spending-put-under-microscope?utm_source=rss_feed

The northwestern city of Tianshui has become the latest Chinese locality to be named and shamed for excessive spending, as the country ramps up its campaign to crack down on extravagance in government.

Located in the poor province of Gansu, Tianshui raised a total of 9 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) to fund a light rail system under the administration of a public-private partnership – a project that has since been plagued with delays and cash-flow problems, state news outlet Xinhua reported on Monday.

Tianshui’s tram is an example of “reckless” borrowing that had led to “wasteful” spending, Xinhua said, citing a report from the office of the Communist Party responsible for tackling “formalism”, a behaviour the top leadership considers prevalent among millions of party cadres and government officials.

China’s ‘days of runaway growth have gone’, firms urged to thrive overseas

Local officials in China are often castigated for wasteful spending on “white elephant” projects – high-profile construction ventures pursued for rapid economic growth and to curry political prestige. In recent years, China has emphasised quality development over fast growth as rising debts put pressure on many regions.

The first phase of Tianshui’s tram line, which began operations in May 2020, only had an average of 800,000 passengers a year, generating around 1.6 million yuan of yearly income, the Xinhua report said.

However, the cost of running the trams was around 40 million yuan a year – 25 times the measured annual revenue – and because the construction failed to take into account water management for rivers over which the tram network is built, it has created a potential geological hazard.

The second phase started in November 2020 and was scheduled to be completed in three years.

But because of cash-flow problems, the Tianshui government has been unable to fund the project. This has led to the delay of necessary road work, causing traffic congestion and inconveniencing residents.

The case in Gansu has been highlighted by Xinhua, along with two others in Fujian and Shandong provinces, as examples of local officials choosing to “ignore reality” in the “one-sided” pursuit of “short-term benefits at the expense of long-term development”.

“It not only deviates from the new development concept, but also increases the burden on the grass roots,” the report said.

Many local governments in China have seen a decline in revenue, mainly a result of years of heavy borrowing and a prolonged slump in the property market lowering the value and frequency of land sales.

Indonesia says ‘strong indication’ of safety violation led to fire at Chinese-owned nickel plant that killed 21 people

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3248665/indonesia-says-strong-indication-safety-violation-led-fire-chinese-owned-nickel-plant-killed-21?utm_source=rss_feed

The Indonesian government said on Tuesday there was a strong indication of a safety procedure violation that led to a fire at a nickel smelter on Sulawesi island that killed 21 workers.

A fire broke out on December 24 at a furnace in a smelter operated by Tsingshan Stainless Steel Indonesia, located in the country’s largest nickel hub, the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP).

There was a strong indication of standard procedure violation and negligence in the implementation of safety requirements that allegedly led to the fire incident, Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah said in a statement on Tuesday.

Indonesians protest at China-backed nickel plant after 18 killed in blast

She did not elaborate on the suspected violations.

In the same statement, Central Sulawesi police chief Agus Nugroho said the police have launched an investigation into the cause of the fire.

The police and two ministries have been ordered to carry out checks on the sites by Coordinating Minister for Investment and Maritime Affairs Luhut Panjaitan

Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, has banned exports of unprocessed nickel ore as it moves to boost domestic smelting and processing, but the sector has suffered several fatal incidents in recent years.

Pandjaitan called for law enforcement to take firm action to avoid similar incidents.

“We have to show that we do need investment, but they have to comply with regulations in our country. They cannot ignore the rules,” Luhut said.

Indonesia probes Chinese-owned nickel plant after blast kills 8 Chinese workers

IMIP spokesperson Dedy Kurniawan said the companies within the industrial estate comply with government regulations.

The incident, which came just weeks ahead of an election, showed the hidden costs that have come with the breakneck expansion of Indonesia’s nickel industry.

Encouraged by a ban on ore exports, the country has received billions of dollars of investment in processing facilities largely owned and operated by Chinese firms.

Nickel is a battery metal and key to the energy transition.

“We have to show that we do need investment, but they have to comply with existing regulations in our country,” Panjaitan said in a statement.

“Don’t ignore these rules.”

The expansion of the industry has seen Indonesia boost its share of global nickel supply to more than 50 per cent, making the metal a key plank of incumbent President Joko Widodo’s drive to add more value to its commodity exports.

But the facilities have been the site of a series of accidents, while also drawing scrutiny for their carbon intensive coal-based energy supply.

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China’s Xi Jinping lays out road map for becoming ‘financial superpower’ – but warns risk can throw efforts off-track

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3248669/chinas-xi-jinping-lays-out-road-map-becoming-financial-superpower-warns-risk-can-throw-efforts-track?utm_source=rss_feed

President Xi Jinping on Tuesday laid out a concrete definition for how China would become a financial superpower and called its system “distinct from Western models”, two months after the goal was presented at the central financial work conference.

However, the world’s second-largest economy faces more urgent tasks in its efforts to defuse rising financial risk, he said during a high-level meeting at the Central Party School in Beijing.

“A financial superpower should be based on a strong economic foundation,” Xi was quoted by state outlet Xinhua as saying. “It must have world-leading economic, technological and comprehensive national strength.”

Six of the powerful seven-member Politburo Standing Committee attended the event, along with dozens of provincial leaders. Premier Li Qiang, the other standing committee member, was absent due to a trip to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Major differences from the Western models, Xi said, include the Communist Party’s leadership and the emphasis on financing support for the real economy.

He also stressed fundamentals, saying a strong currency, central bank, financial institutions both domestic and international are key to superpower status, as well as strong supervision and talent.

While long-term work is required to become a financial superpower, Xi said, he also emphasised the importance of preventing systemic financial risk, adding financial regulators and industry authorities must clarify their responsibilities and strengthen cooperation.

“Financial regulation must have teeth,” he said. “All localities must plan for the overall situation based on one region and practise risk management and stability maintenance.”

The president also pledged further moves against corruption to facilitate a comprehensive de-risking campaign. “In the process of risk management, corruption must be resolutely punished and moral hazard must be strictly prevented,” he said.

Amid property slowdown, China seeks to bolster rental housing market

China will focus, he said, on enhancing its competitiveness and influence on international rules, promoting “high level” financial opening-up.

“[We will] streamline restrictive measures, enhance the transparency, stability and predictability of our policy, and regulate overseas investment and financing activities, improving financial support for the Belt and Road Initiative,” he said.

Beijing is concerned over the fragility of its financial system, particularly as China faces an increasingly turbulent geopolitical environment and grapples with debt crises in the property market and local governments.

Over the last year, China has struggled with multiple financial challenges, including an exodus of foreign capital. The yuan has remained weak against the US dollar, although its exchange rate has stabilised since late last year.

The authorities have responded by reshuffling the regulatory regime, with a Central Financial Commission set up to oversee the multi-trillion dollar industry.

A vast majority of China’s banks, securities houses and insurers are controlled by governments at different levels.

Mounting local government debt has also triggered concerns over regional economic prospects and a potential spillover to the banking sector, which has significant exposure and can be sensitive to economic cycles.

Fitch Ratings said last week that many Chinese banks are seeing heightened capital pressures, including some systemically important banks.

“We expect the authorities to continue a targeted credit allocation approach, with regulators guiding selected banks in channelling credit to strategic sectors, especially given the government’s focus on maintaining systemic stability and pushing forward risk resolutions at small and medium-sized banks,” the international ratings agency said in a report.

China’s economy beat target with 5.2% growth in 2023, Premier Li Qiang tells Davos forum

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3248661/chinas-economy-beat-target-52-growth-2023-premier-li-qiang-tells-davos-forum?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s economy grew at an estimated 5.2 per cent in 2023, Premier Li Qiang told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

“Last year, China’s economy rebounded and moved upward, with estimated growth of around 5.2 per cent, which is higher than the target of around 5 per cent that we set at the beginning of last year,” Li said.

Li, in a keynote speech to the gathering of world leaders, corporates and top economic experts, talked up the health of the Chinese economy and gave a defence of globalisation.

More to follow …

As China’s economy slows, Africa stands at a critical juncture

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3248568/chinas-economy-slows-africa-stands-critical-juncture?utm_source=rss_feed

We will soon usher in the Year of the Dragon, marking a unique time for expanding relationships, harnessing new ideas and moving forward, sentiments that will reverberate halfway across the world in Africa. The continent has long had robust economic ties with China, but now faces a critical juncture as the latter’s economy softens.

Africa needs to diversify and solidify existing relationships with other global partners, including the United States, to buffer itself from China’s changing economic landscape and ensure its growth. This is also a pivotal moment for African countries to increase internal trade and diversify their tradeable goods.

China has long courted Africa, given that the continent is rich in natural resources, including oil and critical minerals, and placed the continent at the heart of its Belt and Road Initiative – a scheme in which China finances infrastructure in Africa that is largely engineered and constructed by Chinese businesses, with resource extraction by Chinese mining and energy companies.

China has footed the bill for massive projects in Africa, including providing around US$1 billion in loans at the end of 2023 to finance two new electricity-generating units in Zimbabwe’s Hwange power station, aimed at reducing power cuts in the country.

However, Beijing is now moving away from large spending sprees on the continent as China faces economic headwinds at home amid falling consumer prices, a real estate crisis and sluggish exports. As Chinese lending to Africa shrinks, there’s a stronger imperative for the continent to find ways to support its own development.

A key approach would be to promote a broader range of tradeable goods outside natural resources to enhance commercial opportunities. To date, Africa concentrates on exporting natural resources such as chromium, platinum, diamonds, iron, cobalt, copper and uranium, given that it has 30 per cent of the world’s remaining mineral resources, as well as 12 per cent of the world’s oil and 8 per cent of the world’s natural gas reserves.

The high risks of Chinese players’ high-reward stakes in African mining

However, overreliance on trading natural resources is not always beneficial, given price fluctuations. Also, resources can be a source of conflict, and large resource revenues can sometimes lead to government corruption and poor governance.

Various African countries, such as Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad are rich in natural resources, but have struggled to translate these into sustainable development and improved living standards for their people. Additionally, the focus on resource extraction can neglect other sectors of the economy, leading to a lack of diversification and long-term economic instability.

Trade in more varied goods and services – cotton, live animals, fish, maize, cocoa, tea and sugar, as well as business and travel services – is more frequent between different African countries, such as Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but accounts for less than a quarter of the continent’s total trade.

While this pattern of trading goods other than natural resources should be translated into worldwide exports, there may not be a global market for other African goods, and it’s unlikely they would be as financially lucrative as commodities. Therefore, there should be a focus on promoting intra-African trade.

Plus, intra-African trade reduces reliance on external global markets, and encourages diversification in agriculture, manufacturing and services – sectors that help create jobs.

“Commodities create less jobs,” said David Luke, a professor at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics, in a blog. “Mining, for example, uses a lot of capital equipment, but doesn’t need that many people. Whereas, when you are producing things … you are creating more jobs. ” He notes that there are more women involved in processing food, while manufacturing can create jobs for African youth.

The United Nations estimates that the domestic African market could become a US$3 trillion market. Meanwhile, the African Continental Free Trade Area is working to reduce trade barriers between African countries.

As more potential industries open up, African governments need to address youth education and training. The continent has the youngest population in the world, but around 72 million young people aged between 15 and 24 are neither in training, at work or in school, according to the International Labour Organization.

Diversifying trade partners may also offer Africa a safety net amid China’s domestic issues.

The US-Africa relationship needs to be developed, too. Trade between sub-Saharan Africa and the US has plateaued in recent years during China’s courtship, despite the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) facilitating tariff-free US market access. Africa-US trade has not progressed as much as had been hoped, although the act boosted South Africa’s auto exports from US$150 million in 2000 to US$2.2 billion in 2013, and African exports to the US reached over US$10 billion in 2022. Yet, only some of the over 30 African members have developed strategies to utilise the act.

The US’ exclusion of Uganda, Central African Republic, Gabon and Niger from AGOA for policy reasons marks a stark difference from China’s non-interference stance in African politics. Africa needs to address the issue of human rights if it wants to strengthen partnerships with Western countries.

It’s time for Africa to shift towards diverse trade alliances and new internal economic dynamics. Harnessing the African Continental Free Trade Area could be key to bolstering intra-continental trade and transcending reliance on natural resources. Meanwhile, rejuvenating ties with the US, despite AGOA’s hurdles, is imperative.

Africa’s path forward depends on expanding its economic horizons and cultivating a workforce equipped for the evolving landscape of opportunities.

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Jimmy Lai trial: Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece calls Western politicians ‘shameless liars’, accuses them of glorifying Hong Kong tycoon

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3248646/jimmy-lai-trial-chinese-communist-party-mouthpiece-calls-western-politicians-shameless-liars-accuses?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese Communist Party newspaper has slammed Western politicians and media as “despicable and shameless liars” and accused them of glorifying Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying while claiming the media tycoon cannot get a fair trial in Hong Kong.

People’s Daily, a mouthpiece for the country’s ruling political party, on Tuesday published the strongly worded commentary on the overseas version of its website as Lai’s national security trial entered its 10th day.

The 76-year-old faces two conspiracy charges of collusion with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law and a third conspiracy charge stemming from colonial-era sedition legislation.

Lai is accused of calling for international sanctions against authorities and inciting public hatred in the wake of anti-government protests in 2019.

Hong Kong court rejects bid by Jimmy Lai to block witness’ ‘irrelevant’ evidence

Tuesday’s commentary described some politicians and media in the West as “despicable and shameless liars”, accusing them of misleading public opinion and undermining rights to a fair trial by glorifying Lai as an “upright media personality”, a “devout Christian” and a “fighter for freedom, democracy and human rights”.

“The devil is the devil. Paints cannot hide his ugly and ferocious face,” it said. “Those American and Western politicians and media have spared no effort to glorify Lai and demand justice for him loudly. Do they want to indicate that they are in the same league?”

An editorial by The Wall Street Journal last Friday slammed Hong Kong authorities for “criminalising Lai’s calls to uphold freedom and the rule of law”.

Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned the trial as “politically motivated”, vowing his government had made it a priority to continue bringing the case up with Beijing. Lai is a British citizen.

People’s Daily also took aim at Western politicians and media outlets for saying the proceedings were “unfair”, arguing the practice of trying national security cases without a jury was common among jurisdictions.

The newspaper defended a court decision to deny Lai bail.

In December 2020, he was briefly granted bail and placed under house arrest after being charged with collusion with foreign forces, with the court later revoking the decision and placing the media tycoon in custody.

The media tycoon has been detained for more than 1,100 days.

Jimmy Lai gave generously to Hong Kong opposition and US groups, court hears

“When Lai was on bail, he frequently contacted foreign politicians and anti-China elements in Hong Kong,” the newspaper said. “He did not stop activities endangering national security at all.

“It is completely legal and reasonable to deny him bail. Haven’t those American and Western politicians and media understood the causal links?”

Sebastien Lai Sung-yan, one of the tycoon’s sons, last month met British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to lobby for the country’s help in securing his father’s release from prison.

People’s Daily pointed to the meeting and several others as a part of Western politicians’ effort to prevent Jimmy Lai from receiving a fair trial.

Watched by strangers: China mother live-streams son, 9, doing homework, says he works 3 times faster

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3247755/watched-strangers-china-mother-live-streams-son-9-doing-homework-says-he-works-3-times-faster?utm_source=rss_feed

A mother in China has been live-streaming her son doing his homework so he could be watched by strangers online, in an unconventional attempt to boost the boy’s focus on learning.

The mother, surnamed Zhang, from southwestern China’s Sichuan province, began live-streaming her nine-year-old’s study sessions, using her Douyin account, in the first week of 2024.

She said the effect was “surprising”, and claimed her son finished his homework two to three times faster than usual. He had also stopped habits such as playing with his eraser while studying.

Zhang said that on January 6, more than 900 people observed the boy doing his schoolwork that evening, and he finished the entire weekend’s work in just one session.

She said the live-streaming has put her son under the watch of “many eyes”, also freeing her from the burden of supervising him while juggling housework and looking after her other three-year-old child.

Douyin does not allow minors to appear in its live-streams, so Zhang only shows her son’s hands and his homework in the sessions.

The mother’s innovative method has inspired other parents concerned by their children’s lack of focus to try the same tactic. Some adults have also adopted the method.

A 28-year-old commented under Zhang’s video that she began live-streaming her own studying after seeing the videos, and it helped her stay off her mobile phone and away from other distractions.

Zhang’s method reminded some online observers of the virtual study services for young people that have become accessible online in recent years.

On China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao, which is operated by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, a one-on-one study supervision service is priced at around 20 yuan (US$2.80) for five hours.

The service assigns each buyer a human supervisor who watches them studying via video calls.

The buyer can choose varied levels of interaction using different “modes”, such as the “harsh mode” in which the supervisor scolds them for being lazy.

Juanwu Studio, a Taobao shop that specialises in such services, has hundreds of monthly orders and more than 24,000 followers.

The owner of Juanwu Studio, 24-year-old Hu Xueliang, began his business after live-streaming his postgraduate entrance exam studies on the video platform Bilibili.com in 2022.

His account has attracted 480,000 followers so far, and he has also initiated virtual study-chat rooms that could facilitate up to 300 people at one time.

A user of the virtual study room product, which costs 15 yuan per spot, said: “I am more motivated to study while studying with others. The atmosphere is worth the money.”

China holds moral high ground as global leader, top diplomat says in push for alternative world order

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3248650/china-holds-moral-high-ground-global-leader-top-diplomat-says-push-alternative-world-order?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing will become more “self-confident and self-reliant” in its development, China’s top diplomat has pledged as part of a wider push to style its assertive diplomacy as an alternative to Western democracies.

In an article published on Tuesday by the Communist Party’s flagship magazine Qiushi, Foreign Minister Wang Yi tried to put a positive light on China’s troubled external environment, vowing to push for an “equal” and “inclusive” multilateralism and globalisation to rally international support.

While the country had weathered “many storms and waves” and overcome “various difficulties and challenges” since President Xi Jinping took power over a decade ago, Beijing had “effectively led the direction of world development” and become an international power of “moral appeal”, Wang said.

But observers say the continued centralisation of power in foreign relations could lead to more enemies and put off potential partners.

Wang’s article reflected the gist of a top-level internal party meeting on foreign affairs late last month, when Xi vowed to further tighten the party’s control and promised to elevate China’s global standing to a new level despite Washington’s alleged containment efforts.

Echoing Xi’s remarks, Wang claimed in the new article that China had seized “the moral high ground” in its across-the-board rivalry with the United States and faced “new strategic opportunities” despite mounting uncertainties and challenges.

Without naming Washington, he sought to present China’s diplomacy as a new path of international relations, an alternative to the existing US-led world order marked by Cold War-style division, bullying and bloc confrontation.

“It is necessary to advocate that all countries adopt a new path of state-to-state relations through dialogue rather than confrontation and partnership rather than alliance, bridge differences through dialogue and resolve disputes through cooperation,” Wang said.

According to Wang, most countries believe in the trend of a multipolar world and refuse to go back to “the old path of camp confrontation and zero-sum games, let alone repeat the mistakes of war and conflict”.

“We advocate that a multipolar world should be based on equality, which means that all countries, big and small, are equal, oppose hegemonism and power politics, oppose the monopoly of international affairs by a few countries,” he said.

“Every country or group of countries should find its own place in the global multipolar system, breaking the traditional narrative that multipolarity means only a few big countries.”

Wang, Xi’s top foreign policy aide, also pledged allegiance to China’s strongman leader, praising Xi as “the top policymaker and chief architect of foreign affairs”.

But he was silent on the fate of disgraced former foreign minister Qin Gang and former defence minister Li Shangfu, whose removal last year stoked intense media speculation.

He also took a jab at the rising protectionism in the West and pledged China would adhere to openness and inclusiveness both at home and abroad, push for win-win cooperation and resist attempts to reverse economic globalisation.

“In the context of great changes in the world, no country can survive alone. ‘Winner takes all’ is even more idiotic. We must adhere to the right path of promoting unity and cooperation,” Wang said.

While China’s major-power diplomacy would enter a new and “more promising” stage, “we cannot be satisfied with our past achievements and not think about making progress, nor can we be timid because of the turbulent external environment”, he said in the article.

Dismissing growing criticism and unprecedented pushback against China’s increasingly authoritarian system, Wang insisted the country would become more “self-confident and self-reliant” in its development “path, theory, system, and culture”.

China would face “more severe international situations and complex external environments”, according to Wang, who called for a “fearless”, “tenacious” fighting spirit when dealing with difficulties and challenges.

“Only by having the courage to fight and being good at fighting can we overcome all kinds of difficulties and obstacles,” he said.

In a speech at a think-tank event in Beijing last week, Wang outlined China’s main diplomatic tasks for the new year amid signs of China’s thawing ties with the US, Europe and other major Western powers.

He listed “exploring a correct way” for Beijing and Washington to get along with each other and deepening “strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Moscow in the midst of Russia’s protracted war against Ukraine as Beijing’s top priorities.

Beijing would also seek to stabilise ties with Europe and its Asian neighbours amid tensions in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.

China will continue to ‘explore the correct way to get along’ with US: Wang Yi

But experts have expressed concerns about the country’s attempts to further tighten control of the opaque and highly centralised decision-making process.

Zhiqun Zhu, an international relations professor from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said that while the effort would further elevate Xi’s status to the level of late leader Mao Zedong, it would leave little room for professional diplomats to manoeuvre or address worsening external challenges.

Suisheng Zhao, director of the Centre for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, also said Xi’s power concentration had serious implications for China’s foreign policy.

While forging an “anti-hegemonic” coalition with Russia and Iran and deploying economic coercion against its perceived opponents, Xi’s major power foreign policy “risks overreach, making enemies on all fronts, alienating potentially valuable would-be partners and unifying rivals”, Zhao said.

In an article published last month on the website of the US Institute of Peace, Zhao said Xi’s “unchecked power” and concentrated control over foreign policymaking “has minimised the opportunities for his wrong decisions to be corrected”.

Worse still, “the politicisation of the foreign policy bureaucracy has changed the incentive structure of Chinese diplomats from professionals who make friends and turn enemies into friends to political loyalists and Wolf Warriors who win diplomatic battles with a ‘fighting spirit’ to defend the core national interests”, he said.

Japanese investors want China to restart visa-free entries into ‘most important’ market

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3248648/japanese-investors-want-china-restart-visa-free-entries-most-important-market?utm_source=rss_feed

Hundreds of Japanese investors have called on China to resume visa-free entry rules – a concession that they say would help smooth over business operations in what most described as their “most important market”.

Among several hundred respondents to a survey by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China, visa-free entries ranked as a top concern as they identified areas in which they “hoped” or “very much hoped” that China could improve.

“If the rule on visa-free entries to China were to be resumed – and the Japanese coming and going from China made more convenient – there would be an opportunity to expand business,” the chamber said on Monday in a summary of the survey results, which comprised 1,713 responses from November 23 to December 13.

In 2003, China began allowing Japanese travellers to enter without a visa for 15 days, but that exemption was suspended in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

Excitement as China’s visa-free deals could trigger Asean trade, investment boon

China began relaxing some entry requirements last year, including visa-free treatment for select countries, in line with efforts to revive international exchanges, drive up foreign investment inflows, and reverse a decline in confidence among investors.

Chinese officials say 55,805 Japanese-invested companies operate in China, and statistics from Tokyo show that 107,715 Japanese people lived in China as of 2021.

From January to November 2019, about 230,000 Japanese nationals arrived in Beijing alone, compared with just 71,000 during the same 11-month period last year, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin.

The chamber also vowed to work “tirelessly” to see a resumption of visa-free border entries to China, according to Caixin.

“Visa waivers would remove a significant barrier for commercial exchanges at a time when a lot of multinational company headquarters are rethinking the importance of the China market,” said Nick Marro, lead analyst for global trade with The Economist Intelligence Unit.

But visa-free travel isn’t the end-all factor determining their interest in China, he said. “There are a lot more issues tied to the growth outlook, geopolitical risks and operational burdens that play more significant roles in investment decision-making,” Marro said.

Chinese officials have been looking to forge closer economic ties with Japan and South Korea via a three-way free-trade pact, as investment in China from its two Asian peers has been on the decline.

Direct investment from Japan to China in the first nine months of last year reached 3.934 trillion yen (US$27 billion), down from 9.612 trillion yen over the same period in 2019, according to the Japanese Ministry of Finance.

The chamber survey found that 39 per cent of respondents anticipated a “decline” or a “slight decline” in China’s market position after 2024, while 25 per cent forecast an “improvement” or “slight improvement”.

China is too big for multinational companies to ignore, data shows

Chen Zhiwu, chair professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong, said visa-free access would be only of marginal help to China’s economy.

“Anything like that would help somewhat at the margin,” Chen said. “It is a temporary need that the Chinese government feels at this moment because the economic slowdown is widespread in China, so they need to put at least a temporary stop to the economic decline to the extent that they can.”

A total of 51 per cent of survey participants said China was their “most important market” or one of three major markets in the world.

But 49 per cent said China business profits had declined last year, compared with 25 per cent who reported an increase and 27 per cent who found no change.

Former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s son Hu Haifeng promoted to deputy minister after serving a decade in regional posts

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3248656/former-chinese-president-hu-jintaos-son-hu-haifeng-promoted-deputy-minister-after-serving-decade?utm_source=rss_feed

Hu Haifeng, the only son of former Chinese president Hu Jintao, was promoted on Tuesday to be China’s deputy civil affairs minister after serving five years as the party boss of a small city in eastern China.

The much-watched appointment was announced by the State Council, China’s cabinet. The promotion will elevate Hu, 51, to vice-ministerial rank which marks an important step in the career advancement of Chinese officials.

The ministry handles welfare, social groups and marriage, among other civil affairs.

Before the appointment, Hu had been the party boss of Lishui, a small city in the coastal province of Zhejiang, since July 2018.

Hu, a computer science graduate from Beijing Jiaotong University with a postgraduate degree in nuclear electronics and an executive MBA from Tsinghua University, did not enter into politics until 2013.

He worked as a senior engineer at the state-owned Tsinghua Holdings and later became the president of Nuctech, a security scanning equipment maker controlled by Tsinghua Holdings.

He was then transferred to Zhejiang Tsinghua Yangtze River Delta Research Institute, serving as party boss of the official think tank from 2009 to 2010.

He started his government career in May 2013, months after his father Hu Jintao retired as president, serving as deputy secretary of Jiaxing in Zhejiang. He was promoted to mayor of Jiaxing in 2016, and to Lishui party boss in July, making him the youngest prefectural-level party chief in the province at the time.

While in Lishui, Hu Haifeng promoted environmental protection and eco-friendly industry in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hallmark environmental policy slogan: “green hills and clear waters are the true gold and silver mines”.

A Zhejiang official who worked with Hu said he liked to keep “a very low profile” and tried to avoid unnecessary attention.

A researcher from China’s central party school said the fact that Hu had to accumulate a decade of regional work experience before being granted a role in Beijing showed that the promotion of the descendants of party top leaders was much stricter under Xi.

“This might be a good thing for Hu moving forward because Xi shows a strong preference to those who have regional experiences because he wants these cadres to make policies based on their knowledge of China’s ground situation. Those who only climb the career ladder in Beijing’s ministries often get played out when they land on regional roles facing sophisticated local officials,” said the researcher who declined to be named because of the sensitive topic.

Hu’s father stepped down as president in 2013, handing the position to Xi. Under China’s party state system, the president is also the chief of the ruling Communist Party and the country’s military.

The elder Hu was last seen in public in December 2022, when he joined other incumbent and retired state leaders at a farewell ceremony for former president Jiang Zemin before Jiang was cremated.

China’s experimental ALS drug achieves unexpected results for patient

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3248226/chinas-experimental-als-drug-achieves-unexpected-results-patient?utm_source=rss_feed

In the legendary life of world-renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, among his many “achievements” was the fact that he lived with neurological condition ALS for 55 years.

It is not the usual way the disease works. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS, is an incurable disease which normally sees sufferers live only three to five years after the onset of symptoms. The form of the condition that Hawking had, after being diagnosed at 21, had a slower progression.

Despite immense gains in knowledge about the disease in recent years, scientists still do not know what causes it and have struggled finding a treatment that will stop its progression once and for all.

But now a potential new drug being tested by a group of Chinese scientists and clinicians may offer a glimmer of hope, with promising results after it was used on a severely affected patient for six months.

Fan Dongsheng, a professor in the department of neurology at Peking University Third Hospital, who is overseeing the patient’s treatment, said that after taking the drug, his condition reached a “turning point”, with the progression of the disease slowing until it was “basically at a plateau stage”.

What was even more unexpected was a measurable physiological change: the patient’s lower limbs began to respond to electrical stimulation, indicating an improvement.

When a nerve is severely damaged, it usually does not respond to an electrical stimulus. But after three months of treatment, doctors saw small fluctuations.

Huang Xusheng, a professor at the neurology department of the First Medical Centre of China’s PLA General Hospital, said it was all “very encouraging”.

While there are several drugs available worldwide to treat ALS, he said they cannot reverse the damage but only slow its progression. This drug candidate, on the other hand, appears to be more effective in actually improving clinical symptoms, although he stressed that “a longer period of observation and more cases are needed to confirm this. ”

A disease of the nervous system, ALS affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Patients usually start with muscle weakness that spreads and worsens over time.

They then develop symptoms such as muscle atrophy, uncoordinated limbs, difficulty in eating and speaking, and deteriorating respiratory function, with the disease eventually leading to death, mainly from complications or respiratory failure.

A rare disease, it is estimated ALS affects six to nine people in every 10,000, but the exact prevalence remains unclear in many countries. In the United States, for example, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admits that it is difficult to estimate the number of cases because there is no nationwide record of ALS.

However, according to a 2016 report by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is estimated that the number of ALS cases across the globe will increase from 222,801 in 2015 to 376,674 in 2040.

Hong Kong patient group launches city’s first registry for people with ALS

“Ageing populations, particularly in developing countries, are the primary driver of this significant increase,” the report said.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved four drugs for the treatment of ALS over the past 30 years, but they only help to slow the progression of the disease and prolong the survival time of patients.

It was in May 2023, when Fan had a patient whose condition was rapidly deteriorating, that he gave the patient a candidate therapy that had been studied in the lab for nearly 10 years but had not yet entered clinical trials.

“For a patient with a serious or imminently life-threatening disease or condition, if there is no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapy, an investigational medical product, albeit unapproved, is allowed to be used if it is beneficial for the patient with his or her full consent,” he said, explaining it is called “compassionate use”.

The investigational drug is also a gene therapy, named “SNUG01”. It was mainly discovered by scientist Jia Yichang at Tsinghua University, but the team has not revealed much about its specific target and working mechanism.

The most recent genetic therapy approved by the FDA in 2023, Tofersen, targets a gene mutation that is carried by only 2 per cent of all ALS patients, meaning that it is only effective in a very small percentage of people.

Hong Kong experts find mechanism that can help develop ALS treatments

But this candidate drug has the potential to benefit a wider number of patients, according to Fan, who added that it has also shown good safety and efficacy in many animal models.

“In addition to ALS, SNUG01 may have potential applications in combating stroke, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases,” Jia told the mainland’s media platform “Sci Phi” in 2022.

Adding to Fan’s excitement is the fact that the improvement seen in his patient is unlikely to be caused by the “placebo effect” where a person feels better after a treatment due to psychologically reasons.

“The placebo effect usually lasts about two months,” Fan said. In this case, however, they found that the patient’s condition was still under control after six months of treatment, so he is confident any placebo effect could be ruled out.

To accelerate the drug’s progress to market, Jia, the lead scientist behind the drug, co-founded a biotech company in 2021.

In preparation for an application for a clinical trial, the drug has been in a small study since September last year, a phase called an “investigator-initiated study”, which will involve six patients. Three patients have already been enrolled, Fan said, and preliminary observations suggest that the drug is safe, but it is too early to assess its efficacy.

As part of China’s efforts to become self-sufficient in biotechnology and encourage the development of home-grown innovative medical products, “the Chinese authorities have attached importance to the development of this drug and provided some support,” Fan said.

On the other hand, he said, some new drugs approved overseas tend to be very expensive – far beyond the reach of many Chinese patients. Tofersen, for example, developed by US company Biogen in collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, costs about 1.5 million yuan (US$210,000) a year.

Fan said that if SNUG01 really enters the market one day, he expected it would be more affordable, especially domestically.

But he warned against being too optimistic just yet.

“As researchers, we must remain calm and cautious. We have only observed one case for six months, which is far from enough,” he said.

Indeed, just like the global search for Alzheimer’s treatments, which has been a long journey full of failures, drug development for neurological disorders has always been very challenging.

Between April 2020 and April 2022, a total of 11 drugs to treat ALS were announced to have suffered setbacks in research and development, with nine of them falling due to lack of efficacy.

Can China’s elderly become a silver economic lining?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3248611/can-chinas-elderly-become-silver-economic-lining?utm_source=rss_feed

As China braces for a rapidly ageing population, it rolled out a national blueprint on Monday to try to boost the “silver economy”.

The document issued by the State Council is part of the country’s attempts to lighten the enormous needs of its rapidly ageing population and turn them into investment opportunities in the hope of igniting growth in the sluggish economy.

The document contains 26 measures that can be divided into four categories.

The first category directs state and private investment to provide services for elderly people, such as food delivery, canteens, community health centres, homes for the aged, day care services and vehicles to provide bathing services.

The second backs the nurturing of more service providers, including motivating state enterprises to set aside land for elderly service facilities and encouraging more social organisations and big private enterprises to tap into the market.

To boost research and product development, there are plans to build 10 silver economy industrial estates to be affiliated with existing industrial estates.

The third area would encourage the design and manufacture of products to meet the needs of the ageing population, ranging from rehabilitation equipment and supplements to robots that care for elderly people.

The government also wants to develop more financial products for the elderly to help them manage their wealth, and install lifts and other equipment to improve access in residential and public areas.

Mind the gap: China should foster digitally inclusive society as population ages

The fourth area aims to create a better environment, such as boosting scientific research into facilities and medicines for older people, incorporating housing for the elderly and other facilities into town planning and cracking down on scams.

In China, there were 209.78 million people aged over 65 in 2022, accounting for almost 15 per cent of the population.

Demographer Du Peng of Renmin University has predicted the number of citizens aged over 60 will rise by an average of 10 million people a year.

In recent months, government officials and advisers, including former World Bank economist Justin Lin Yifu, have touted the potential of the silver economy and highlighted how the ageing population presents an opportunity rather than a crisis.

China Central Television quoted a State Council researcher saying China’s silver economy accounted for about 6 per cent of the country’s GDP at 7 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion), and that it would reach 10 per cent of the GDP at 30 trillion yuan in 2035.

Seeing opportunity in a potential demographic crisis and formulating a more comprehensive policy package for the ageing society is a good attitude to have.

However, there are bottlenecks that China must break through, as well as caveats.

The first bottleneck is healthcare provision. Medical bills are expensive in mainland China. While the government wants to shift more of the burden to community healthcare institutes, they remain poor quality. Many people still have to head to hospitals in big cities and foot enormous medical bills for more serious diseases.

The second impediment is a shortage of good service providers because non-governmental organisations are not welcome in the mainland. Instead, the government hopes to nurture government-backed social organisations, and make use of grass-roots Communist Party committees and companies as service providers.

Reluctance to marry, have kids continued in 2022 amid China’s population woes

Growing reliable service providers is an issue: subsidiaries of the beleaguered property syndicates Evergrande Group and Country Garden Group were both big players in elder-care industries.

It is crucial to preserve the wealth of the elderly amid market instability. More than half of urban elderly residents rely on pensions to fund life after retirement and the government must find ways to preserve the values of their pensions or risk social instability.

Finally, the government must make sure the policy priority does not become another political movement that creates white elephants and poor quality projects.

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Tech war: Chinese chip-tool giant Naura forecasts surge in 2023 sales on strong local demand amid US export controls

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3248610/tech-war-chinese-chip-tool-giant-naura-forecasts-surge-2023-sales-strong-local-demand-amid-us-export?utm_source=rss_feed

State-backed Chinese semiconductor equipment giant Naura Technology Group expects its 2023 revenue to jump by around half from a year earlier, as leaps in its technology helped it gain a larger market share in the country.

The company said in a regulatory filing on Monday evening that its revenue last year is projected to grow between 42 per cent and 57 per cent to 20.9 billion yuan and 23.1 billion yuan (US$2.93 billion and US$3.24 billion).

“[Naura] has made technology breakthroughs and achieved volume production of more than a dozen of semiconductor equipment including etching, deposition and cleaning, and furnace, which help the company to cover more semiconductor manufacturing processes, leading to higher market shares,” Naura said.

Net profits are expected to increase between 57 per cent and 80 per cent to between 3.3 billion yuan and 3.8 billion yuan.

The company said it received over 30 billion yuan worth of new equipment orders in 2023, over 70 per cent of them related to semiconductor-related tools. It did not disclose similar figures in its revenue forecasts for 2022 or 2021.

Beijing-based Naura counts China’s largest foundries as major clients, such as Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC).

Amid a government-supported semiconductor self-sufficiency drive, YMTC has been in talks with domestic tool suppliers, including what was said to be a major company based in the Chinese capital, to produce replacements for crucial parts widely found in its equipment made by US firm Lam Research, sources told the Post last year.

Lam Research has suspended equipment supply and services to clients in mainland China after Washington tightened US export controls in October 2022.

With foreign players pulling their staff and operations out of China, local chip makers have rushed to find domestic alternatives. The surging demand has helped lift sales of Chinese equipment manufacturers, although most of their products – especially those in advanced nodes below 10 nanometres – are thought to lag in quality.

Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment China, Naura’s main rival, has said it expects 2023 revenue to rise more than 30 per cent on the back of strong demand from mainland fabs.

Shares of Shenzhen-listed Naura rose around 3 per cent to nearly 239 yuan in the morning trading session on Tuesday.

‘Big Chip’: China is building a wafer-sized processor to beat US sanctions on supercomputers and AI

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3248176/big-chip-china-building-wafer-sized-processor-beat-us-sanctions-supercomputers-and-ai?utm_source=rss_feed

A large, integrated circuit built from an entire silicon wafer could be the solution Chinese computer scientists have been looking for as they come up with ways to get around US sanctions while boosting the performance of processors.

With limited access to new advanced chips due to the restrictions imposed by the US, scientists in China have had to think outside the box when developing things such as supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI).

And the latest innovation is a processor – an early version of which is named “Zhejiang” – being developed by a team from the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by associate professor Xu Haobo and professor Sun Ninghui. Their work was detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Fundamental Research on December 29.

The Zhejiang covers an area measuring thousands of square millimetres and consists of 16 chiplets with 256 cores. The researchers also revealed it has the potential to scale up to 100 chiplets, corresponding to 1,600 cores in total.

The chip could be used in high-performance computing (HPC) and boost the training of next-generation AI, according to the researchers.

“As Moore’s law comes to an end, the implementation of high-performance chips through transistor scaling has become increasingly challenging. To improve performance, increasing the chip area to integrate more transistors has become an essential approach,” wrote ICT professor Han Yinhe, the paper’s first author.

Moore’s law says the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

To design a chip with a larger area – one that breaks the limits of cost, yield and lithography technology – the team proposed a new chip form, which they named “Big Chip”.

Big Chip refers to a chip that is bigger than the area limitation of the most advanced lithography machine available.

It has two main characteristics. First, the Big Chip is really big. Because of its size, it can have more tiny electronic parts, or transistors, than a regular single-piece chip made with existing technology.

Second, the Big Chip has multiple functional dies, and several emerging semiconductor fabrication techniques are used to integrate the prefabricated dies into a Big Chip.

Consisting of over a trillion transistors, the Big Chip can be created using two approaches.

“The first approach is chiplet integration, which involves combining multiple chiplets on a substrate in a single package,” Han said. Huawei’s Kunpeng 920 SoC (system-on-a-chip) is a good example where it still has the size of an ordinary CPU.

“The second approach is wafer-scale integration (WSI), which involves building a very large integrated circuit from an entire silicon wafer,” Han said.

With WSI, the Zhejiang Big Chip processor is designed and fabricated on a 22nm CMOS process.

Because Big Chips contain more cores, the communication between cores will affect their cooperativity, so the architectural design of the chips has a significant impact on performance.

“It adopts a scalable tile-based architecture. The processor consists of 16 chiplets. In each chiplet, there are 16 CPU processors that are connected via a built-in network. And each tile is symmetrically interconnected with others to enable communication among multiple chiplets,” Han said in the paper.

“Moreover, this processor adopts a unified memory system, which means any core on any tile can directly access the memory across the entire processor.”

The chiplets are connected using a special system that lets them share communication paths one at a time. This method reduces the number of wires and connections needed, making the overall design simpler.

The paper gives an overview of Zhejiang’s architecture but the ICT website does not offer photos or an official release.

China’s semiconductor industry weathers tough year amid tighter US sanctions

Cerebras System, an American AI company, also uses WSI to build chips with an area up to 46,225 sq mm. They implemented Wafer-Scale Engine-1 (WSE-1) in 2019 and Wafer-Scale Engine-2 in 2021.

A complete system that contains WSE-1 was sold to the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Centre and US National Science Foundation in 2020 to build the AI supercomputer, Neocortex. The price tag was around several million dollars.

Big Chips are not without their challenges though.

While they can achieve a powerful computing ability, they still face yield, cooling and performance issues.

“Making big chips is complex and it’s hard to always do it perfectly due to many influencing factors. While there are ways to improve this, they can be costly,” Han said in the paper.

“Big Chips create a lot of heat, so it’s important to have good cooling systems and designs that use less power. Task mapping and design space exploration in Big Chip design are also challenging to implement.”

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Gifted China PhD holder who went from Wall Street to slums sees light at end of tunnel after 16-year homeless hell in New York

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3247686/gifted-china-phd-holder-who-went-wall-street-slums-sees-light-end-tunnel-after-16-year-homeless-hell?utm_source=rss_feed

Help is finally at hand for a highly-educated, former Wall Street software developer from China who fell upon hard times and has been sleeping on the streets of New York for the past 16 years.

The fortunes of Sun Weidong could be about to change after a video clip telling his story went viral online and was seen by fellow alumni of his alma mater, Shanghai Fudan University, who have persuaded him to move into a temporary shelter.

Sun, 54, who has a PhD degree and was hailed as a genius earlier in his life, captivated mainland social media earlier this month when his story was shared in a video filmed by another man from China who does business in New York, Jiupai News reported.

In the viral video, Sun says he is originally from the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu.

An academic high achiever, he was recruited by a genius class at Fudan University to study physics in 1985 while only in his first year of high school.

After graduating from the university with a bachelor’s degree, he went to the United States where he obtained a master’s and a PhD degree.

Sun then went to work on Wall Street as a software engineer for two years, a job he said paid him a salary of more than US$100,000 a year.

However, his life began to spiral out of control after a difficult divorce and he began moving from job to job.

Sun, who is a US citizen, said he developed depression years ago and has also been suffering from other mental health problems.

“I suffer from delusions. I don’t know what is true and what is fake,” he was quoted as saying.

Since 2007, when he started sleeping rough, Sun has received help mostly from local churches. He said he sleeps in internet cafes or subway stations.

“My life is bad. In the past, I managed to cope with all life’s hardships. But now, winter is really tough for me,” he said.

The liaison office of Fudan University alumni association in New York has confirmed to the media that Sun is a graduate of the university.

A number of alumni volunteers have offered Sun help while a WeChat group with 200 alumni members has been formed to discuss further assistance for him.

Sun said he had only returned to China once in the past three decades and rarely contacted his family.

A former school classmate, surnamed Liu, told Red Star News that Sun had been an elite student with extraordinary academic abilities.

“He hasn’t been in touch with his family for at least 10 years. Before he lost contact with his family, he said he was doing a ‘sensitive’ job. We thought he was living decently abroad,” Liu said.

“Seeing him in the recent video, we were all astonished and felt sorry about his predicament.”

An official from Sun’s hometown of Jiangyin in Jiangsu province said they were preparing documents to help him return to China.

“We had a telephone conversation with him in our dialect. He was weeping. Apparently, he is missing home very much,” the official was quoted as saying.

In a video released on January 7, sporting a new coat and neat haircut, Sun expressed his gratitude to the public.

“I’ve experienced dramatic changes in my life that led me to this point. I thank all the people who cared for and helped me over recent days,” he said.

“Thank you for refreshing my spirit and helping me restart my life,” Sun added.

But not everyone was sympathetic to his plight.

“He is an American citizen. Why bother sending him back to China? No government in China at any level should be willing to spend our taxpayers money to support a foreigner,” one person said.

However, another online observer said: “Welcome back to China, Dr Sun. I hope you can make contributions to our motherland in physics.”

Last year, a Chinese man who lived illegally in the US for three decades after abandoning his wife and child in Shanghai, returned to the country thanks to help from Chinese expatriates in New York.

Hong Kong’s leader receives ‘positive feedback’ from mainland Chinese authorities on possible resumption of multiple-entry permit scheme

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3248580/hong-kongs-leader-receives-positive-feedback-mainland-chinese-authorities-possible-resumption?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong’s leader has said he has received “positive feedback” from mainland Chinese authorities during talks on resuming a multiple-entry permit scheme for Shenzhen residents and the possibility of allowing visitors from additional cities across the border to visit on individual trips.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Tuesday also brushed aside concerns that allowing Shenzhen residents to head south as many times as they wanted within a year could lead to a rebound in parallel trading activities in border towns, saying “things have changed” while pointing to visitors’ new spending habits.

“I’m receiving positive feedback from the departments we have been talking to, but of course, some details need to be ironed out and I hope to be able to get some decisions made [as soon as possible] so that we can tell everybody,” Lee told reporters before the weekly meeting of the Executive Council, the government’s key decision-making body.

He added that city authorities would have to take into account the considerations and ideas of the relevant mainland authorities, which he said also shared the view that “people-to-people exchanges work best for both sides”.

Lee did not provide a specific timeline on when a decision would be made and revealed to the public, but a government source previously suggested that the goal was to bring back the multiple-entry scheme for Shenzhen residents before the Lunar New Year holiday.

Introduced in 2009, the scheme was replaced by once-a-week permits in 2015 as concerns mounted over parallel trading activities, which involves travellers buying goods tax-free in Hong Kong to resell on the mainland at a profit, and the city’s capacity to handle surges in single-day visitors.

‘Modest gains for Hong Kong if multiple-entry visas for Shenzhen residents restart’

The chief executive assured that the authorities would examine “all potential threats and risks” and put into place mitigation measures, but also pointed out new trends had emerged over the past eight years relating to spending patterns and market conditions on the mainland, such as the growing popularity of online shopping and more products being available.

“We used to have a problem with parallel trading but things have changed,” Lee said. “I think the right attitude to take is not to be averse to all these challenges. We have to find ways to address and control them.”

The proposal to bring back multiple-entry permits for Shenzhen residents was first submitted by a group of Hong Kong delegates to the National People’s Congress, including Starry Lee Wai-king, the city’s sole representative in the national legislature’s Standing Committee.

Hong Kong officials ‘learn lesson’ after new year transport chaos at border

The chief executive also said there had been “smooth progress” in talks with mainland authorities over extending the operation hours of some land-based crossings with Shenzhen and adding more round-the-clock border checkpoints.

Out of Hong Kong’s 14 border checkpoints with the mainland, visitors can only cross the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong through the Lok Ma Chau crossing after midnight, which is connected to Huanggang on the Shenzhen side. The checkpoint was overwhelmed with tourists heading north after midnight on New Year’s Day after watching the fireworks display in the city.

Additional reporting by Harvey Kong

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In Israel-Gaza war, Hamas fights with patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia and North Korea

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/3248577/israel-gaza-war-hamas-fights-patchwork-weapons-built-iran-china-russia-and-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed

Iranian sniper rifles. AK-47 assault rifles from China and Russia. North Korean- and Bulgarian-built rocket-propelled grenades. Anti-tank rockets secretly cobbled together in Gaza.

An Associated Press analysis of more than 150 videos and photos taken in the three months of combat since Hamas launched its October 7 surprise attack on Israel shows the militant group has amassed a diverse patchwork arsenal of weapons from around the world – much of it smuggled past a 17-year blockade that was aimed at stopping just such a military build-up.

Those weapons have proved deadly during weeks of intense urban warfare in Gaza, where Hamas fighters are typically armed only with what they can carry and employ hit-and-run tactics against lopsided Israeli advantages in arms and technology.

Hamas propaganda videos posted over the past few weeks appear to show the shootings of Israeli soldiers recorded through the scopes of sniper rifles.

“We are searching everywhere for weapons, for political support, for money,” Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad recently said in an interview with Associated Press, declining to discuss specifically who has been providing its weapons or how they were sneaked into Gaza.

Experts who reviewed the images for Associated Press were able to identify distinguishing features and markings that show where many of the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters were manufactured.

In 100 days, how has the Israel-Gaza war transformed the region?

But such an analysis does not provide evidence of whether they were provided by the governments of those countries or purchased in a thriving Middle East black market, with weapons and components listed for sale on social media in such war-torn countries as Iraq, Libya and Syria.

What is clear, however, is that many of the images show Hamas militants toting weapons that appear to be relatively new, evidence the group has found ways of getting arms past the air-and-sea blockade of the Gaza Strip – possibly by boat, through tunnels or concealed in shipments of food and other goods.

“The majority of their arms are of Russian, Chinese or Iranian origin, but North Korean weapons and those produced in former Warsaw Pact countries are also present in the arsenal,” said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services.

Despite the build-up, Israel maintains a massive advantage, with a powerful array of modern tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and an air force of US-made fighter jets.

Israel’s military says it has killed more than 7,000 Hamas militants, compared to the deaths of at least 510 of its own soldiers, more than 330 of whom were killed in Hamas’ initial attack.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 24,000 Palestinians have died in the fighting, though it does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Imagery reviewed by Associated Press showed a Hamas arsenal featuring weapons ranging from small arms and machine guns to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and craft-produced anti-tank projectiles.

Among the most distinctive is the oversized AM-50 Sayyad (Arabic for “hunter”), an Iranian-made a sniper rifle that fires a .50- calibre round powerful enough to punch through up to an inch of steel. It has previously been spotted on battlefields in Yemen, Syria, and in the hands of Shia militias in Iraq.

Hamas fighters have also been seen carrying an array of Soviet-era weapons that have been copied and manufactured in Iran and China. They include variants of the Russian-designed 9M32 Strela, a portable heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile system.

Jenzen-Jones said a grip stock on one of the missile launchers a fighter was seen holding is distinctive to a variant manufactured in China and used by the Iranian military and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, a group closely aligned with Hamas.

Israel says weapons found, 80 Hamas members arrested at Gaza hospital

Weapons recovered from Hamas fighters by the Israel Defence Forces include what appear to be Italian-designed TC/6 anti-tank mines. However, Seán Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert, said it too had been copied by Iran’s arms industry.

The Israel Defence Forces and US officials have long accused Iran of supplying money, training and weapons to Hamas and allied militants in Gaza, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Iranian representatives at the United Nations did not respond to emails from Associated Press about whether their government supplied weapons to Hamas, including AM-50 Sayyad sniper rifles.

However, a week after Associated Press sought comment, Hamas posted a video purporting to show militants in Gaza using machining equipment to make their own copies of the rifle.

Master gunsmith Don Fraley reviewed that December 20 video and said it would be nearly impossible for Hamas to manufacture a safe and accurate .50-calibre sniper rifle with the rudimentary equipment shown.

“You’re going to have to be a rock star at machine shop work. And I didn’t see any of that,” said Fraley, a former US Army Special Forces soldier and sniper for the Kentucky State Police. “These folks are just trying to cover their tracks.”

An Israeli military official familiar with Hamas’ arsenal said the group uses a combination of smuggled “off-the-shelf” weaponry, including AK-47s, RPGs and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a large collection of home-grown weapons often made with easily accessible civilian materials.

Israeli military shows video of weapons found in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital

For instance, the official said, the group uses lathes to shape metal into rockets and mortars, and fits them with explosives manufactured from fertilisers. Other home-made weapons include a launcher capable of firing 14 rockets simultaneously and the “Zuwari” drone, an explosives-laden aircraft that was used to strike Israeli observation towers and knock out cameras on October 7.

“There is a huge military/defence industry inside the Gaza Strip,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules.

The official said most of the smuggled weapons are believed to have been brought in through Egypt and are generally easy to purchase and did not need to be supplied by the country of origin.

One such weapon seen in the hands of Hamas fighters is a version of Chinese machine guns known as the Type 80, a model that has also been copied by the Iranians and renamed as the PKM-T80.

Jonathan Ferguson, the curator of firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum in England, said from what he could see from the photos and videos, versions of the gun made in China and Iran were so similar as to be indistinguishable.

Ferguson was also able to identify a rocket-propelled grenade with marks showing it was made in Bulgaria. Associated Press previously reported Hamas used RPGs with a distinctive red stripe indicating they were made in North Korea.

Among the more sophisticated Hamas home-grown weapons is a copy of a Russian anti-tank rocket called the PG-7VR, which is specifically designed to defeat reactive-armour systems like those used on Israel’s Merkava Mark VI main battle tanks.

Such tanks are covered with explosive-filed plates that explode outwards to disrupt incoming projectiles.

In propaganda videos posted in October, masked militants are seen assembling a version of the Russian rocket that Hamas has renamed the Al-Yasin 105, in honour of the group’s founder killed in an Israeli air strike in 2004.

While the original Russian version can melt through up to two feet of steel armour, experts say it’s not clear whether the home-brewed explosives in the Hamas knock-off are as potent.

Hamas has posted multiple videos of fighters firing the rockets at Israeli tanks and armoured personal carriers. Those videos are typically cut off after the warhead explodes, making it impossible to independently verify whether the target was destroyed.

Also, in a tactic borrowed from the battlefields of Ukraine, Hamas appears to have obtained or copied Iranian-designed drones that pack warheads that explode when crashed into their targets. Off- the-shelf, Chinese-made quadcopter drones have also been adapted to drop explosives on tanks and troops.

“The availability of commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicles, these light consumer drones, has radically changed warfare in recent years,” Jenzen-Jones said. “We’ve seen them, obviously, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, in Ukraine, and now in Gaza.”

China’s private firms warned ‘days of runaway growth have gone’ amid debt crisis, urged to thrive overseas

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3248509/chinas-private-firms-warned-days-runaway-growth-have-gone-amid-debt-crisis-urged-thrive-overseas?utm_source=rss_feed

Some of China’s most prominent tycoons have been committed to reining in debt, and are also eying the overseas market for increased growth this year, despite Beijing’s attempt to play up domestic economic prospects and calls for more private investment.

“The economic recovery last year was not as fast as we expected. Private firms are still facing huge pressure,” said Guo Guangchang, founder of Fosun Group, one of China’s largest private conglomerates.

The 56-year-old is a respected voice in China’s entrepreneurial circles, with a net worth calculated by Forbes to have shrunk to US$4 billion in 2023 from a high of US$8.1 billion five years earlier.

“However, the worst is behind us. Only those who can survive can reap more opportunities,” he told an annual gathering of the Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai over the weekend.

China’s economy holds ‘real potential’ in 2024, think tank predicts 5.3% growth

China is widely believed to have reached its annual economic growth target of around 5 per cent for 2023, despite many sectors, including private firms, calling for more policy support to help weather a host of challenges.

Private investment dropped by 0.5 per cent from a year earlier in the first 11 months of last year, while private property developers are heavily exposed to the ongoing debt crisis.

Guo attributed the hardships suffered by many private firms to their business strategy of high debt and heavy asset loads.

Such a business model is seen as particularly vulnerable when Beijing switches to deleveraging to tackle financial risks, and also as it relies on consumption and tech innovation to drive growth.

Guo has been on a spree of offloading underperforming assets in recent years to instead bet on core themes, including bioscience, pharmaceuticals and tourism.

Fosun was once one of China’s most prolific buyers of global assets, but since 2022 it has sold its stakes in several firms, ranging from steelmaking to breweries.

Its pivot to an asset-light strategy was evident by the sale of its 60 per cent stake in Nanjing Iron and Steel last year, having held it for 20 years.

“The days of runaway growth have gone … Profitability in the future can only be extracted from craftsmanship, technology and good management,” said Guo.

Guo also encouraged more Chinese firms to expand into the international market.

“Once you can survive the ferociously competitive home market, you can probably thrive almost anywhere,” he added.

“The key is to derive profits from overseas markets by shipping and selling across the globe.”

A key area for overseas expansion lies in the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s ambitious plan to cast its economic influence in more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.

Wang Junjin, chairman of the Shanghai-based Juneyao Group, said local entrepreneurs would still actively explore business opportunities overseas despite the current economic difficulties.

“We must refuse lying flat,” he said at the gathering over the weekend, referring to the social trend of doing the bare minimum to get by and striving for nothing more than what is absolutely essential for survival.

“Instead, we need to comply with the country’s ‘going global’ strategy, stick to our main business and actively embrace changes.”

China’s non-financial outbound direct investment rose by 12.7 per cent year on year to US$115.7 billion in the first 11 months of 2023.

HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of China among lenders waiving fees for Hong Kong airport operator’s US$640 million retail bond

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3248514/hsbc-standard-chartered-bank-china-among-lenders-waiving-fees-hong-kong-airport-operators-us640?utm_source=rss_feed

Banks and brokers are waiving a range of fees for retail investors eyeing Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK)’s highly anticipated HK$5 billion (US$640 million) bond, which opens for subscription on Wednesday.

HSBC, Hong Kong’s biggest bank, plans to waive eight types of charges for the airport operator’s bond, including subscription fees, safe custody fees and other transaction costs, to support retail investors subscribing to the offering from January 17 to 25.

“Given anticipation that interest rates are at a peak, it makes sense for retail investors to lock down such a rate from a high-quality name for 2.5 years,” said Eugene Ng, managing director of debt capital markets and investment banking at HSBC Asia Pacific. “The bond is expected to be well-received.”

The 4.25 per cent, 2.5-year note will pay interest quarterly. Investors can request early redemption from the AAHK, allowing them to get their entire principal plus interest due on the date of redemption.

This is AAHK’s first retail bond offering targeted at the general public in 20 years to fund its third runway, which will allow the Hong Kong airport to handle an extra 30 million passengers each year and strengthen its status as an international aviation hub.

Bright Smart Securities, the biggest local broker to offer margin financing for initial public offerings (IPO), said it would waive 12 types of fees for investors, including subscription, custodian and redemption charges.

Investors who open new accounts at Bright Smart to subscribe to the bonds, the brokerage said it would give each new client 20 units of Tracker Fund, 10 shares of HSBC and two shares of Nasdaq-listed football club Manchester United.

Other banks such as Bank of China (Hong Kong), Standard Chartered, ICBC Asia, Citibank, and Shanghai Commercial Bank are also offering a range of incentives for investors, including forgoing handling and custodian fees.

Katerine Kou, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Securities Association, said brokers and banks are waiving fees with an eye on the future.

“The fee waivers could mean financial firms may not be able to make a profit from the deals, but could attract new customers who may bring long-term business opportunities,” Kou said.

“The IPO market is quiet at the moment, so high-quality retail bonds such as the one offered by the Hong Kong airport authority would be popular with investors as the risk is low and the returns are high,” she added.

Fundraising from IPOs in Hong Kong last year fell 53.5 per cent to a 20-year low of US$5.9 billion from 68 listings, according to Refinitiv data. The city dropped to eighth place last year in the global IPO table, the lowest since 2001 when it ranked No 14, compared with third in 2022.

Alson Ho, head of wealth management at Standard Chartered Hong Kong, expects the AAHK bond to be popular, pointing to the declining interest rates in the city amid expectations of a rate cut later this year.

Hong Kong’s one-month interbank rate, or Hibor, stood at 4.7616 per cent on Monday, compared with 5.3969 per cent a month earlier, according to data from the Hong Kong Association of Banks.

“Against this backdrop, the Airport Authority Hong Kong’s retail bonds could be an appealing option for retail customers who are looking for stable returns with relatively low risk,” Ho said.

Investors clamour to invest in Hong Kong airport’s perpetual bonds

The AAHK retail bonds’ quarterly interest payment versus half-yearly for the Hong Kong government’s retail green bonds is another attraction for small investors, said Jonathan Wan, deputy head of retail banking and wealth management department at ICBC (Asia).

“The retail bonds of AAHK only require a minimum investment of HK$10,000, which is a low threshold,” Wan said. “The more frequent interest payment, flexible features and low risks mean the bonds would be attractive.”

Daisy Chan Yin-hei, senior vice-president and head of the investment products department at Shanghai Commercial Bank, said the bond’s features – interest payment each quarter and flexible redemption – make it interesting.

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific signs up 100 new mainland Chinese cabin crew as it rebuilds post-coronavirus

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/3248537/hong-kongs-cathay-pacific-signs-100-new-mainland-chinese-cabin-crew-it-rebuilds-post-coronavirus?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has signed up 100 cabin crew through its first recruitment drive in mainland China and some have already started work, the company has said.

Cathay Pacific on Monday added the new staff were the trailblazers for the 1,500 people it aimed to recruit from across the border by 2025.

Mandy Ng, Cathay’s director of service delivery, said the recruitment of Mandarin-speaking flight attendants was an “obvious” and “very natural” move to expand staff diversity.

“We appreciate a very diverse team of our cabin crew, not only coming from our local recruitment, but also from other areas in Asia and also from mainland China,” she said in an interview last Thursday.

“The mainland Chinese crew will complement our existing very diverse cabin crew community to better serve our customers who actually come from different parts of the world with different backgrounds.”

Ng added the airline had an increasing number of Mandarin-speaking passengers, not only coming in and out of the mainland, but also across the entire network.

Cathay held its first recruitment event on the mainland last August and shortlisted 600 candidates for interview from more than 2,000 applicants and aimed to recruit 200 to 300 cabin crew from across the border that year.

Candidates are required to be proficient in English and fluent in at least one Asian language.

Three Cathay cabin crew members were fired last May after they were accused of mocking a mainland passenger who wanted a blanket, but spoke in English and asked for a carpet instead.

But the airline brushed aside suggestions at the mainland recruitment event that it had been organised because of the incident.

The airline suffered a shortage of manpower after it had laid off 5,300 people in October 2020 and shut its regional airline Dragonair as part of a desperate restructuring to help survive the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

About 4,000 cabin crew, 600 pilots, and 700 ground staff and office workers were made redundant in the HK$2.2 billion (US$281.2 million) cost-cutting exercise.

The carrier later launched a massive recruitment drive to make up the shortfall and planned to hire 5,000 workers in 2024, in addition to the 4,000 taken on last year.

A shortage of pilots has forced Cathay to cancel more than 160 flights since last Christmas Eve. The airline has since the start of the month cut flights by an average of 12 a day, which will continue until February. It said the 27 flights axed on January 7 was the peak.

Hong Kong’s Cathay lines up 600 mainlanders to compete for 300 cabin crew jobs

Ng said Cathay aimed to have 10,000 flight attendants, including 1,500 from mainland China, by 2025. She added recruits from across the border would be the airline’s second major source of staff after Hong Kong.

Ng said 1,000 cabin crew were recruited in 2023 including from the city, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Thailand.

She added the 100 mainland staff, all recruited through the August event in Shenzhen, would be based in Hong Kong and had completed their seven weeks of training and examination.

“I am very satisfied with the performance of the flight attendants recruited from the mainland as they are especially diligent during the training,” Ng said.

She said the new staff received the same training and attended classes with the other new hires from different parts of the world, and communicated with each other in English.

Ng explained that the new staff, in line with other cabin crew, would not be limited to mainland routes, but fly around the globe.

New joiners could expect to earn HK$17,000 to HK$20,000 a month if they fulfilled the required flying hours.

Ng said the airline had organised other recruitment events on the mainland, including one in Beijing and another in Guangzhou this month. She added she was confident the company could hire more cabin crew, even with strong competition for staff from other airlines.

Hiring plan could help Hong Kong’s Cathay ‘compete for mainland Chinese travel market’

Harry Wu, from Nanjing in Jiangsu province, is one of the new cabin staff. He said he had worked for a European airline for four years on the mainland after he graduated in 2017.

“I first took a flight on Cathay Pacific in 2011 from Shanghai to Brisbane and changed flights in Hong Kong,” he said. “The dedicated and professional attitude of the flight attendants at that time left a strong impression on me.”

He said his first assignment was a return leg to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from Hong Kong last Monday and he had mistaken the Cantonese word for “blanket” for the Mandarin for “towel”.

But he added he would brush up on his Cantonese through practising with colleagues and watching television dramas.

Lareina Su who graduated from a Canadian university last year, said she joined the airline mostly because of its diverse staff and proximity to her hometown in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

She said she was pleased to learn that she had been assigned to flight routes to a variety of countries she had never visited.

‘Just a game’: China firm tells employees to crawl along street in humiliating team bonding activity they ‘volunteered’ to endure

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3247750/just-game-china-firm-tells-employees-crawl-along-street-humiliating-team-bonding-activity-they?utm_source=rss_feed

A company in China which asked its staff to crawl down the street at night after they failed at a team-bonding game has shocked mainland social media.

A video clip that has attracted 4 million views on Douyin, shows a group of young people on all fours making their way along a street in southern China’s Guizhou province, on January 3.

The person who posted the video said he initially thought they were having a meeting, then they suddenly began crawling – “seems to be some slave company’s punishment for its staff,” he said.

Local police said they had talked to the company’s boss and employees, who told them it was “just the penalty for a team-bonding game” and all the staff had “volunteered” for the extreme activity.

Social media was shocked by the bizarre company team-bonding event and the employees’ response.

“I thought I was watching a zombie movie,” one viewer commented.

Another said: “I wonder how much the company pays its staff for them to agree to such a humiliating event?”

“‘Volunteered’, like we don’t know what that really means for those who cannot say no to their bosses,” said a third.

Other observers called for some kind of objective, external supervision of the firm to prevent exploitative behaviour, adding that companies were able to treat their staff badly due to a lack of proper regulation.

This is not the first time companies in China raised concerns among the public for making unreasonable requests.

Last year, a group of women employees poured cups of water over another female staff member’s head at a training event in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. They said the woman agreed to the deed to boost her motivation.

In 2019, a logistics company in northeastern China’s Liaoning province told its staff to make piles of sand on a beach, which represented their “graves”, and kowtow in front of them as a symbolic gesture for embarking on a new phase of life.

Not all team-bonding activities at Chinese firms are as extreme, they usually take the form of dinner parties and travelling.

In recent years, employees – especially the younger generation – have expressed a dislike for company team-bonding activities.

They say it takes up their precious leisure time and they would rather be given the money than have it spent on a staff party.

China’s Labour Law bans any form of physical punishment imposed by companies on employees, and they face legal action if anybody is harmed.

Cyber ‘Kidnapping’ Scams Target Chinese Students

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/cyber-kidnapping-scams-target-chinese-students/7434825.html

Late last month, 17-year-old Chinese student Kai Zhuang was reported missing near Salt Lake City in the American state of Utah. He was found days later, alone and cold in a tent in the mountains north of the city.

Officials say the case was part of a cyber, or online, plan by criminals. The criminals tried to get $80,000 in ransom money by making Zhuang’s family believe he had been kidnapped. Ransom is money that is paid to release a kidnapped person.

Zhuang’s case is one of many in which unknown criminals target Chinese students around the world and pretend to kidnap them. The criminals often pretend to be Chinese police or government officials. They convince the students to leave the places where they live and go stay at a hotel. Then they threaten the students’ families and ask for tens of thousands of dollars for the release of their children.

On January 3, just days after Kai Zhuang was found, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning about the fake kidnappings of Chinese people in the United States.

Fake kidnappings around the world

Criminals have also attempted fake kidnappings of Chinese students in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan, VOA News found. It is not clear whether the criminals are working together or separately across these countries.

Theresa Payton is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the cybersecurity company Fortalice Solutions. She told VOA News that the complex relationship between the Chinese government and its citizens may move worldwide criminal groups to target Chinese students more than students from other countries.

Other security experts say that the criminals pretend to be Chinese police or government officials for a reason; they are using the strong Chinese security system to their advantage.

“Chinese people are naturally afraid of the police,” said Han Jiang Du Diao Seng, a pharmacist based in the United States. He runs accounts on YouTube and Weibo that are popular among Chinese exchange students.

Seng has helped four Chinese students caught up in cyber kidnapping, he said. He explained to VOA News how the scam, or illegal trick, works.

The criminals, pretending to be Chinese officials, first ask students if they have recently received money from their families. If they say yes, the criminals lie to the students. They may tell them that the money was sent illegally or they may tell them their families are targets of criminals. Then they tell the students to stop communicating with their family while officials look into the problem.

Soon, this makes the family believe their son or daughter has been kidnapped.

In the cases Seng worked on, he said, the criminals forced all the students to leave where they lived and go stay at a hotel. This made their families believe the students were actually kidnapped.

Seng said Chinese parents may be less likely to report their cases to American police. He noted that there is distrust among Chinese people of American police. Chinese state media often show American police as violent and irresponsible, Seng said.

Use of technology

There is no clear information on the number of cyber kidnapping cases in the U.S. or around the world, cybersecurity experts told VOA. However, the number of cases appears to be growing.

Improved technology, especially with artificial intelligence (AI), might make the cyber kidnappings easier for criminals, experts say.

AI can create deepfakes. Deepfake audio and pictures can make it seem like victims have actually been kidnapped, said Payton, the Fortalice Solutions CEO.

Joseph Steinberg is a cybersecurity expert based in New York City. He said improvements in AI mean that criminals do not even have to speak the same language as their victims.

“AI is only going to get better, and that means that the attacks will only be more and more realistic,” he told VOA.

Last February in Canada, police said Chinese students had been tricked out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by scammers claiming to be Chinese government officials.

In Japan last summer, at least six Chinese students were targeted in cyber kidnapping plans, local police said. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo issued a warning about the scams in August.

Police in Britain issued a warning about cyber scams targeting Chinese students in September. And in October, the Australian government issued a similar warning.

Cybersecurity experts recommend families set up a password to check one another’s identity over the phone during these kinds of situations.

“The cyber kidnapping scam very much can happen to anybody, Steinberg said, “and that’s what people need to be aware of.”

I’m Faith Pirlo. And I’m Andrew Smith.

 

Liam Scott and Tracy Liu wrote this story for VOA News. Andrew Smith adapted it for VOA Learning English.

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Words in This Story

tent -n. a shelter made of nylon or canvas and held up by poles or ropes, usually used for camping

ransom -n. the money that has to be paid to free someone who has been kidnapped

fake -adj. not real or genuine

pharmacist -n. a person who has legal permission to sell and administer medicine

deepfake -n. an image, audio recording, or video that seems like a real recording of a person in a particular situation but instead is fake and generated by digital technology

 

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Hamas fights with a patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia and North Korea

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-guns-weapons-missiles-smuggling-adae9dae4c48059d2a3c8e5d565daa30In this image from body camera video during the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, a Hamas fighter holds a Russian-designed 9M32 Strela anti-aircraft missile. An Associated Press analysis of more than 150 videos and photos taken in the three months of combat since Hamas launched its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel shows the militant group has amassed a diverse patchwork arsenal of weapons from around the world – much of it smuggled past a 17-year blockade that was aimed at stopping just such a military buildup. (South First Responders via AP)

2024-01-15T14:44:53Z

Iranian sniper rifles. AK-47 assault rifles from China and Russia. North Korean- and Bulgarian-built rocket-propelled grenades. Anti-tank rockets secretly cobbled together in Gaza.

An Associated Press analysis of more than 150 videos and photos taken in the three months of combat since Hamas launched its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel shows the militant group has amassed a diverse patchwork arsenal of weapons from around the world – much of it smuggled past a 17-year blockade that was aimed at stopping just such a military buildup.

Those weapons have proved deadly during weeks of intense urban warfare in Gaza, where Hamas fighters are typically armed only with what they can carry and employ hit-and-run tactics against lopsided Israeli advantages in arms and technology. Hamas propaganda videos posted over the past few weeks appear to show the shootings of Israeli soldiers recorded through the scopes of sniper rifles.

“We are searching everywhere for weapons, for political support, for money,” Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad recently said in an interview with the AP, declining to discuss specifically who has been providing its weapons or how they were snuck into Gaza.

Experts who reviewed the images for AP were able to identify distinguishing features and markings that show where many of the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters were manufactured. But such an analysis does not provide evidence of whether they were provided by the governments of those countries or purchased in a thriving Middle East black market, with weapons and components listed for sale on social media in such war-torn countries as Iraq, Libya and Syria.

What is clear, however, is that many of the images show Hamas militants toting weapons that appear to be relatively new, evidence the group has found ways of getting arms past the air-and-sea blockade of the Gaza Strip — possibly by boat, through tunnels or concealed in shipments of food and other goods.

“The majority of their arms are of Russian, Chinese or Iranian origin, but North Korean weapons and those produced in former Warsaw Pact countries are also present in the arsenal,” said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services. 

Despite the buildup, Israel maintains a massive advantage, with a powerful array of modern tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and an air force of U.S.-made fighter jets. Israel’s military says it has killed more than 7,000 Hamas militants, compared to the deaths of at least 510 of its own soldiers, more than 330 of whom were killed in Hamas’ initial attack. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 23,000 Palestinians have died in the fighting, though it does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Imagery reviewed by the AP showed a Hamas arsenal featuring weapons ranging from small arms and machine guns to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and craft-produced anti-tank projectiles.

Among the most distinctive is the oversized AM-50 Sayyad (Arabic for “hunter”), an Iranian-made a sniper rifle that fires a .50- caliber round powerful enough to punch through up to an inch of steel. It has previously been spotted on battlefields in Yemen, Syria, and in the hands of Shia militias in Iraq.

Hamas fighters have also been seen carrying an array of Soviet-era weapons that have been copied and manufactured in Iran and China. They include variants of the Russian-designed 9M32 Strela, a portable heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile system.

Jenzen-Jones said a grip stock on one of the missile launchers a fighter was seen holding is distinctive to a variant manufactured in China and used by the Iranian military and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, a group closely aligned with Hamas.

Weapons recovered from Hamas fighters by the Israel Defense Forces include what appear to be Italian-designed TC/6 anti-tank mines. However, Seán Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert, said it too had been copied by Iran’s arms industry.

The Israel Defense Forces and U.S. officials have long accused Iran of supplying money, training and weapons to Hamas and allied militants in Gaza, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

Iranian representatives at the United Nations did not respond to emails from the AP about whether their government supplied weapons to Hamas, including AM-50 Sayyad sniper rifles. However, a week after AP sought comment, Hamas posted a video purporting to show militants in Gaza using machining equipment to make their own copies of the rifle.

Master gunsmith Don Fraley reviewed that Dec. 20 video and said it would be nearly impossible for Hamas to manufacture a safe and accurate .50-caliber sniper rifle with the rudimentary equipment shown.

“You’re going to have to be a rock star at machine shop work. And I didn’t see any of that,” said Fraley, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier and sniper for the Kentucky State Police. “These folks are just trying to cover their tracks.”

An Israeli military official familiar with Hamas’ arsenal said the group uses a combination of smuggled “off-the-shelf” weaponry, including AK-47s, RPGs and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a large collection of home-grown weapons often made with easily accessible civilian materials.

For instance, the official said, the group uses lathes to shape metal into rockets and mortars, and fits them with explosives manufactured from fertilizers. Other home-made weapons include a launcher capable of firing 14 rockets simultaneously and the “Zuwari” drone, an explosives-laden aircraft that was used to strike Israeli observation towers and knock out cameras on Oct. 7.

“There is a huge military/defense industry inside the Gaza Strip,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules.

The official said most of the smuggled weapons are believed to have been brought in through Egypt and are generally easy to purchase and did not need to be supplied by the country of origin.

One such weapon seen in the hands of Hamas fighters is a version of Chinese machine guns known as the Type 80, a model that has also been copied by the Iranians and renamed as the PKM-T80.

Jonathan Ferguson, the curator of firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum in England, said from what he could see from the photos and videos, versions of the gun made in China and Iran were so similar as to be indistinguishable.

Ferguson was also able to identify a rocket-propelled grenade with marks showing it was made in Bulgaria. AP previously reported Hamas used RPGs with a distinctive red stripe indicating they were made in North Korea.

Among the more sophisticated Hamas home-grown weapons is a copy of a Russian anti-tank rocket called the PG-7VR, which is specifically designed to defeat reactive-armor systems like those used on Israel’s Merkava Mark VI main battle tanks. Such tanks are covered with explosive-filed plates that explode outwards to disrupt incoming projectiles.

In propaganda videos posted in October, masked militants are seen assembling a version of the Russian rocket that Hamas has renamed the Al-Yasin 105, in honor of the group’s founder killed in an Israeli air strike in 2004. While the original Russian version can melt through up to two feet of steel armor, experts say it’s not clear whether the home-brewed explosives in the Hamas knock-off are as potent.

Hamas has posted multiple videos of fighters firing the rockets at Israeli tanks and armored personal carriers. Those videos are typically cut off after the warhead explodes, making it impossible to independently verify whether the target was destroyed.

Also, in a tactic borrowed from the battlefields of Ukraine, Hamas appears to have obtained or copied Iranian-designed drones that pack warheads that explode when crashed into their targets. Off- the-shelf, Chinese-made quadcopter drones have also been adapted to drop explosives on tanks and troops.

“The availability of commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicles, these light consumer drones, has radically changed warfare in recent years,” Jenzen-Jones said. “We’ve seen them, obviously, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, in Ukraine, and now in Gaza.”

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Biesecker reported from Washington. AP writer Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/

MICHAEL BIESECKER Biesecker is a global investigative reporter for The Associated Press, based in Washington. He reports on a wide range of topics, including human conflict, climate change and political corruption. twitter instagram mailto