China and Hong Kong fleshed out and expanded their free trade pact yesterday, with Beijing adding telecommunications to the deal and raising the stake that Hong Kong companies can take in Chinese insurance providers.
"This not only brings new momentum and opportunity to the development of Hong Kong, this also brings new momentum and opportunity to the development of the mainland," China's vice commerce minister, An Min (
He and Hong Kong Financial Secretary Henry Tang (
Tang suggested that will depend on how well Hong Kong's entrepreneurs take advantage of the deal.
"Now it is up to our private sector to realize the potential benefits," Tang said after the two sides approved additional provisions and details to the free trade pact, known as the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, which was signed on June 29.
Although Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China six years ago, they have separate legal and economic systems -- with Hong Kong maintaining its capitalist ways and Western-style civil liberties under an arrangement dubbed "one country, two systems."
China had previously agreed to eliminate tariffs on 273 goods certified as made in Hong Kong as of Jan. 1.
Hong Kong Commerce Secretary John Tsang said that will remove HK$750 million (US$96 million) in tariffs each year.
Goods covered range from clothing to jewelry, cosmetics, chemicals and watches.
Hong Kong companies will also be allowed to get into five types of telecommunications businesses starting tomorrow: Internet data services, call centers, Internet access centers, content services and storage and forwarding services.
The Hong Kong companies will have to team up with Chinese partners but can hold up to 50 percent of those businesses through joint ventures.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained