■ Counterfeiting
Police seize fake toner
Police in Singapore seized US$6.9 million worth of pirated photocopier products in their biggest single haul of counterfeit goods, officials said yesterday. During a 12-hour operation, a 51-year-old man was arrested, the managing director of a company dealing in ink-related products. About 167,000 counterfeit photocopier products, including toners and ink cartridges, were taken from a factory bearing such trademarks as Sharp, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Panasonic and Canon. Police believe the managing director obtained empty toners and ordered ink from China, according to The Straits Times. He was said to have filled the toners with the ink and packed them for export to the Middle East, South Africa and several Western nations.
■ Currencies
China relaxes controls
China may permit exchanges between the Chinese Yuan and the Taiwan dollar from mid-December, starting with five cities in the southeastern province of Fujian, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing unidentified people. The Chinese government may allow Taiwanese businessmen, with valid identification and documents, to carry out transactions at Bank of China branches in the cities of Zhangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou and Putian, the paper said. The exchange rate and amount allowed will be specified later, the paper said. China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party lost a civil war to Mao Zedong's Communist Party and fled to the island. China deems Taiwan a renegade province and has vowed eventual reunification.
■ Semiconductors
Vanguard to cut production
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) plans to exit the market for computer memory chips from the middle of next year, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing chairman Paul Chien. The company expects to cut the portion of capacity used to make dynamic random-access memory chips, which serve as the main memory in personal computers, to 15 percent next year from 40 percent this year, and will stop making the chips completely by the end of the year, the paper said. Vanguard will focus on making specialized chips for wireless communications, imaging and other products, the report said. The company, based in Hsinchu, is controlled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world's biggest supplier of made-to-order chips.
■ Fishing
China cuts fishing fleet
China will cut the size of its fishing fleet by 13 percent over the next eight years and limit its catch to protect diminishing fish stocks, state media reported yesterday. The move is expected to throw some 300,000 people out of work, newspapers and the Xinhua News Agency said. The number of fishing boats permitted in China's waters will fall by 30,000 to 192,000 by 2010, the reports said. The cutbacks add to increasingly drastic steps taken by China in recent years to protect dwindling fishing stocks. Fishing is regularly banned in large sections of China's coastal waters during spawning season. Seasonal restrictions have been extended in recent years to the Yangtze and other major rivers to protect the breeding of dwindling fish species.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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