China’s sovereign wealth fund is considering investments in Europe, the head of the organization was quoted as saying in the Financial Times yesterday.
Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉), chairman of China Investment Corp (中國投資), said the fund might turn to the continent after initially shunning it because European officials had voiced concerns about its transparency and motives.
“I have to thank these European officials,” Lou told a regional forum in south China over the weekend. “They saved me a lot of money. Now they come to me without conditions and I am beginning to consider making investments in Europe again.”
During a trip to Beijing in February last year, Peter Mandelson, the then EU trade commissioner, called for a global code of conduct for sovereign wealth funds.
While China Investment Corp has not been a major player in Europe since its establishment in 2007, it has made several high-profile and costly investment decisions in the US.
Among them was a US$5 billion investment in Morgan Stanley in December 2007 that saw the fund rack up almost US$4 billion in unrealized losses as the bank was hit by the credit crisis, state media reports said.
The fund was set up to help China find more lucrative ways to place its massive foreign exchange reserves, which now stand at US$1.95 trillion and are parked mainly in low-yield instruments, such as US Treasury bonds.
However, the fund has so far not lived up to expectations, partly because of its launch date, shortly before the global financial crisis, while at the same time raising suspicions abroad about China’s intentions.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last