Profit at China’s top state-owned companies fell 30 percent last year, hurt by the global financial crisis, but assets have increased.
The 141 banks, airlines, oil producers and other companies controlled by the central government reported net profit of 696.18 billion yuan (US$102 billion) last year, down 30.8 percent from the previous year, Xinhua news agency said yesterday.
The report cited the Cabinet’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) as saying the assets of the companies grew for the fifth consecutive year since 2004 and were worth 5.56 trillion yuan at the end of last year, up 8.6 percent from the previous year.
SASAC owns China’s biggest, most prominent companies, including China National Petroleum Corp (中石油), China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), Industrial Commercial Bank of China Ltd (工商銀行), China Life Insurance Ltd (中國人壽保險) and Air China Ltd (中國國際航空).
Beijing’s 4 trillion yuan stimulus helped to accelerate second-quarter economic growth to 7.9 percent compared with a year earlier, up from the previous quarter’s 6.1 percent expansion.
State-owned companies have received a big share of the stimulus, which is meant to reduce reliance on exports by boosting domestic demand through higher spending on construction of highways and other public works.
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”