The focus of global spending has gradually shifted from G7 wealthy countries to emerging markets, a sign of the emergence of an Asia-Pacific “era,” the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said in a report last week.
The emerging markets, including those in the Asia-Pacific region, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, have become the main drive for global economic growth as they took the lead in recovering from the global financial crisis, the government’s top economic planner said last Tuesday.
In particular, the impact of the financial crisis on China and India was relatively limited, the CEPD said, adding that with multiple stimulus measures to help expand internal demand, the two countries were turning into the world’s market rather than the world’s factory.
The latest data by Global Insight Inc, an independent economic and financial services firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts, showed that emerging countries’ economies were expected to grow approximately 5.5 percent next year, accounting for 53.1 percent of global economic growth, compared with 44.9 percent for industrialized countries, the CEPD said.
Because of the rising consuming power of the middle-class population in China and India, the countries’ economic growth is expected to make up nearly one third of the world’s momentum next year, becoming the key to the global steady economic growth, the CEPD said.
Among the emerging markets, the Asia-Pacific market has shown the strongest sign of recovery with projected economic growth of 7.5 percent, accounting for more than 40 percent of global economic growth, the CEPD said.
As for Taiwan, the CEPD said last Monday that the government’s economic growth target was 4.8 percent for next year.
Also See: Analysts predicting an ‘Asian Century’
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts