Shanghai, China’s financial center and most populous city, will raise the minimum monthly wage by 14 percent to 1,280 yuan (US$195) next month, the city said yesterday.
The minimum hourly wage will be raised by 22 percent to 11 yuan, a statement from Shanghai’s municipal government said.
Shanghai’s mayor said in January that minimum wage would be raised by more than 10 percent this year given the fast pace of development and soaring food prices.
The Chinese government is encouraging wage hikes as it wants to boost consumer spending and reduce the economy’s reliance on exports.
A China Daily report in late January said the wealthy coastal province of Jiangsu was to hike minimum wages by at least 12 percent last month, with its capital, Nanjing, raising the minimum wage to 960 yuan from 850 yuan.
Media have also reported that Beijing might raise the minimum wage by 10 percent from the current 800 yuan per month as early as April 1, and that Zhejiang Province, as well as Guangdong Province’s Dongguan and Guangzhou were also planning increases.
According to official statistics, per capita disposable income of urban residents nationwide was 19,109 yuan last year, up 7.8 percent from 2009 in real terms; per capita income in rural areas was 5,919 yuan, up 10.9 percent.
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
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
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