Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said slowing growth and elevated prices are adding to the difficulties the government faces in helping manage the world’s second--biggest economy.
The nation will keep its export policies such as tax rebates “basically stable” next year and the government will mainly use fiscal spending to support “structural tax cuts” and to improve people’s lives, Wen was cited as saying in a statement posted on the central government’s Web site on Tuesday.
“The current economic growth momentum is generally sound, but we are also facing many new situations and problems,” Wen said.
China will maintain prudent monetary and proactive fiscal policy next year and policies will be fine tuned as needed in accordance with the changing situation, the Chinese Communist Party said after an economic work meeting last week.
A lingering European debt crisis and a cooling domestic property market could prompt the government to ease policy further to sustain its expansion pace.
“This is a sign of policy initiatives to support growth next year as the external environment remains weak while domestic demand may suffer from slowing housing construction,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “China seems to be preparing for a prolonged downturn in the US and the eurozone by boosting domestic demand and focusing on exposure to emerging markets.”
Regions that are highly reliant on exports should try to stimulate domestic demand and explore domestic or emerging markets, Wen was cited as saying during a tour to eastern China’s Jiangsu Province.
The nation needs to “rectify” financial orders and banks should address the problem of unreasonable fees and additional conditions attached to loans because many enterprises are suffering from excessive credit costs, Wen said, without elaborating.
China’s GDP expanded 9.1 percent in the third quarter, slowing from the 9.5 percent in the previous three months. Inflation eased to a 14-month low of 4.2 percent last month from a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July.
Export growth slowed to the weakest pace since 2009 in November, a development that Wen said reflects a “grim” situation facing China.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained