China and Indonesia signed deals worth at least US$17 billion yesterday in fields such as hydroelectricity and mining during a visit to Beijing by the Southeast Asian nation’s leader, state media said.
The agreements come as the two countries, both highly dependent on exports, seek to make up for sagging demand in Europe’s debt-hit economies and a US economy still struggling to recover from the 2008 housing mortgage crisis.
They cover a wide range of industries, including hydroelectric generation, mining and steelmaking, and were signed by business representatives from the two countries during Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s three-day visit to China.
“Indonesia welcomes Chinese enterprises to expand their investment in Indonesia and to participate in major infrastructure projects,” Yudhoyono said, according to a statement posted on the Chinese foreign ministry Web site.
Trade between the two Asian nations has steadily increased in recent years, reaching US$60.5 billion last year compared with just US$2.9 billion in 2000, according to the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
The two countries aim to increase bilateral trade further to US$80 billion by 2015, and Yudhoyono said he was confident this previously announced target would be met.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), meanwhile, told Yudhoyono Beijing wanted to increase cooperation with Jakarta “in the fields of oil and gas, minerals, electricity and clean and sustainable energy.”
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