Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he raised concerns about trade and investment imbalances in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
The two leaders did not discuss CNOOC Ltd’s (中國海洋石油) US$15.1 billion takeover of Calgary-based oil and gas producer Nexen Inc when they met, Harper said yesterday at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, Russia. Canada is reviewing the bid under the country’s foreign-takeover law.
“The Chinese side did not raise the issue of the Nexen takeover,” Harper said. “I think they understand that that is subject to a Canadian legal process on which, as prime minister, I’m severely restricted on my ability to comment.”
Harper raised “issues of the relative flows of our trade and investment between Canada and China and the significant imbalance that exists in both,” he said. “We had a good and robust discussion on that question.”
With 99 percent of oil exports going to the US, Canada’s trade deficit with China reached a record C$31.7 billion (US$32.4 billion) last year, according to Statistics Canada. Canadian direct investment in China was C$4.5 billion last year, less than 1 percent of total Canadian investment abroad, and less than half the level of investment in Canada by Chinese firms, Statistics Canada data show.
Harper and Hu signed an agreement yesterday to protect foreign investors in their respective countries. Both countries must still ratify the agreement.
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],”
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
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