China will link trading between its Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock markets as part of a push for financial reforms, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) said yesterday, following a similar scheme with Shanghai’s flagship bourse.
The “Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect” trial will be launched “at an appropriate time,” Li told the opening of the annual session of the Chinese National People’s Congress. He gave no further details.
In November last year, China’s main stock exchange in commercial hub Shanghai and the market in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, began allowing investors on each exchange to trade selected stocks on the other through their existing accounts.
The Shenzhen exchange, just across the border from Hong Kong in the southern province of Guangdong, has dedicated boards for technology firms and smaller companies, and daily trading volumes sometimes exceed those of Shanghai.
“This will accelerate the internationalization of the A-share market, which will have significant long-term effects on liquidity and investment style,” BOC International Holdings Ltd (中銀國際控股) analyst Shen Jun (沈鈞) said, referring to China’s domestic share market. “So it not only concerns the capital markets, but also China’s financial reforms.”
Shenzhen stock investors were unimpressed by the announcement, with the market flat at midday yesterday. Shenzhen’s benchmark composite index surged 33.8 percent last year and has risen more than 18 percent so far this year. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 0.17 percent by the break.
Officials trumpeted the Shanghai link as the opening up of China’s closeted stock markets to the outside world, as it gives foreign investors access to Chinese companies not quoted elsewhere.
However, trading through the scheme has been lackluster.
The creation of the trading platform between Hong Kong and Shanghai was also seen as a key step toward making China’s yuan currency freely convertible.
However, the scheme is still subject to strict limits to preserve capital controls in China, where authorities keep a tight grip on the yuan.
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
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
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],”