Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday said that he supported the proposed development of a Chinese-led Asian regional bank — as long as it was transparent and not run by a single nation.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is expected to be established by the end of the year, has raised concerns in Washington that it would compete with international lenders such as the World Bank.
Abbott said he was having ongoing conservations with US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — both close strategic allies — about the proposed bank.
Photo: Bloomberg
“What is proposed by China and now joined by many other countries could serve a very useful purpose because we have a massive infrastructure deficit in this country and in our region in the wider world, and a new multilateral bank to fund infrastructure, particularly in our region, could play a really important part for good in the years and decades to come,” Abbott told reporters.
“So we are certainly well and truly disposed to joining something which is in fact a genuinely multilateral institution with transparent governance, with clear accountability and with major decisions made by the board,” Abbott said. “That is really, I guess, the fundamental thing for us: Would major decisions be made by the board and is it going to be a multilateral institution rather than one that is controlled by any one country?”
Australia is expected join the bank as early as this week, with Abbott to explain his government’s position before a final decision is made, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday.
Chinese Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉) said the AIIB would complement rather than compete with established international lenders, Xinhua news agency reported last week.
Like other regional investment vehicles, such as the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the AIIB would not weaken established institutions, but reinforce them and “more vigorously push forward the global economy,” Lou was quoted as saying.
Lou said other nations would be welcome to join even after a deadline expires on Tuesday next week.
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