Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison yesterday said that national security would be his overriding consideration when he makes a decision on whether to allow a Chinese consortium to lease a major Sydney electricity grid.
Morrison said he was close to making a decision on whether to allow Chinese state-owned State Grid Corp (國家電網) and Hong Kong-registered Cheung Kong Infrastructure Group (長江基建集團) buy a 99-year lease for half of the New South Wales State-owned electricity network Ausgrid for more than A$10 billion (US$7.6 billion).
“This is not an easy decision,” Morrison told Sydney Radio 2GB. “National security out ranks everything.”
Chinese foreign investment, particularly from state-owned companies, has become increasingly contentious in Australia has China takes a more aggressive stance in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
US President Barack Obama raised questions with Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last year after Australia allowed a Chinese company, Landbridge, to secure a 99-year lease over the strategically important Darwin Port, which has become a US Marines training hub in northern Australia. Turnbull said Australian defense and security officials determined the A$506 million deal did not threaten national interests.
Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, the leader of three senators whose support could be crucial to the government to pass legislation through the upper chamber when Parliament resumes this month, said the foreign investment decisionmaking process lacked transparency.
“I don’t believe it is in the national interest for a state-owned enterprise to control one of our biggest power assets in this country,” Xenophon told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
New South Wales State Premier Mike Baird is relying on the Ausgrid deal to fund major infrastructure projects. Baird and Morrison are members of the state wing of the conservative Liberal Party.
Australian Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Morrison should not be swayed by Baird’s political needs in deciding on Ausgrid, which provides power to 1.7 million homes and businesses in Sydney and its surrounds.
“What we don’t need is for the Liberal Party just to rush this through at they did with the Port of Darwin,” he told reporters.
Morrison in May blocked a Chinese-led consortium from buying Australia’s largest private landholding, S Kidman & Co Ltd.
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