China’s slowing growth in money supply has not affected the economy and the nation’s fundamentals support a stable foreign-exchange rate, the top economist at the central bank’s research bureau said.
The nation’s stabilizing hoard of foreign reserves, which were little changed at US$3.201 trillion last month from the previous month, signal the exchange rate is near equilibrium, People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) research bureau chief economist Ma Jun (馬駿) wrote in a note on Saturday.
He added that China’s corporate debt was high by international standards and that it should reduce the leverage by cleaning up “zombie” companies and implementing debt-to-equity swaps.
Ma’s remarks came after official data on Friday showed that a recent economic stabilization faltered last month, with factory output, retail sales and investment all missing estimates, and the broadest measure of new credit rising at the slowest pace in two years.
He pointed to the IMF’s forecasts for China’s growth as a sign of confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.
The nation should weaken its focus on GDP in the future and put more emphasis on a stable job market, he said.
The broad M2 money supply increased 10.2 percent last month, the slowest pace since April last year, PBOC data showed on Friday. The yuan climbed 0.12 percent against the US dollar last month, halting three months of declines.
China’s leaders plan to underpin demand with fiscal support and view interest rates as being at “appropriate” levels, according to glimpses of their thinking seen in the IMF’s yearly review of the economy.
Its GDP is projected to expand 6.6 percent this year and 6.2 percent next year, while inflation is seen picking up to about 2 percent this year, the IMF said.
China’s economy will probably grow 6.5 percent this year and 6.3 percent next year, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
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],”