China officially launched a new multibillion-dollar jet engine conglomerate with almost 100,000 employees over the weekend, as Beijing seeks to become an aerospace power and compete with the likes of Rolls-Royce and General Electric Corp (GE).
The Aero Engine Corp of China (AECC, 中國航發) has registered capital of 50 billion yuan (US$7.5 billion), and previous reports said it would incorporate subsidiaries of a series of state-owned firms, including the Aviation Industrial Corp of China (AVIC, 中國航空工業集團).
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said founding the company was a “strategic move” to make China an aviation power and modernise the military, Xinhua news agency reported.
China does not make large commercial jet engines of its own and its narrow-body airliner, the C919, is powered by engines from CFM International, a venture between GE of the US and France’s Safran.
The best aircraft in China’s air force use engines built in Russia, Xinhua said.
Beijing is looking to change that with the creation of a new national champion in the field as it seeks the prestige of having its own aviation sector.
Leaders have targeted the manufacture of high-technology products such as jet engines as a means to transform the world’s second-largest economy and make its firms more competitive with advanced foreign rivals in aerospace, biotechnology, alternative energy and other sectors.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) said in written comments that making “breakthroughs” in advanced aircraft engines would have great value in strengthening the military and manufacturing ability of the country.
Xinhua cited him urging indigenous innovation to make AECC a world leader in aero-engines.
The new firm will employ 96,000 employees and be headquartered in the capital, reports said, with China’s State Council and the Beijing City Government investing in it.
However, industry executives say it could take years for the firm to develop the engines to power big commercial jets.
This summer China’s homegrown regional jet, the ARJ21, made by the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (中國商用飛機公司), made its first commercial flight after years of delays, though its quality and reliability have yet to be established.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts