China is to allow foreign automakers from Volkswagen AG to Ford Motor Co to own more than 50 percent of local ventures, removing a two-decade restriction and giving a boost to global companies seeking to capture a greater share of the world’s largest car market.
In a move helping electric-car makers such as Tesla Inc, the ownership limits for new-energy vehicles are to be removed this year, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
China is to do away with the limit for commercial vehicles in 2020 and that for passenger vehicles in 2022.
Potential beneficiaries include Daimler AG, BMW AG, General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp, all set to find it easier to manufacture and do business in China.
The country’s local automakers would be under increased pressure to speed up the building of their own brands.
Shares in German carmakers all gained on the news, reversing earlier losses.
China accounts for about half of Volkswagen’s namesake brand sales, while the world’s biggest car market is also the most significant buyer of luxury Mercedes, VW’s Audi unit and BMW vehicles.
Elon Musk’s Tesla in particular is in a position to benefit from the relaxed ownership rules, which take effect this year for electric cars.
Musk has not been able to secure a deal to open an assembly plant in China, after negotiating with the Shanghai government for more than a year. The sides disagreed on the ownership structure, people with knowledge of the situation said in February.
The risk of higher import taxes spurred by Chinese trade friction with the US would be allayed if Tesla were able to secure a production.
China has moved toward eliminating the caps in recent years with promises of their eventual removal.
China has required foreign automakers to enter into ventures with domestic partners to operate in the country since 1994, with the overseas company holding no more than 50 percent.
For years, the so-called “50:50 rule” was a sacred cow for the auto industry, seen as necessary to buy local carmakers time to gain the technology and build their brands before giving overseas carmakers unfettered access to the market.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained