AUSTRALIA
Chinese investment dives
Chinese investment in the country’s commercial property has plummeted to the lowest level in six years as Chinese capital controls bite. Direct investment fell 81 percent to A$250 million (US$187 million) in the first half of the year from a year earlier, property brokerage CBRE Group Inc said in a report yesterday. “If these restrictions continue, we expect Chinese investment into Australia to record its lowest year since 2012,” CBRE associate director of capital markets and forecasting Ben Martin-Henry said. The capital controls are having a “meaningful impact” globally, he said. Chinese spending on commercial property in the country is down from a A$2 billion high in 2015, when capital from Asia’s biggest economy accounted for 43 percent of all foreign investments, CBRE said.
CHINA
FX holdings remain steady
The country’s foreign-currency (FX) holdings held steady last month, with a slight month-on-month increase, as the yuan slumped and the nation came closer to the trade war that has now begun with the US. Reserves last month rose US$1.51 billion to US$3.112 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said yesterday. That was more than the US$3.102 trillion estimate in Bloomberg’s survey of economists. The increase came as the yuan suffered its worst quarter since 1994, as China and the US neared the imposition of tariffs on at least US$34 billion of each other’s goods. Further declines in the yuan might stoke concern over capital flight, prompting the central bank to use reserves to defend the currency.
UNITED KINGDOM
E-car infrastructure boosted
The country is to boost investment in electric-car infrastructure, including a £400 million (US$531 million) fund for companies that produce and install charging points. New street lighting also would be required to have charging points in areas with on-street parking and a £40 million program would be introduced to test low-cost wireless charging technology, among other measures unveiled yesterday by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling. The proposals are part of the government’s push to end the sale of new cars and vans fueled by gasoline and diesel by 2040. “The prize is not just a cleaner and healthier environment, but a UK economy fit for the future and the chance to win a substantial slice of a market estimated to be worth up to £7.6 trillion by 2050,” Grayling is to say in a speech to mark the government’s “Road to Zero” strategy.
UNITED KINGDOM
Brexit hits financial services
The country’s financial services industry is battling a drop in foreign investment, while some of its EU counterparts enjoy big gains, according to a new study that displays the starkest indication yet of Brexit’s impact on the sector. Investment in the country’s financial services firms from abroad last year fell 26 percent, EY Financial Services said in a report yesterday. During the same period, Germany experienced a 64 percent increase, while the figure for France more than doubled. London remains the most attractive EU city for investment in financial services, but the gap with Paris, Frankfurt and Dublin is narrowing, EY said. With talks between the UK and EU stalled since March, banks are rushing to establish new trading hubs elsewhere in the region. EU regulators have made it clear that they expect banks to establish full-scale, standalone operations inside the union staffed by significant numbers of front and back-office staff, as well as senior employees, as soon as possible.
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