German luxury carmaker BMW AG yesterday announced a plan to take control of its China joint venture, the first foreign automaker to take advantage of Beijing’s new ownership rules for the sector.
BMW would acquire a further 25 percent stake in the venture with Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd (華晨中國汽車控股) for 3.6 billion euros (US$4.2 billion), the company said, bringing its stake to 75 percent by 2022.
Foreign automakers have long been restricted to holding no more than a 50 percent stake in their China operations, but Beijing decided to relax the ownership caps this year.
The reforms are part of Beijing’s plan to further open its economy to foreign business, after years of facing pressure from the US and Europe, but US and European business groups say the reforms have still not gone far enough, and have pushed for further opening.
To force the issue, and to hit back at China for alleged theft of US intellectual property, US President Donald Trump has slapped tariffs on about half of the imports from China.
The joint venture “is the cornerstone of the BMW brand’s sustained success in its largest single market,” BMW chairman Harald Kruger said.
“BMW Group and Brilliance continue to set a good example of successful cooperation in China,” he said.
The changes in ownership rules are a boon for foreign automakers — which will gain a greater share of control and profits from their China operations — but hurt prospects for their Chinese partners.
Brilliance China’s shares in Hong Kong have plummeted this year and were yesterday suspended from trading.
The two companies had extended their joint venture contract until 2040 and announced a plan to pump 3 billion euros into expanding their auto plants in Liaoning Province — ramping up production capacity to 650,000 cars early next decade while creating 5,000 new jobs.
BMW has been hit particularly hard by the US-China trade war, with many of its sports utility vehicles imported from the US facing new 25 percent taxes, while cars imported from other countries have benefited from China’s tariff cut for vehicles from 25 percent to 15 percent.
With the new production capacity, the China joint venture would start to produce BMW vehicles like fully electric BMW iX3 for export globally from 2020, BMW said.
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