■ Petroleum
Hitachi wins Russian deal
Hitachi Ltd, Japan's largest electronics maker, won a ¥6 billion (US$51 million) order for generators from Sakhalin Energy Investment for an oil and natural gas project off Russia's Sakhalin Island, Nikkei English News reported, citing company officials it didn't name. Tokyo-based Hitachi will deliver four 26.9-megawatt gas turbine generators and four gas compressors for the Sakhalin 2 project by the end of next year, the report said.The company, which mainly supplies generators to companies in Japan, expects the Sakhalin contract may lead to more sales overseas, according to Nikkei.
■ Electronics
Macronix ups investment
Macronix International Co, Taiwan's biggest maker of memory chips for electronic games, may invest tens of millions of dollars more in Tower Semiconductor Ltd, an Israeli maker of chips to order, the Israeli business daily Globes said, citing Macronix's president. President Miin Wu made the comment in a meeting with Israeli Minister of Industry and Trade Ehud Olmert and Taiwanese Economics Minister Lin Yi-Fu, the newspaper said. Macronix has already invested US$75 million in a plant of Migdal Ha'emek, Israel-based Tower Semicon-ductor, the paper said. Wu said Macronix has invested a total of US$100 million in Israeli companies, the paper added. Tower Semiconductor said in May its first-quarter net loss widened to US$14.4 million from US$12 million a year earlier because the costs of building a plant expanded.
■ Macroeconomics
China's GDP grows 8%
China will probably say its economy expanded 8 percent in the first half as strong export and fixed asset investment growth offset the effect wrought by the outbreak of SARS, Xinhua news service reported, citing Chen Dongqi, an official at a think tank funded by State Development & Reform Commission, China's top planning ministry. China's government plans to announce its second-quarter GDP later this month. In the first quarter, China's GDP rose 9.9 percent, the fastest pace in seven years. China's foreign direct investment rose nearly 30 percent in the first six months, the report said, without giving absolute figures. State investment, such as the building of roads and bridges, and exports rose 30 percent in that period, it said. Government investment will probably grow at a faster pace in the second half than the first, the report said.
■ Software
Chinadotcom sues AOL
Chinadotcom Corp, a Hong Kong-based software vendor, sued an executive at a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc over an aborted joint venture, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a court filing. Chinadotcom filed suit for unspecified damages in a Hong Kong court against Gerald Sokol, executive president of AOL International, the paper reported. Chinadotcom claimed it spent millions between 1999 and 2001 on promoting and developing online, communications and transaction services for AOL Hong Kong in expectation it would eventually form a joint venture with the unit of the US media company, the Post said. In June 2001, AOL announced a joint venture with Chinese computer maker Legend Holdings Ltd to develop Internet services for Chinese people. Chinadotcom claims Sokol deliberately concealed from Chinadotcom the negotiations with Legend, which continued throughout the second half of 2000.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has