■ US economy
Trade deficit his record
The US economy reached a record-high trade deficit in January, importing goods and services worth US$43.1 billion more than its exports, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Exports of meat, consumer goods and auto parts declined, while the value of imports of oil surged to the highest level since March last year. The trade deficit rose from US$42.7 billion in December, the agency said. Exports fell 1.2 percent, while imports declined 0.5 percent. Many countries have stopped importing beef from the US following the December discovery of a single case of mad cow disease, adding to the trade deficit. Meat and poultry exports fell 40 percent, reaching their lowest level since November 1993.
■ Mobile phones
China to invest 252bn yuan
Companies will invest 252 billion yuan (US$30 billion) in high-speed cellular networks in China in 2006, after the government starts granting licenses for the service this year, the China Daily reported, citing Lu Guoying, an analyst with government-backed research company CCID Consulting. The establishment of so-called third-generation services, which enable mobile-phone users to hold video conferences over handsets and access the Internet at faster speeds, will create a new mobile-phone market worth about 100 billion yuan a year, the newspaper said. China's mobile-phone subscribers will exceed 400 million in 2006, up from last year's 269 million, the report said, citing data from the country's Ministry of Information Industry.
■ Gas
China pipeline faces delay
Russia may delay building a US$17 billion gas pipeline to China and South Korea by four years on concern there won't be enough demand in northeast China, which gets most of its energy from coal, a Russian government adviser said. Russia's gas pipeline monopoly OAO Gazprom wants to send gas from Siberia's Kovykta field, which has 10 times Asia's annual gas demand, to Western Europe instead and delay delivery to China until 2012, said Andrei Korzhubaev, an economist at the Institute of Petroleum Geology in Siberia. BP Plc, the field operator and Europe's biggest oil company, said government support may boost demand enough in the northeast to warrant its preferred route to China. The tussle with Gazprom, the world's biggest gas producer, is delaying supplies to China.
■ South Korea
Defaults likely to increase
Standard and Poor's said yesterday that South Korea's corporate and individual defaults may rise further, raising questions about trends in the country's credit quality. South Korea's corporate default rate hit a record high 133,195 in January, up 14 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Federation of Banks. Individual defaults also hit a record high, the international credit rating agency said without providing details. "In Korea, default rates are likely to continue to increase for some time," Standard and Poor's credit analyst Takahira Ogawa said. Since early last year, domestic demand was hit hard by credit card turmoil, the chief culprit behind South Korea's economic slump last year. In addition, higher costs stemming from global raw material prices and a rise in interest rates have also served to further depress the pace of economic growth, the credit ratings agency said.
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it is closely monitoring developments in Venezuela, and would continue to cooperate with democratic allies and work together for regional and global security, stability, and prosperity. The remarks came after the US on Saturday launched a series of airstrikes in Venezuela and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was later flown to New York along with his wife. The pair face US charges related to drug trafficking and alleged cooperation with gangs designated as terrorist organizations. Maduro has denied the allegations. The ministry said that it is closely monitoring the political and economic situation
UNRELENTING: China attempted cyberattacks on Taiwan’s critical infrastructure 2.63 million times per day last year, up from 1.23 million in 2023, the NSB said China’s cyberarmy has long engaged in cyberattacks against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure, employing diverse and evolving tactics, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said yesterday, adding that cyberattacks on critical energy infrastructure last year increased 10-fold compared with the previous year. The NSB yesterday released a report titled Analysis on China’s Cyber Threats to Taiwan’s Critical Infrastructure in 2025, outlining the number of cyberattacks, major tactics and hacker groups. Taiwan’s national intelligence community identified a large number of cybersecurity incidents last year, the bureau said in a statement. China’s cyberarmy last year launched an average of 2.63 million intrusion attempts per day targeting Taiwan’s critical
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
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