China warned yesterday it was facing serious unemployment problems due to the global economic crisis, amid signs it was increasingly concerned about social tensions across the country.
“Currently, the employment situation is critical, and this impact [of the financial crisis] is still unfolding,” Chinese Social Security Minister Yin Weimin (尹蔚民) told reporters in response to a question on recent labor unrest.
Yin announced a series of measures to try to stave off unemployment — predicted to rise next year — and to help those who have lost their jobs, particularly among the more than 200 million rural migrant workers.
The trouble has been most acute in Guangdong Province, China’s manufacturing heartland, where one-fifth of factories in major cities are expected to close by January alone, according to industry estimates.
Thousands of workers have recently gathered outside shuttered factories there, demanding unpaid wages and forcing local authorities to intervene.
Experts have warned labour unrest could spike as more migrant workers lose their jobs.
Yin said measures included helping the migrants find a job when they come to urban areas, for example by giving them information about available positions, and providing extra training for those returning home.
Unemployment in China stands at 4 percent, and Vice Minister of Social Security Zhang Xiaojian (張小建) said the government expected to hit 4.5 percent by the end of the year.
“But next year the registered [official] unemployment rate will certainly increase,” Zhang said.
The official unemployment rate does not include the millions of migrant workers who are not registered in the place they live in.
Zhang added that demand for workers in 84 cities across China in the third quarter of this year had fallen 5.5 percent — the first third-quarter drop in “many years.”
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS