12/04/2020
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – African ambassadors in China have written to the country’s foreign minister over what they call discrimination against Africans as the country seeks to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus.
Several African countries have separately also demanded that China address their concerns that Africans, in particular in the southern city of Guangzhou, are being mistreated and harassed.
Having brought under control the original outbreak centred on the city of Wuhan, China is now concerned about imported cases and is stepping up scrutiny of foreigners coming into the country and tightening border controls. It has denied any discrimination.
In recent days Africans in Guangzhou have reported being ejected from their apartments by their landlords, being tested for coronavirus several times without being given results and being shunned and discriminated against in public. Such complaints have been made in local media, and on social media.
The ambassadors’ note said such “stigmatisation and discrimination” created the false impression that the virus was being spread by Africans.
“The Group of African Ambassadors in Beijing immediately demands the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments meted out to Africans,” it said.
The note was sent to China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, copying the chair of the African Union, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and all African foreign ministers.
The Chinese foreign ministry’s International Press Centre did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the note, sent outside of business hours.
The Chinese embassy in South Africa also did not respond.
Foreign affairs official Liu Baochun told a news conference on Sunday that Guangzhou is enforcing anti-virus measures on anyone who enters the city from across the national border, regardless of nationality, race or gender.
The Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe on Saturday dismissed the accusation that Africans were being deliberately targeted.
“It is harmful to sensationalize isolated incidents,” it said in a tweeted statement. “China treats all individuals in the country, Chinese and foreign alike, as equals.”
DISAPPOINTMENT
The ambassadors’ note highlighted a number of reported incidents, including that Africans were being ejected from hotels in the middle of the night, the seizure of passports, and threats of visa revocation, arrest or deportation.
On Saturday, Ghana’s foreign minister of affairs Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said she had summoned the Chinese ambassador to express her disappointment and demand action.
Kenya’s foreign ministry has also “officially expressed concern”, adding the government is working with Chinese authorities to address the matter.
On Friday, Nigerian legislator Akinola Alabi tweeted a video of a meeting between the leader of Nigeria’s lower house of parliament, Femi Gbajabiamila, and Chinese Ambassador Zhou Pingjian. In it, Gbajabiamila demanded an explanation from the diplomat after showing Zhou a video of a Nigerian complaining about mistreatment in China.
The ambassador said in response to the questions from the house leader that he took the complaints “very seriously” and promised to convey them to the authorities back home.
Source: Reuters
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26/09/2019
- An increasing proportion of young people no longer willing to wait tables in China as restaurant owners look to new technology for answers
Catering robots developed by Pudu Tech, the three-year-old Shenzhen start-up, have been adopted by thousands of restaurants in China, as well as some foreign countries including Singapore, Korea, and Germany. Photo: Handout
Two years ago, Bao Xiangyi quit school and worked as a waiter in a restaurant for half a year to support himself, and the 19 year-old remembers the time vividly.
“It was crazy working in some Chinese restaurants. My WeChat steps number sometimes hit 20,000 in a day [just by delivering meals in the restaurant],” said Bao.
The WeChat steps fitness tracking function gauges how many steps you literally take and 20,000 steps per day can be compared with a whole day of outdoor activity, ranking you very high in a typical friends circle.
Bao, now a university student in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, quit the waiter job and went back to school.
“I couldn’t accept that for 365 days a year every day would be the same,” said Bao.
“Those days were filled with complete darkness and I felt like my whole life would be spent as an inferior and insignificant waiter.”
Olivia Niu, a 23-year-old Hong Kong resident, quit her waiter job on the first day. “It was too busy during peak meal times. I was so hungry myself but I needed to pack meals for customers,” said Niu.
Being a waiter has never been a top career choice but it remains a big source of employment in China. Yang Chunyan, a waitress at the Lanlifang Hotel in Wenzhou in southeastern China, has two children and says she chose the job because she needs to make a living.
Catering robots developed by Pudu Tech, the three-year-old Shenzhen start-up. Photo: Handout
Today’s young generation have their sights on other areas though. Of those born after 2000, 24.5 per cent want careers related to literature and art. This is followed by education and the IT industry in second and third place, according to a recent report by Tencent QQ and China Youth Daily.
Help may now be at hand though for restaurants struggling to find qualified table staff who are able to withstand the daily stress of juggling hundreds of orders of food. The answer comes in the form of robots.
Japan’s industrial robots industry becomes latest victim of the trade war
Shenzhen Pudu Technology, a three-year-old Shenzhen start-up, is among the tech companies offering catering robots to thousands of restaurant owners who are scrambling to try to plug a labour shortfall with new tech such as machines, artificial intelligence and online ordering systems. It has deployed robots in China, Singapore, Korea and Germany.
With Pudu’s robot, kitchen staff can put meals on the robot, enter the table number, and the robot will deliver it to the consumer. While an average human waiter can deliver 200 meals per day – the robots can manage 300 to 400 orders.
“Nearly every restaurant owner [in China] says it’s hard to recruit people to [work as a waiter],” Zhang Tao, the founder and CEO of Pudu tech said in an interview this week. “China’s food market is huge and delivering meals is a process with high demand and frequency.”
Pudu’s robots can be used for ten years and cost between 40,000 yuan (US$5,650) and 50,000 yuan. That’s less than the average yearly salary of restaurant and hotel workers in China’s southern Guangdong province, which is roughly 60,000 yuan, according to a report co-authored by the South China Market of Human Resources and other organisations.
As such, it is no surprise that more restaurants want to use catering robots.
According to research firm Verified Market Research, the global robotics services market was valued at US$11.62 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach US$35.67 billion by 2026.
Haidilao, China’s top hotpot restaurant, has not only adopted service robots but also introduced
a smart restaurant with a mechanised kitchen in Beijing last year. And in China’s tech hub of Shenzhen,
it is hard to pay without an app as most of the restaurants have deployed an online order service.
Can robots and virtual fruit help the elderly get well in China?
China’s labour force advantage has also shrank in recent years. The working-age population, people between 16 and 59 years’ old, has reduced by 40 million since 2012 to 897 million, accounting for 64 per cent of China’s roughly 1.4 billion people in 2018, according to the national bureau of statistics.
By comparison, those of working age accounted for 69 per cent of the total population in 2012.
Other Chinese robotic companies are also entering the market. SIASUN Robot & Automation Co, a hi-tech listed enterprise belonging to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced their catering robots to China’s restaurants in 2017. Delivery robots developed by Shanghai-based Keenon Robotics Co., founded in 2010, are serving people in China and overseas markets such as the US, Italy and Spain.
Pudu projects it will turn a profit this year and it is in talks with venture capital firms to raise a new round of funding, which will be announced as early as October, according to Zhang. Last year it raised 50 million yuan in a round led by Shenzhen-based QC capital.
To be sure, the service industry is still the biggest employer in China, with 359 million workers and accounting for 46.3 per cent of a working population of 776 million people in 2018, according to the national bureau of statistics.
And new technology sometimes offers up new problems – in this case, service with a smile.
“When we go out for dinner, what we want is service. It is not as simple as just delivering meals,” said Wong Kam-Fai, a professor in engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a national expert appointed by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. “If they [robot makers] can add an emotional side in future, it might work better.”
Technology companies also face some practical issues like unusual restaurant layouts.
“Having a [catering robot] traffic jam on the way to the kitchen is normal. Some passageways are very narrow with many zigzags,” Zhang said. “But this can be improved in future with more standardised layouts.”
Multi-floor restaurants can also be a problem.
Dai Qi, a sales manager at the Lanlifang Hotel, said it is impossible for her restaurant to adopt the robot. “Our kitchen is on the third floor, and we have boxes on the second, third, and fourth floor. So the robots can’t work [to deliver meals tdownstairs/upstairs],” Dai said.
But Bao says he has no plans to return to being a waiter, so the robots may have the edge.
“Why are human beings doing something robots can do? Let’s do something they [robots] can’t,” Bao said.
Source: SCMP
Posted in ability, answers, Artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI), Beijing, careers, catering robot, China alert, China Youth Daily, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese University of Hong Kong, complain, Consumer, education, foreign countries, founder and CEO, Germany, global robotics services market, guangdong province, Hangzhou, hard to recruit, Hong Kong resident, hundreds of orders, increasing proportion, industrial robots industry, IT industry, Japan, juggle, Korea, labour shortfall, Lanlifang Hotel, latest victim, literature and art, machines, Multi-floor restaurants, national bureau of statistics, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), new technologies, new technology, online ordering systems, plug, problem, Pudu Tech, restaurant owners, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Shenzhen Pudu Technology, Singapore, smart restaurant, start up, table number, Tech Companies, tencent qq, top hotpot restaurant, trade war, traffic jams, Uncategorized, venture capital firms, Verified Market Research, wait tables, WeChat, Wenzhou, willing, young people, Zhang Tao, zhejiang province, zigzags |
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15/09/2019
- An increasing proportion of young people no longer willing to wait tables in China as restaurant owners look to new technology for answers
Catering robots developed by Pudu Tech, the three-year-old Shenzhen start-up, have been adopted by thousands of restaurants in China, as well as some foreign countries including Singapore, Korea, and Germany. Photo: Handout
Two years ago, Bao Xiangyi quit school and worked as a waiter in a restaurant for half a year to support himself, and the 19 year-old remembers the time vividly.
“It was crazy working in some Chinese restaurants. My WeChat steps number sometimes hit 20,000 in a day [just by delivering meals in the restaurant],” said Bao.
The WeChat steps fitness tracking function gauges how many steps you literally take and 20,000 steps per day can be compared with a whole day of outdoor activity, ranking you very high in a typical friends circle.
Bao, now a university student in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, quit the waiter job and went back to school.
“I couldn’t accept that for 365 days a year every day would be the same,” said Bao. “Those days were filled with complete darkness and I felt like my whole life would be spent as an inferior and insignificant waiter.”
Olivia Niu, a 23-year-old Hong Kong resident, quit her waiter job on the first day. “It was too busy during peak meal times. I was so hungry myself but I needed to pack meals for customers,” said Niu.
Being a waiter has never been a top career choice but it remains a big source of employment in China. Yang Chunyan, a waitress at the Lanlifang Hotel in Wenzhou in southeastern China, has two children and says she chose the job because she needs to make a living.
Catering robots developed by Pudu Tech, the three-year-old Shenzhen start-up. Photo: Handout
Today’s young generation have their sights on other areas though. Of those born after 2000, 24.5 per cent want careers related to literature and art. This is followed by education and the IT industry in second and third place, according to a recent report by Tencent QQ and China Youth Daily.
Help may now be at hand though for restaurants struggling to find qualified table staff who are able to withstand the daily stress of juggling hundreds of orders of food. The answer comes in the form of robots.
Japan’s industrial robots industry becomes latest victim of the trade war
Shenzhen Pudu Technology, a three-year-old Shenzhen start-up, is among the tech companies offering catering robots to thousands of restaurant owners who are scrambling to try to plug a labour shortfall with new tech such as machines, artificial intelligence and online ordering systems. It has deployed robots in China, Singapore, Korea and Germany.
With Pudu’s robot, kitchen staff can put meals on the robot, enter the table number, and the robot will deliver it to the consumer. While an average human waiter can deliver 200 meals per day – the robots can manage 300 to 400 orders.
“Nearly every restaurant owner [in China] says it’s hard to recruit people to [work as a waiter],” Zhang Tao, the founder and CEO of Pudu tech said in an interview this week. “China’s food market is huge and delivering meals is a process with high demand and frequency.”
Pudu’s robots can be used for ten years and cost between 40,000 yuan (US$5,650) and 50,000 yuan. That’s less than the average yearly salary of restaurant and hotel workers in China’s southern Guangdong province, which is roughly 60,000 yuan, according to a report co-authored by the South China Market of Human Resources and other organisations.
As such, it is no surprise that more restaurants want to use catering robots.
According to research firm Verified Market Research, the global robotics services market was valued at US$11.62 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach US$35.67 billion by 2026. Haidilao, China’s top hotpot restaurant, has not only adopted service robots but also introduced a smart restaurant with a mechanised kitchen in Beijing last year. And in China’s tech hub of Shenzhen, it is hard to pay without an app as most of the restaurants have deployed an online order service.
Can robots and virtual fruit help the elderly get well in China?
China’s labour force advantage has also shrank in recent years. The working-age population, people between 16 and 59 years’ old, has reduced by 40 million since 2012 to 897 million, accounting for 64 per cent of China’s roughly 1.4 billion people in 2018, according to the national bureau of statistics.
By comparison, those of working age accounted for 69 per cent of the total population in 2012.
Other Chinese robotic companies are also entering the market. SIASUN Robot & Automation Co, a hi-tech listed enterprise belonging to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced their catering robots to China’s restaurants in 2017. Delivery robots developed by Shanghai-based Keenon Robotics Co., founded in 2010, are serving people in China and overseas markets such as the US, Italy and Spain.
Pudu projects it will turn a profit this year and it is in talks with venture capital firms to raise a new round of funding, which will be announced as early as October, according to Zhang. Last year it raised 50 million yuan in a round led by Shenzhen-based QC capital.
To be sure, the service industry is still the biggest employer in China, with 359 million workers and accounting for 46.3 per cent of a working population of 776 million people in 2018, according to the national bureau of statistics.
And new technology sometimes offers up new problems – in this case, service with a smile.
“When we go out for dinner, what we want is service. It is not as simple as just delivering meals,” said Wong Kam-Fai, a professor in engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a national expert appointed by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. “If they [robot makers] can add an emotional side in future, it might work better.”
Technology companies also face some practical issues like unusual restaurant layouts.
“Having a [catering robot] traffic jam on the way to the kitchen is normal. Some passageways are very narrow with many zigzags,” Zhang said. “But this can be improved in future with more standardised layouts.”
Multi-floor restaurants can also be a problem.
Dai Qi, a sales manager at the Lanlifang Hotel, said it is impossible for her restaurant to adopt the robot. “Our kitchen is on the third floor, and we have boxes on the second, third, and fourth floor. So the robots can’t work [to deliver meals to downstairs/upstairs],” Dai said.
But Bao says he has no plans to return to being a waiter, so the robots may have the edge.
“Why are human beings doing something robots can do? Let’s do something they [robots] can’t,” Bao said.
Source: SCMP
Posted in ability, adopted, Art, artificial intelligence (AI), Bao Xiangyi, Beijing, careers, catering robots, CEO of Pudu tech, China alert, China Youth Daily, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, Chinese University of Hong Kong, complain, darkness, delivering meals, education, foreign countries, Germany, guangdong province, Haidilao, Hangzhou, hotpot restaurant, hundreds of orders, industrial robots industry, IT industry, Italy, Japan, juggle, Keenon Robotics Co, Korea, labour shortfall, Lanlifang Hotel, literature, machines, mechanised kitchen, online ordering systems, plug, Pudu Tech, QC capital, qualified table staff, quit, Restaurant, restaurants, robots, school, Shenzhen, Shenzhen Pudu Technology, SIASUN Robot & Automation Co, Singapore, smart restaurant, South China Market of Human Resources, Spain, start up, tencent qq, trade war, Uncategorized, university student, US, Verified Market Research, victim, waiter, WeChat, Wenzhou, worked, zhejiang province |
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10/09/2019
- Suspects rounded up after people complain of being duped into making donations to support non-existent temples
- One woman says she handed over US$4,600 after being told that charitable gesture would help her live to be 400
One victim of the alleged scams said she was told she could live for 400 years if she handed over her money. Photo: Thepaper.cn
Police in southeast China have detained 100 people on suspicion of being part of a criminal network that cheated members of the public out of 50 million yuan (US$7 million) by preying on their superstitions and generosity.
Authorities in Ningguo, Anhui province launched an investigation in May after receiving a number of complaints about the activities of several groups posing as fortune-tellers on social media platforms like Weibo, financial news outlet Caijing reported on its website on Tuesday.
One of the groups, which operated on the Twitter-like service under the name “Kanxiang Zen Master”, was run by a local man surnamed Zhang and had 12 million followers, the report said.
Adverts for online fortune-telling services are common in China. Photo: Thepaper.cn
In one alleged scam, members of the group were told they would receive good luck if they made a donation to support a “famous temple”. But when a man who gifted 10,000 yuan via WeChat Pay checked on the address of the recipient, he found it was a residential address in the city of Xuancheng and not a place of worship, the report said.
When police investigated, they found Zhang had links to seven criminal groups in Anhui and neighbouring Jiangsu province, which between them operated about 60 fortune-telling accounts on Weibo, several of which had more than 10 million followers. The Kanxiang Zen Master account has since been removed from the platform.
Six Chinese wanted for internet scam arrested in Vanuatu
A number of the gangs were registered as media companies and operated as semi-professional organisations with formal recruiting procedures and regular conferences to plan their fraudulent activities, the report said, adding that they had been operating for at least two years.
Police in July staged a series of raids to round up the suspects and confiscated associated equipment, including computers, vehicles and mobile phones, the report said.
Authorities in Ningguo have appealed for more victims to come forward.
A separate report by Shanghai-based news outlet Thepaper.cn said that some of the suspects also used e-commerce sites such as Taobao and the messaging service WeChat to promote their fortune-telling services.
Taobao is owned by Alibaba Group, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
In one case, a woman from the city of Changshu in Jiangsu said she made multiple payments – totalling about 33,000 yuan – to a fortune-teller she met on WeChat who said the money would be used to buy incense for use in offerings to the gods.
She said she reported the alleged fraud after starting to doubt the fortune-teller’s claims, including one that said if she made the donations she could live for up to 400 years.
Alibaba, Weibo and Tencent, which owns WeChat, have been contacted for comment.
Posted in Adverts, Alibaba Group, Anhui, authorities, Caijing, Changshu, chinese police, complain, detain, duped, e-commerce sites, famous temple, financial news outlet, fortune-tellers, fortune-telling, generosity, gods, incense, Jiangsu, jiangsu province, Kanxiang Zen Master, making donations, messaging service, Ningguo, non-existent temples, offerings, place of worship, promote, residential address, scam, Services, Shanghai-based news outlet, social media platforms, south china morning post, superstitions, Taobao, TENCENT, Thepaper.cn, Uncategorized, Vanuatu, website, WeChat, WeChat Pay, Weibo, Xuancheng, Zhang |
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 