Posts tagged ‘China’

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12/06/2016

Electronics Maker Automates as China Costs Rise – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Regardless of the assurances, I am concerned that we have started down a very slippery slope and in a generation or two we will have personless factories and maybe personless offices.  When that happens where will humans be earning salaries and hence, are going to be buying the stuff the factories will be churning out and who will pay for the offices; and – indeed – what will be done in those offices?

Is anyone in government, whether Chinese, Swedish, Japanese or American, putting their minds to this frightening future?

“A new generation of machines is gradually transforming this electronics factory in China’s manufacturing hub.Inside the sprawling factory, owned by Jabil Circuit Inc.—the world’s third-largest contract manufacturer for companies such as Apple Inc. and Electrolux SA—robotic arms assemble circuit boards as driverless components-laden carts glide nearby. Machines also are starting to replace workers in checking circuit-board assemblies for errors.

“This is the past,” said David Choonseng Tan, an operations director at Jabil, pointing to a line of workers hunched over the assembly line. “And this,” he said, gesturing to a line of machines next to them, “is the future.”

Rapidly changing product models make it challenging for electronics companies like Jabil to automate all aspects of the assembly process, according to John Dulchinos, a vice president at the company. Still, Jabil has increasingly embraced automation and advanced technology, a shift encouraged by the Chinese government as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with labor shortages and high costs that are making neighboring countries like Vietnam increasingly competitive for mass production.

Manufacturers elsewhere in the world are also investing in automation and robotics in an effort to wean themselves off “chasing the needle”—moving to ever-lower-cost countries in pursuit of cheap labor.

In Stockholm, Sweden, roughly 8,000 miles away from China, fuel-cell maker myFC has built a 2,000 square-foot smart factory that will eventually have five robots doing the work of 20 full-time humans. The robots assemble power cards used for portable electronic devices while 3D printers churn out prototypes of new designs.

“We are building one cell, then we can export that to any country, any customer,” says Bjorn Westerholm, chief executive of myFC.

Jabil says that it’s hoping that a key piece of its automation—a boxy white platform it calls Flexi-Auto Cell—can also be redeployed at factories elsewhere in the world. The idea, according to Jabil, is for technology to be able to emulate the worker’s flexibility in switching from one task to another.

Jabil’s vision of manufacturing, however, isn’t one in which machines will replace workers completely, but rather one in which they’re freed up to focus on less-tedious tasks.

“We are not going for a lights-off factory,” says KC Ong, a senior vice president of operations for Jabil. In the factory of the future, “we’ll still have a lot of people.””

Source: Electronics Maker Automates as China Costs Rise – China Real Time Report – WSJ

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10/06/2016

China now rivals US and Europe as growth engine for Asian exports | South China Morning Post

China is now an equal or even bigger driver of export growth in neighbouring economies than the US and EU combined, marking a significant shift in the economic pecking order since the 2008 global financial crisis.

That’s according to research by Deutsche Bank AG economists who weighed up the influence of the US and China over the rest of Asia through the prism of export growth, as well as the currency and bond markets.China committed to free trade, market reforms, says senior official

In Taiwan and Indonesia, for example, the growth of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) dominates the US and European Union’s as a source of export demand. In other economies, the trading giants are equally important.

“This is noticeably different from the pre-crisis years when China was much less important –- bordering on irrelevance – as an engine of growth in the region,” Deutsche analysts led by Asia-Pacific chief economist Michael Spencer wrote in a note.

After a rocky start to the year, China has been aided in its growth prospects by a record surge in credit in the first quarter. Key indicators for May are expected to show that the economy is continuing to find its footing and growth is on track to hit the Communist Party’s goal of 6.5 per cent to 7 per cent for 2016.

The International Monetary Fund in April upgraded its China growth forecasts by 0.2 percentage point for this year and next, following signs of “resilient domestic demand” and growth in services that offset weakness in manufacturing.

China needs market-driven interest rate system to help yuan become global currency: economists

Beyond the pace of GDP growth, China’s currency gyrations are also increasingly important across the region. While the dollar still drives volatility in most Asian currencies, the yuan is as least as important for fluctuations in the Malaysian ringgit and South Korean won and is growing in significance for other exchange rates, except the Philippines peso.

“Asia is far from being a ‘yuan bloc’, but idiosyncratic shocks to the yuan cannot be ignored,” according to the Deutsche analysts.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) surprised traders this week by setting the reference rate at weaker-than-expected levels, helping send the currency to its biggest declines in four months versus a trade-weighted basket that includes the yen and the euro. The rate’s fixing had become more predictable since early February after the PBOC pledged greater transparency and the yuan increasingly tracked moves in the dollar against major currencies. That was after a sudden weakening of the yuan in January fuelled fears of a devaluation and triggered global market turmoil. During the subsequent three months, the central bank adopted a more market-based system to set the rate and said the basket would play a bigger role.

China cooling imports are sending a huge chill across the global economy

But the US still dominates in the bond markets, and moves in Treasury yields continue to steer Asian bond trading. And even if Asia central banks don’t match rate tightening by the US Federal Reserve, financial conditions in the region may tighten if US yields increase.

“We find only weak evidence that fluctuations in Chinese yields have any impact on other countries’ bond markets,” the analysts said.

Source: China now rivals US and Europe as growth engine for Asian exports | South China Morning Post

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10/06/2016

17 People Die on India’s Roads Every Hour, Report Says – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s roads are getting more dangerous, with 17 people dying in accidents every hour, a new government report shows.

“Much more needs to be done,” to make India’s roads safe, Sanjay Mitra, secretary of the Ministry of Roads and Transport said in the report.

The data is pretty damning. The total number of road accidents in India increased 2.5% in 2015, to 501,423. The number of people killed climbed 4.6% to 146,133. Injuries rose by 1.4%.

Road accidents also got more severe. The total number of people killed per 100 accidents was up 2.1% at 29.1 in 2015.

The Ministry of Roads and Transport said it had identified 700 “black spots” on roads, where more than five people died in the past year, and that it has earmarked 6 billion rupees ($89.9 million) to fix defects.

Source: 17 People Die on India’s Roads Every Hour, Report Says – India Real Time – WSJ

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09/06/2016

‘The greatest palace that ever was’: Chinese archaeologists find evidence of the fabled imperial home of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty | South China Morning Post

For centuries the imperial palace of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty was shrouded in mystery.

After the dynasty collapsed, there were no clues as to where it was and it lived on only in legend through writings such as those of 13th century Venetian merchant Marco Polo.

If Polo is to be believed, the walls of “the greatest palace that ever was” were covered with gold and silver and the main hall was so large that it could easily seat 6,000 people for dinner.

“The palace was made of cane supported by 200 silk cords, which could be taken to pieces and transported easily when the emperor moved,” he wrote in his travel journal.

It was a vision of grandeur but the palace disappeared, seemingly without trace.

The Yuan dynasty lasted for a less than a century, spanning the years from 1279 to 1368, and it is widely believed that the capital of the empire was Beijing.

But in the centuries since, one question has dogged historians and archaeologists in China: just where was the dynasty’s palace?

Now experts at the Palace Museum in Beijing believe that they have some answers, clues they stumbled upon during upgrades to the heritage site’s underground power and fire-extinguishing systems.

According to historical records, the Yuan palace in Beijing was abandoned by its last emperor, Toghon Temür, who was overthrown by rebel troops that established the Ming dynasty in the 14th century.

Some experts believe the palace was razed by Ming soldiers who took over the city, while others insist the buildings were removed by Ming workers on the site of what was to become the Forbidden City.

The foundations for the sprawling Forbidden City were laid in 1406 and construction continued for another 14 years. It was the imperial palace for the Ming rulers and then the Qing dynasty until 1912.

The complex has been built up, layer by layer, but researchers sifting through the sands of archaeological time said last month that they had found evidence that at least part of the Yuan palace was beneath the site.

The researchers from the museum’s Institute of Archaeology said the proof was a 3 metre thick rammed earth and rubble foundation buried beneath the layers of Ming and Qing dynasty construction.

Institute deputy director Wang Guangyao said the foundation unearthed in the central-west part of the palace was in the same style as one uncovered in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, in the ruins of Zhongdu, one of the four capitals of the Yuan dynasty.

Some of the rubble in the newly discovered Yuan foundation dated back even further to dynasties such as the Liao (907–1125) and the Jin (1115–1234), Wang said.

Wang said a foundation of such size was rare in Yuan buildings and could have been used to support a palatial hall.

At the very least, the find proved that the Yuan palace was built on the same site as the Ming palace, though it was still too early to say these two completely overlapped.

“At least we now know that the palace was not built somewhere else but here,” Wang said.

“From a historical perspective, it gives us evidence that the architectural history runs uninterrupted from the Yuan, to the Ming and Qing dynasties.

”The discovery has also revived debate about the Central Axis of Beijing – a 7.8km strip that runs from Yongding Gate to the Drum and Bell towers and included the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party leadership compound.

Many Chinese believe the axis has been the city’s “sacred backbone” since the Ming dynasty but others argue that it goes back further to the mid-13th century.

Wang said it was still too early to conclude whether the Yuan, Ming and Qing were built along the same axis.

“As archaeologists, we can only define what we have found,” Wang said. “But it gives us a direction for future exploration.”

Wang said it wasn’t easy to excavate in one of the country’s most important cultural sites and more work was still to be done.

Even if we think a certain site is important for an archaeological finding, we can’t just dig the ground up because it is not allowed,” Wang said.“All we can do is to wait and collect as much evidence as we can until sometime later, probably in a generation or two, work is done in those places and we can put all the finds together to see if they are all connected.

”The new discovery would be open to the public soon, Wang said.

Source: ‘The greatest palace that ever was’: Chinese archaeologists find evidence of the fabled imperial home of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty | South China Morning Post

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09/06/2016

China leads resistance to India joining nuclear export club | Reuters

China is leading opposition to a push by the United States and other major powers for India to join the main club of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology, diplomats said on Thursday as the group discussed India’s membership bid.

Other countries opposing Indian membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) include New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria, diplomats said.

The 48-nation NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms.

India already enjoys most of the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation deal with Washington, even though India has developed atomic weapons and never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the main global arms control pact.

Opponents argue that granting it membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate India’s rival Pakistan, which responded to India’s membership bid with one of its own and has the backing of its close ally China.

“By bringing India on board, it’s a slap in the face of the entire non-proliferation regime,” a diplomatic source from one of a handful of countries resisting India’s push said on condition of anonymity.

A decision on Indian membership is not expected before an NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20, but diplomats said Washington had been pressuring hold-outs, and Thursday’s closed-door meeting was a chance to see how strong opposition is.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrote to members asking them “not to block consensus on Indian admission to the NSG” in a letter seen by Reuters and dated Friday.

China, however, showed no sign of backing down from its opposition to India joining unless Pakistan becomes a member. That would be unacceptable to many, given Pakistan’s track record — the father of its nuclear weapons program sold nuclear secrets to countries including North Korea and Iran.

“China, if anything, is hardening (its position),” another diplomat said.

Most of the hold-outs oppose the idea of admitting a non-NPT state such as India and argue that if it is to be admitted, it should be under criteria that apply equally to all states rather than under a “tailor-made” solution for a U.S. ally.

Mexico’s president said on Wednesday his country supports India’s membership bid, but one Vienna-based diplomat said it still opposed the idea of it joining under conditions that did not apply equally to all.

Source: China leads resistance to India joining nuclear export club | Reuters

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08/06/2016

U.S. Firm to Build Six Nuclear Reactors in India – India Real Time – WSJ

The U.S. and India agreed to move ahead with the construction of six nuclear reactors in India by an American company, the first such move since the countries signed a landmark civil nuclear deal in 2008.

The breakthrough capped a wide-ranging White House meeting on Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who are seeking closer cooperation as Washington wants to boost New Delhi’s role in counterbalancing China.

The meeting, which included lunch at the White House, will be followed on Wednesday by a speech by Mr. Modi to Congress, wrapping up the Indian leader’s fourth visit to the U.S. as part of an increasingly close relationship that has been sought by both governments.

The warming Indian relationship is backed by the lure of accelerating growth in that country, signs of improvement in the business climate, shared democratic values and some overlapping strategic goals.

By contrast, recent U.S. interactions with China, a far bigger Asian economy and U.S. trading partner whose growth appears to be slowing down, have been marked by strains and warnings over economic and security issues.

Source: U.S. Firm to Build Six Nuclear Reactors in India – India Real Time – WSJ

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31/05/2016

China releases new action plan to tackle soil pollution | Reuters

China aims to curb worsening soil pollution by 2020 and stabilize and improve soil quality by 2030, the cabinet said in an action plan published on Tuesday.

The central government will set up a special fund to tackle soil pollution, as well as a separate fund to help upgrade technology and equipment in the heavy metal sector, the cabinet said in a statement on its website (www.gov.cn).

The government will also continue to eliminate outdated heavy metal capacity, the cabinet said.

Last year, the environment minister said 16 percent of China’s soil exceeded state pollution limits. Treatment costs for heavy metal or chemical contamination are high, and China has struggled to attract private funds for soil remediation.

According to Reuters calculations, the cost of making all of China’s contaminated land fit for crops or livestock would be around 5 trillion yuan ($760 billion), based on average industry estimates of the cost of treating one hectare.

Analysts have estimated the soil remediation market could be worth as much as 1 trillion yuan, but authorities have struggled to determine who should pay for rehabilitating contaminated land. Much of the responsibility for the costs now lies with impoverished local governments.

Researchers with Guohai Securities said earlier this year that there are currently 100 key soil remediation projects under way in China with an estimated total cost of 500 billion yuan. With no natural profit motive to encourage private companies to get involved, the clean-up programs have relied mostly on government funding.

China’s five-year plan published in March said the country would give priority to cleaning up contaminated soil used in agriculture. It promised also to strengthen soil pollution monitoring systems and promote new clean-up technologies.

Lawmakers said during the annual session of parliament in March that the country would introduce legislation to help tackle soil pollution by next year.

Companies involved in the sector include Beijing Orient Landscape and Ecology, Tus-Sound Environmental Resources, Beijing Originwater Technology and Guangxi Bossco Environmental Protection Technology.

($1 = 6.5836 Chinese yuan)

Source: China releases new action plan to tackle soil pollution | Reuters

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27/05/2016

India Inc shows growth spreading by end of Modi’s sophomore year | Reuters

Indian companies are posting their best earnings results since Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power two years ago, giving the clearest sign yet that India’s fast, but patchy, economic growth is becoming more broad-based.

Though headline growth figures make India one of the world’s fastest growing economies, weak private investment and low capacity utilization rates have painted a less rosy picture.

Going by India Inc’s surge in profit growth in the first three months of the year, however, the outlook really does seem to be brightening, as benefits feed through from lower interest rates and government spending in infrastructure and defense.

On Tuesday, India will release gross domestic product data for the January-March quarter. Year-on-year growth of 7.5 percent is forecast by a Reuters survey economists, slightly faster than the previous quarter’s 7.3 percent.

“Macro indicators are suggesting that at the ground level the economy is gaining momentum,” said Dhiraj Sachdev, a fund manager at HSBC Asset Management in Mumbai.

“That has also been validated in terms of better corporate earnings in many of the sectors.”

Operating profits for 289 companies that have reported results so far leapt 25.5 percent year-on-year in the March quarter, compared with 1.7 percent growth in the previous quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data.

It is Indian firms’ best showing since the April-June quarter in 2014.

Put alongside the 6.8 percent decline in earnings that data provider Factset reckons companies in the S&P 500 suffered during the same quarter, India’s corporates have some things going in their favor.

India’s broader National Stock Exchange share index .NSEI has surged around 17 percent from a near 2-year low on Feb. 29, outperforming a 7 percent gain by the Asia-Pacific MSCI index excluding Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS.

This week, Morgan Stanley upgraded Indian equities to “overweight” from “equalweight” citing rising dividends, and prospects of a simpler country-wide sales tax, lower interest rates and benign monsoon among its reasons.

Source: India Inc shows growth spreading by end of Modi’s sophomore year | Reuters

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27/05/2016

What Can Be Learned From China’s Monetary Past – China Real Time Report – WSJ

China’s decline as a great power in the 19th century wasn’t the fault of imperialism and opium. It was bad monetary policy, after all.

English: Qing emperor Jiaqing

English: Qing emperor Jiaqing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So says Werner Burger, a numismatic historian and Sinologist who has published a detailed history of money in the Qing Dynasty, entitled “Ch’ing Cash.” Mr. Burger has spent his professional life tracking down details of nearly every coin minted in China over three centuries. After three decades of making official requests, it wasn’t until 1996 that Beijing granted him access to the previous century’s imperial mint reports, the modern equivalent to central bank money supply statistics.

His conclusion: The Jiaqing Emperor, By letting the fakes infiltrate the economy, the Jiaqing emperor and his successors allowed the effective exchange rate for standard brass Chinese coins to swell from the official rate of 1000 per unit of silver to as high as 2500. Soldiers wages were effectively halved, giving them little incentive to fight the various battles against Western colonizers.

Mr. Burger refutes the notion that China’s trade with the United Kingdom, which for a time involved China sending silver to the U.K. in exchange for opium, was responsible for the debasement. He said the amount of silver sent abroad didn’t affect the exchange rate, noting a mid-century period of three decades when China actually experienced silver inflows.

Amid such currency instability, “all attempts at economic reforms and progress were bound to fail. China had no chance to catch up with the rest of the world and so lost a whole century to corruption and greedy officials,” says Mr. Burger.

For investors who want to learn from China’s past mistakes, the two volume history will cost a pretty penny: $800.

Source: What Can Be Learned From China’s Monetary Past – China Real Time Report – WSJ

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27/05/2016

Foxconn replaces ‘60,000 factory workers with robots’ – BBC News

If manufacturers like Foxconn and high street companies like McDonald’s and, no doubt soon, offices too start replacing humans with robots, where will it all end? Where will all the ‘surplus’ people find jobs and pay.  And, eventually, who will be able to afford the iPhones, the hamburgers and so forth?  Won’t it be self-defeating in the long run for the employers with no customers or, at best, not enough customers to keep all the robots occupied and earning their keep.

“One factory has “reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots”, a government official told the South China Morning Post.

Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: “More companies are likely to follow suit.”

China is investing heavily in a robot workforce.

In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating “many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations” but denied that it meant long-term job losses.

“We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees, and through training, also enable our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control.

“We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations, and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China.”

Since September 2014, 505 factories across Dongguan, in the Guangdong province, have invested 4.2bn yuan (£430m) in robots, aiming to replace thousands of workers.

Kunshan, Jiangsu province, is a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry.

Economists have issued dire warnings about how automation will affect the job market, with one report, from consultants Deloitte in partnership with Oxford University, suggesting that 35% of jobs were at risk over the next 20 years.

Former McDonald’s chief executive Ed Rensi recently told the US’s Fox Business programme a minimum-wage increase to $15 an hour would make companies consider robot workers.

“It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who is inefficient, making $15 an hour bagging French fries,” he said.”

Source: Foxconn replaces ‘60,000 factory workers with robots’ – BBC News

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