They call them hei shou (黑手), meaning “black hands”. They are founders of Taiwan’s high-tech manufacturers, approaching retirement age now but refusing to quit working punishing 14-hour days in their factories and steadfast they will never sell the business.
China’s just-installed president, Xi Jinping, has made fighting official corruption one of his biggest priorities.
While Indonesia’s economy has had a great few years, the World Bank has warned the risks to growth are increasing as the country fails to invest in infrastructure and spread its new found wealth among the poor.
Retailers best known for making one product are, unfortunately, rather dependent on that product succeeding all of the time.
China’s Suntech Power, the world’s largest solar panel maker, has just failed to repay its $541 million of bonds.
It may get increasingly difficult for Western media and technology firms to operate in China. That is because of a two-pronged campaign against Western media and the tech companies that make the devices on which the Chinese consume their news and entertainment.
There are fresh allegations that some of the money that went missing from a Chinese company once listed on the Nasdaq may have been laundered through slot machines in Las Vegas casinos.
More than two-thirds of apps that run on Chinese smartphones are tracking users’ private data, according to a new study by the Data Center of China Internet. (The study is in Chinese but is reprised here in English by Tech in Asia.) And 35% of apps go further by tracking user data that has no connection with the apps’ function, often not making users aware this was happening. The DCCI report said the review covered the top 1,400 apps in China.
As you contemplate the just-launched Samsung Galaxy S IV, which will retail for hundreds of dollars, do you wonder how Chinese firms churn out Android smartphones that sell for as little as $65? Well, MIT Technology Review will tell you. It carries an interview with a Chinese entrepreneur who explains how he buys up smartphone components and then sends them to a range of factories in Shenzhen, near the Hong Kong border, for assembly.
Taiwan, the island to which the then-Chinese government fled in 1949 after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist forces, has embraced a different development path from its mainland neighbor. Namely, free-market capitalism and democracy.
A couple of years back, when London and Wall Street were suffering but China was growing, investment bankers in Hong Kong were raking in huge salaries and bonuses and enjoying perks such as first class business travel.
Australia’s Fairfax Media reports today that BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, is under investigation by the US Department of Justice and Australia’s Federal Police over payments it may have made to officials in Asian countries including China, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Aluminum is a perfect reminder that China does not have a market driven economy.
Japanese car and electronics companies are delighted about the yen’s 20% drop against the dollar over the last six months, thanks to new leader Shinzo Abe’s efforts to wage war on deflation and kickstart the moribund economy by, among other things, boosting exporters’ fortunes.
Taiwan’s “Apple Daily”, the island’s most popular newspaper, is not a serious read. Inclined towards celebrity gossip and graphic coverage of sex and violence, the most popular story on its website at the time of writing was this salacious story (Chinese) about “foot hookers” in New York (women whose clients lick their feet).
In theory, Shanghai and Hong Kong bourses should move more or less in sync. Hong Kong’s stock market is dominated by mainland Chinese companies, so events like rises and falls in China’s GDP ought to have similar effects on both bourses. But they have entirely separate groups of investors. Mainland Chinese funds and individuals are restricted to buying stocks at home, using the tightly controlled renminbi. Hong Kong’s market is for the territory’s locals and international money managers.
China’s attempts to rein in its enormous shadow banking sector seem to be taking effect—although, as is often the case with opaque layers of the economy, the results have to be deduced from larger trends.
Despite their constant squabbles, there is one area of industry where America and China are tentatively making friends.
China’s new leader Xi Jinping has vowed to fight corruption in an attempt to dampen public anger about his country’s gaping social inequality.
Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wants the nation’s central bank to pump cash into the economy to suppress the value of the yen and end deflation. But while markets have assumed he will get his way, the nation’s fiercely independent central bank reminded Abe earlier today that he is not omnipotent.
In the final quarter of last year, the world’s miners breathed a sigh of relief as China seemed to break out of its economic slowdown and speed up its consumption of iron ore. Prices of the commodity had shriveled to almost a three year low last September (see chart below), then rallied back up. China is the world’s largest consumer of it.
Will Hong Kong lose out on a hotly anticipated jumbo Chinese IPO?
Sharp, the long-struggling Japanese electronics maker, has raised some much-needed cash by selling a 3% stake to the much more successful South Korean company Samsung Electronics.
Indonesia is “Asia’s next big opportunity,” according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group, which cites its fast-growing economy (up 6.2% last year, forecast to grow 6.8% in 2013) and favorable demographics. Over 60 per cent of the population is between 20-65, which gives the country a large bank of earners and not too many old people for workers to support. And while most Indonesians live in relative poverty, lacking air conditioning, broadband and access to healthcare, their cheery optimism about the future makes them happy to spend what they have. The nation’s consumer sector is thriving, and BCGs data shows 91% of Indonesians feel at least somewhat financially secure—a higher percentage than the US, the EU, or Japan.
