Day: March 13, 2024

Oodles of noodles: how a global favourite became an economic red flag

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. If the entire (cooked) length of instant noodles sold around the world in a single year were laid out in a line, the resulting 6.2bn kilometre giga-noodle would stretch well beyond Pluto and into the depths of space. It is a fact as miserable as it is marvellous. Instant noodles sit among the most potent weapons ever devised in the unending struggle against starvation: a product that towers, among processed…

Vietnam police summon political prisoners’ wives

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Vietnam police have been summoning the wives of political prisoners for questioning over the past week, leading one lawyer to suggest that the Ministry of Public Security has launched a new harassment campaign against relatives of prisoners of conscience. According to information obtained by Radio Free Asia, police summoned the wives of four prisoners this week: Trinh Thi Nhung, wife of Bui Van Thuan; Le Thi Ha, wife of Dang Dang Phuoc; Do Thi Thu, wife of Trinh Ba Phuong; and Nguyen Thi Tinh, wife of Nguyen Nang Tinh.  The…

AIA’s 2023 profit jumps 15%, buoyed by Hong Kong’s increasing sales of insurance policies to mainland Chinese visitors

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AIA Group reported a 15 per cent profit jump last year, benefiting from demand for insurance products from the return of mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong in search of better returns and as a hedge against a weakening yuan. Hong Kong-based AIA, Asia’s largest insurer, reported a net profit of US$3.76 billion, or 32.68 US cents per share, according to an exchange filing on Thursday. Operating profit after tax, which excludes any valuation gain or loss in its investment portfolio, fell 1 per cent to US$6.21 billion. The insurer…

Zombie car factories on the rise in China as buyers opt for EVs

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In 2017, Hyundai invested $1.15bn in a new factory in Chongqing, southwestern China, with the goal of reaching an annual output of 300,000 internal combustion engine cars. But six years later, the rapid switch by Chinese consumers to electric vehicles has stalled sales, forcing the automaker to sell the factory in December for less than a quarter of the investment value. “The Chongqing plant continued to be in the red and China’s auto market is grappling with oversupply,” said Lee Hang-koo at the Jeonbuk Institute of Automotive Convergence Technology, a…

China’s police pledge to build ‘new quality combat capacity’ with tech aimed at preventing risks

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Since then, provincial and city security forces have pledged to increase the use of big data and improve their ability to predict and prevent risks. These risks include phone scams, offshore gambling, political rumours, “harmful” online information and “disruptive and subversive activities by domestic and foreign hostile forces”, according to the public security ministry. During last week’s annual parliamentary meetings, known as the “two sessions”, Wang’s deputy Qi Yanjun, who is also police chief of Beijing municipality, made rare remarks on public gatherings. “Beijing should … prepare sufficiently to respond…

TikTok’s Security Threats Go Beyond the Scope of House Legislation

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In a capital where Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, it was notable when the House overwhelmingly declared on Wednesday that TikTok poses such a grave risk to national security that it must be forced to sell its U.S. operations to a non-Chinese owner. But that glosses over the deeper TikTok security problem, which the legislation does not fully address. In the four years this battle has gone on, it has become clear that the security threat posed by TikTok has far less to do with who owns it…

China may be facing too many economic obstacles to hit its ambitious growth target for 2024

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Chinese leaders who have been predicting an end to the country’s deflation would have been heartened by official statistics this week showing consumer prices had increased for the first time in six months. The news came as the ruling Communist party used its annual gathering in Beijing to declare the economy would clock up growth of “around 5%” in 2024. However in his speech, Premier Li Qiang warned dutiful delegates they “should not lose sight of worst-case scenarios and should be well prepared for all risks and challenges”. And little…

Retired SMIC veteran joins China’s top memory chip maker CXMT in boost to research efforts, report says

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Retired SMIC veteran joins China’s top memory chip maker CXMT in boost to research efforts, report says A veteran of China’s top chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) has joined the country’s top memory chip maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) to take charge of research and development, according to media reports in Taiwan. Zhou Meisheng, formerly the executive vice-president of R&D at SMIC and a key aid to co-chief executive Liang Mong-song, will head up the R&D centre of the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip maker, according to…