How China's Tech Sector is challenging the world by innovating faster, working harder, and going global
The
rise of China's tech companies and intense competition from the sector
is just beginning. This will present an ongoing management and strategy
challenge for companies for many years to come. Tech Titans of China is
the go-to-guide for companies (and those interested in competition from
China) seeking to understand China's grand tech ambitions, who the
players are and what their strategy is. Fannin, an expert on China, is
an internationally-recognized journalist, author and speaker. She hosts
12 live events annually for business leaders, venture capitalists,
start-up founders, and others impacted by or interested in cashing in on
the Chinese tech industry. In this illuminating book, she provides
readers with the ammunition they need to prepare and compete.
Featuring
detailed profiles of the Chinese tech companies making waves, the tech
sectors that matter most in China's grab for super power status, and
predictions for China's tech dominance in just 10 years.
-- China's central bank on the brink of launching a digital currency. How will this revolutionize the monetary landscape in China and abroad?
-- and, we meet a scholar whose calling revolves around friendly China-US ties. How can people on both sides maintain the relationship.
China's to launch its own digital currency
https://youtu.be/IWVBxOdfdOo
The Point: What does China think about Facebook's digital currency?
https://youtu.be/eAPLA4oy7Ks
Facebook announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency for its members, with the aim of enabling them to make virtually all their transactions online. What are the potential risks for governments, companies and individuals?
China to launch gov’t-backed digital currency
https://youtu.be/KEj6gNiIlOw
China Is Issuing It's Own Digital Currency
https://youtu.be/Jj_t9Mnnj8k
China's yuan will become a cryptocurrency, blockchain expert says
https://youtu.be/jAbVPCpdXRs
China Cryptocurrency is Ready!!! - Crypto Daily News
https://youtu.be/0i-1cU53Fkk
Christine Lagarde: 'Central Bank digital currency is coming alive'
https://youtu.be/-D9MRkw5wOc
Tech Daily: China government backed digital currency launch soon
https://youtu.be/HTqdVPchmhY
US, China to meet as Beijing considers digital currency
https://youtu.be/AOvdDBnb08M
CHINA’S CENTRAL BANK SAYS THEIR DIGITAL CURRENCY IS READY
https://youtu.be/zU9pni9bYmk
From 'Made in China' to 'Created in China'从中国制造到中国智造
https://youtu.be/mt77GAFWQV0
Made in China" used to be a synonym for cheap products, but all that has changed. China has made huge progress in innovation and technology. From the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, the fastest in the world, and the 500-meter-wide radio telescope in southwest China's Guizhou Province, to the development of lithium battery and 3D-printed blood vessels made from stem cells and renewable energy technologies, Chinese innovations are making a name for themselves.
CGTN explains China's huge transformation from the world's factory to an innovation leader.
CGTN's special program "New China" gives you an in-depth look at China 70 years on. Our crew is on a 12-day journey around China's southwestern, southeastern and northeastern regions. Don't miss it. #PanoramicChina #70YearsThriving
China's central bank speeds up digital currency drive
Private-sector players likely to participate in project
Photo: VCG
With internet technologies advancing and cryptocurrencies flourishing amid a broad digital transformation, individual countries are starting to issue legal tender in digital form, and the People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, is also accelerating its pace in this area.
As of Sunday, the PBC had applied for 74 patents involved with digital currencies to the National Intellectual Property Administration, according to a report by the Economic Information Daily on Monday.
The PBC said it will speed up the development of legal digital currency on Friday.
Wang Xin, director of the PBC Research Bureau, said in July that the authority is organizing market-oriented institutions to jointly research and develop a central bank digital currency and the program has been approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet.
"China is beefing up efforts in digital currency innovation, a trend driven by emerging technologies that is spreading worldwide," said Huang Zhen, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics.
Rather than letting cryptocurrencies challenge the position of sovereign currencies, it is wiser for countries to roll out their own digital currencies, Huang told the Global Times on Monday.
Chinese authorities ordered a ban on initial coin offerings in 2017 and stopped direct bitcoin-yuan trading as the rapidly expanding market spawned concerns over financial risks.
The PBC, one of the earliest central banks in the world to start the process of digital currency innovation, launched its program in 2014 during the tenure of former governor Zhou Xiaochuan. In 2017, the PBC established a research institution for the digital currency.
"China is among the leading countries in terms of its research into a government-backed currency," said Huang.
Favorable conditions
The basic conditions favorable for China's implementation of a digital currency include comprehensive and fast networks, broad digitalization in the financial sector, and advanced financial technologies - particularly blockchain, a digital, public ledger that records online transactions, according to Huang.
In recent years, Chinese internet companies have made huge achievements in the mobile payment and e-commerce sectors, helping create a digital economy of more than 30 trillion yuan ($4.36 trillion), according to media reports.
In June, US social media giant Facebook released an official white paper for its cryptocurrency project Libra, a blockchain-powered stablecoin expected to arrive in 2020.
The move stepped up the global race for digital currencies, with China's central bank paying close attention.
The central bank is closely working with market participants on creating a central bank digital currency, PBC official Wang said.
"China's private market players have accumulated some experience in the digital currency sector. Their participation in the government's work will effectively help promote the project," Cao Yin, an expert in the blockchain sector, told the Global Times on Monday.
It is likely that the sovereign digital currency will be issued within two or three years at the soonest, although the authority tends to take a prudent attitude, Cao said.
Once it is broadly implemented, the new currency will have a big impact on Alibaba's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Pay, the two dominant mobile digital payment tools in China, as the PBC's digital currency is featured by decentralization, unlike the former two.
Challenges ahead
There are still some bumps on the road to promoting the digital currency.
"For this new kind of currency, its nature actually poses challenges to existing policies in such aspects as foreign exchange control, so it takes time to balance benefits with potential risks," said Cao.
A flexible and open mechanism is needed by the PBC to attract more talent, he added.
Digital currencies can help strengthen regulation as transaction data can be tracked and analyzed, including illegal money laundering, according to Huang. But laws and rules should be formulated in a timely fashion to protect individual information. "Safety is the biggest issue," he added.
"Use of the digital currency to better serve the real economy also requires policy guidance," said Huang.
Newspaper headline: PBC accelerates digital currency drive.
in China to launch a national digitalcurrency, following the central government's plan to work...
Source: Global Times | Author: Li Xuanmin and Shen Weiduo in Shenzhen | Column: Economy
: 3pxFile photo: ICpResearch into a national digitalcurrency, as mentioned in a central government...
Source: Global Times | Author: Zhang Hongpei | Column: Economy
AS talk of a recession picks up, a veteran fund manager, Ang Kok Heng of Phillip Capital Management Sdn Bhd, correctly points out that the Malaysian stock market has been in “recession” in five of the six years since 2014.
Hence, he does not envisage how it can get worse for the Malaysian stock market if the global economy does go into a recession next year. Fears of a global recession have picked up pace based on the behaviour of the US yield curve.
The yield curve, which charts the spreads of US debt papers of various tenures, has inverted several times in the past few weeks. Most people would not understand what an inverted yield curve means.
Simply put, it means long-dated debt papers of 10 years giving lower returns compared to shorter-term debt papers such as two-year US Treasuries. It causes what is called an inverted yield curve.
It goes against the normal behaviour of US Treasury yields because long-term debt papers should give a higher return than short-term papers.
The consequence of an inverted yield curve is that it will lead to banks reducing their lending activities because their margins are narrow. Eventually, it results in companies reducing their activities and the country going into a slowdown or recession.
An inverted yield curve has been the precursor to all past recessions (see diagram).
However, there are some who are disputing the fears of an impending global recession based on the behaviour of the bond yield curve. Their reason is that the bond yields are not behaving as what they should due to the governments all around the world printing money to keep interest rates artificially low since 2009.
Interest rates have become so low to the extent that European banks are offering no returns on deposits. This means depositors do not get any money for keeping their money in the banks. Borrowers instead get discounts on their installments.
It’s happening in Europe because government bond yields there have turned negative.
For instance, the yield on 10-year Switzerland bonds is negative 0.74%, while German bonds of a similar tenure yield negative 0.52%. From France to Denmark, government debt papers have negative yields.
Only some countries such as Portugal and Spain still have positive yields on their debt papers.
Analysts believe that this has resulted in investors resorting to buying US debt papers that still offer positive yields. Hence, the price of bonds across all tenures in the US has gone up, causing their yields to come down.
The search for yields has also resulted in the narrowing of the difference between what the two-year and 10-year debt papers offer. And there have been several occasions in the last one month when the yield on the 10-year paper was lower than the two-year debt papers.
Apart from the behaviour of the yield curve, the other indicator that is seen as a precursor to a recession is the declining manufacturing sector all around the world caused by the trade war between the US and China. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which is a leading indicator to assess the state of the economy, has been declining for all major economies.
For Malaysia, the PMI has been less than the 50-point benchmark for almost a year now. The same trend is seen in China, while the indicator has started to decline in the US in the last few months, which some see as a result of the trade war.
The trade war has caused supply disruptions, impacting the manufacturing sector.
However, there are other indicators that do not indicate a recession is imminent.
Banks are fairly well-capitalised and have pulled the brakes on lending. We do not hear of banks being impacted by major corporate defaults except for some financial institutions in China. Malaysian banks, for instance, have weathered the storm quite well so far, thanks to Bank Negara keeping a tight rein on their lending activities.
There has not been any run-up in asset prices. Property prices in countries such as Malaysia have remained subdued since 2015 after Bank Negara pulled the brakes on lending. Since 2014, Bursa Malaysia has closed lower every year, except for 2017.
The only exception of rising asset prices is Wall Street that has soared to record highs. Stock prices are hitting all-time highs due to improved earnings growth.
Technology companies such as Apple and Amazon are US$1 trillion companies. The other technology companies such as Facebook and Alphabet are enjoying growing valuations because of earnings growth.
No other stock exchange in the world has such a large concentration of technology companies than the exchanges on Wall Street. All technology companies, even from China, want to list on Wall Street.
Even Alibaba is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and not in Hong Kong.
It has been 11 years since the last recession, but the world’s central banks have resumed their printing of cheap money to keep interest rates low. The European Central Bank has resumed quantitative easing, while the US Federal Reserve is reducing interest rates. In essence, central banks are taking these measures to prevent a slowing economy going into recession.
In the meantime, it has caused fear among people and companies. Companies are holding back on spending, and in fact, cutting down on their debt.
A clear indicator is in the US where companies raised the most amount of corporate debt. Apple and Disney raised US$7bil worth of debt papers to reduce their borrowings.
In Malaysia, corporations have been deleveraging for the past few years in anticipation of a slowdown. Companies are not expanding, as indicated by the declining private-sector gross capital formation.
It is only reasonable for companies and people to save for the upcoming rainy days. Even governments are cautious in spending. For instance, in the upcoming Budget 2020, many are expecting the government to start spending. But there is also a view that the government will adopt a cautious stance as it continues to strengthen its balance sheet and reduce debts.
If nobody spends for fear of a recession, it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Most people are expecting a recession, meaning negative growth. Fear of a recession has translated into a slowdown that the world and Malaysia are experiencing. If this fear continues to perpetuate, a recession would be a self-fulling prophecy.
It is good to be fearful, but being too fearful and conservative will also result in lost opportunity.
As Ang of Phillip Capital puts it, in times when fears of a recession seap in, cash must be held to seize opportunities. Holding cash as an investment is not a wise option.
Malaysia may, to a certain extent, be less
vulnerable with the revival of major construction projects which in view
of the country’s strained finances, have been shrunk to cut costs. The
Singapore economy may undergo a “shallow, technical recession” in the
third quarter.
Unknown future: As Singapore further cut its
growth forecast, New Zealand, India and Thailand also cut their interest
rates signalling concerns on growth outlook. — AFP
Stepping down as chairman: Jack Ma waving
while standing for a photograph with Alibaba CEO Jonathan Lu (left) and
co-founder and vice-chairman Joseph ‘Joe’ Tsai in front of the New York
Stock Exchange. Ma is giving up the reins of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
after presiding over one of the most spectacular creations of wealth the
world has ever seen. — Bloomberg
Alibaba Cloud, which set up a datacentre in
Malaysia last year, is considering a second one to further develop a
local ecosystem, its president Simon Hu said. — Reuters
Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
(HKSAR) Carrie Lam speaks during a media session in Hong Kong, south
China, Sept 5, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
Economist: Island needs closer ties with China to improve
"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," said economist Lau Pui-King. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."
"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.
HONG KONG - Kwong loves the pure adrenaline rush he gets when he takes his motorcycle out on the weekends to light up his lackluster life.
The 35-year-old lives with his parents in an old and cramped apartment in the New Territories of Hong Kong. He has a girlfriend but is hesitant to get married and start a family.
"The rent is so high, and there is no way I can afford an apartment," said Kwong, who earns 15,000 HK dollars ($1,950) a month. Renting a 30-square meter one-bedroom apartment would cost him about two-thirds of his salary.
"Future? I don't think much about it, just passing each day as it is," he said.
Kwong's words reflect the grievances among many people in Hong Kong, particularly the young. Many vented their discontent in prolonged streets protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June.
The demonstrations, which started over two planned amendments to Hong Kong's ordinances concerning fugitive offenders, widened and turned violent over the past months.
"After more than two months of social unrest, it is obvious to many that discontentment extends far beyond the bill," said Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), referring to the now-withdrawn amendments.
To Lam, the discontent covers political, economic and social issues, including the often-mentioned problems relating to housing and land supply, income distribution, social justice and mobility and opportunities, for the public to be fully engaged in the HKSAR government's decision-making.
"We can discuss all these issues in our new dialogue platform," she said.
HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam visits a transitional housing project of the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society Kowloon in Hong Kong, south China, Aug 9, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
UNAFFORDABLE HOUSES
For nine straight years, housing in Hong Kong has been ranked as the least affordable in the world. Homes in the city got further out of reach for most residents, according to Demographia, an urban planning policy consultancy. The city's median property price climbed to 7.16 million HK dollars in 2019, or 20.9 times the median household income in 2018, up from 19.4 times from a year earlier.
In the latest case of house transaction, an apartment of 353 square feet (about 33 square meters) at Mong Kok in central Kowloon was sold at 5.2 million HK dollars in September, according to the registered data from Centaline Property Agency Limited.
For those fortunate enough to have bought an apartment, many have to spend a large part of their monthly income on a mortgage. For those who have not bought any property yet, it is common to spend more than 10,000 HK dollars in rent, while saving every penny up for a multi-million HK dollar down payment.
From 2004 to 2018, the property price increased by 4.4 fold, while income stagnated, statistics show. From 2008 to 2017, average real wage growth in Hong Kong was merely 0.1 percent, according to a global wage report by the International Labor Organization. Homeownership dropped from 53 percent to 48.9 percent from 2003 to 2018.
Efforts of the HKSAR government to increase land supply to stem home prices from soaring also went futile amid endless quarrels. Of Hong Kong's total 1,100 square kilometers of land area, only 24.3 percent has been developed, with land for residential use accounting for a mere 6.9 percent, according to data from the HKSAR government.
Social worker Jack Wong, 29, lives in an apartment bought by his parents. "I'm lucky. Most of my friends still have to share apartments with their parents. My cousin has been married for seven years, but he is still saving for his down payment, so he has to live at his parents' house," he said.
"The older generation changed from having nothing to having something. We, the younger generation, thought we had something, but it turns out we have nothing," he said.
MIDDLE CLASS' ANXIETY
While young people complain about having few opportunities for upward mobility, Hong Kong's middle class, which should have long been stalwarts of the society, are under great economic pressure and in fear of falling behind.
It is not easy to be middle class in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities. To join the rank, a household needs to earn at least 55,000 HK dollars, or $7,000, a month, according to Paul Yip Siu-fai, a senior lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. About 10 percent of the households in the city are up to the rank.
Earning that much can be counted as rich in many parts of the world. But in Hong Kong, the money is still tight if you have a child to raise and elderly to support.
Housing is the biggest burden for the average middle-class resident. The cost of having a child is another headache in Hong Kong, where pricey extra-curricular activities and private tutoring are considered necessary to win in the fierce competition.
Fears of descending to the low-income group are real for the middle class. Many think they belong to the middle class only in education and cultural identity, but their living conditions are not much better than the impoverished, said Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, former secretary for transport and housing of the HKSAR government.
Civil servants and teachers, who earn much more than the average income, are traditionally considered middle class. But Cheung found out in a survey that many of them could not afford to have their own apartment, with some even living in the narrow rooms of partitioned apartments.
"We don't belong to the low-income group, but we could just rent an apartment now," said Lee, a teacher at a secondary school in Hong Kong.
Lee and her husband earned nearly 1.3 million HK dollars a year, but a 50-square meter apartment is the best they could rent now for a five-member family. She preferred not to give her full name as she feels her situation is embarrassing.
"We want to save more money to buy a house near prestigious elementary schools for our kids," Lee said. "If our kids can't go to a good school, it'll be very tough in the future."
A woman walks near the Harbour City in Hong Kong, south China, Aug 27, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
CHANGING ECONOMIC STRUCTURE
In the 1970s, nearly half of Hong Kong's labor force were industrial workers when manufacturing thrived in Hong Kong. During the 1980s, Hong Kong's finance, shipping, trade and logistics and service industries started to boom.
Since then, the economic landscape began to change amid subsequent industrial upgrading.
Due to the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry, the wealth gap in Hong Kong widened and the class division worsened. Despite the prosperity of finance, trade and tourism in recent years, more than 1.37 million people are living below the poverty line in Hong Kong, home to more than 7 million.
Working career options are now limited, leaving little hope for the youngsters to move up the social ranks.
As a result, Hong Kong's social class has largely been solidified in the 21st century, with the richest people dominated by property developers and their families.
The Gini coefficient, which measures the inequality of income distribution, reached a new high of 0.539 in 2016, far above the warning level of 0.4, according to data by the HKSAR government's Census and Statistics Department. The greater the number toward one, the more inequal in income distribution.
Though the HKSAR government tried to narrow the wealth gap, many people in Hong Kong said they are not sharing the fruits of economic prosperity, the young and those low-income groups in particular.
STAGNATING POLITICAL BARRIERS
What makes the deep-seated problems in Hong Kong such a hard nut to crack? The reason is complicated, according to observers, partly due to the containment in the current political structure that leads to governance difficulty, partly due to a doctrinaire implementation of the principle of "small government, big market," or laisser faire, and most importantly due to the opposition's "say no for none's sake" that stirs political confrontation and sends Hong Kong into a dilemma of discussions without decisions, or making decisions without execution.
Over the past 22 years, the successive HKSAR governments have tried many times to tackle these problems by rolling out affordable housing programs and narrowing the rich-poor gap.
For example, to make houses more affordable, Tung Chee-hwa, the first HKSAR chief executive, proposed in 1997 to build at least 85,000 flats every year in the public and private sectors, raise the homeownership rate to 70 percent in 10 years and reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to three years.
Such plans, however, went aborted as home prices plunged in Hong Kong amid the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
"Since Hong Kong's return, many economic and livelihood issues would not be as politicized as they are now, should the HKSAR government have introduced more policies and better social security arrangements to address those problems," said Tian Feilong, a law expert of the "one country, two systems" center with the Beijing-based Beihang University.
To carry out major policies or push forward major bills, the HKSAR government needs to garner the support of two-thirds majority at the Legislative Council (LegCo).
The HKSAR government's previous motions, be it economic policies or fiscal appropriations, were impeded by the opposition time and again at the LegCo, regardless of the interests of the majority of Hong Kong residents and the long-term development of the society.
The HKSAR government sought in 2012 to establish the Innovation and Technology Bureau to ride the global wave of innovative startups, diversify its economic structure and bring more opportunities for young people. Such efforts, however, were obstructed by the opposition at the LegCo in defiance of repeated calls by the public. After three years, the proposal to create the bureau was finally passed by the LegCo.
In another case, a Hong Kong resident, incited by the opposition, appealed in 2010 for a judicial review of the construction plan of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Though the HKSAR government won the lawsuit after more than a year of court proceedings, 6.5 billion HK dollars of taxpayers' money had been wasted in the increased construction costs of the bridge's Hong Kong section due to the delay.
As time passed, problems remained unsolved, so did public discontent.
Repeated political bickering stalled Hong Kong's social progress amid the sparring, and the opposition created a false target and blamed the Chinese mainland for those deep-seated problems.
Lau Pui-King, an economist in Hong Kong, snubbed the opposition's resistance of or even antagonism to the Chinese mainland, saying such thinking of secluding Hong Kong from the entire country could end nowhere but push the city down an abyss.
"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," Lau said. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."
"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.
If you ask Hong Kong residents who have been working in
business since the city returned to China in 1997, they can tell
countless stories of how the city and the mainland helped each other
over the years.
China filed a lawsuit under the WTO dispute settlement
mechanism on the US' 15 percent tariffs on $300 billion Chinese goods,
the first batch of which started on September 1, China's Ministry of
Commerce (MOFCOM) announced on Monday.
China will not proactively escalate the trade war, and will not discriminate against US companies that invest in China due to the trade war. As the trade war is messing up the world, China is bound to be stronger.
https://youtu.be/yjzsDNMEe1U China wants a deal, but won't stand down against new tariffs
https://youtu.be/5ljbYOInolc
Why China Holds a Trade War Edge Over U.S.
https://youtu.be/RL-HqSrdJm4
'We're clearly heading toward a recession,' says strategist
https://youtu.be/ZbknzF8_0os
Trump's Incompetence and Corruption on Display
https://youtu.be/voYuH5eGlkk
KUALA LUMPUR: Asian markets started the week on a weak note amid escalating trade war concerns after the US and China announced plans for additional tariffs against each other.
Locally, the FBM KLCI stayed in negative territory for the whole of yesterday, before paring losses to close 8.8 points or 0.55% lower at 1,600.53 points. Before the closing, the index hovered below 1,595, falling 1.17% to an intraday low of 1,590.51.
Despite the fall, the local index was among the least affected by the regional selldown, compared with other Asian indices. The biggest loser among the regional indices was Japan’s Nikkei 225, falling 2.17% to 20,261.04. This was followed by Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and the Taiwan Stock Exchange, down 1.91% and 1.74% respectively. India’s Sensex notably closed 2.16% higher.
In Southeast Asia, Singapore’s Straits Times Index was the biggest decliner, down 1.45% at 3,065.33, and the Jakarta Composite index closed 0.66% lower at 6,214.51.
Last Friday, US President Donald Trump announced an additional duty on some US$550 billion worth of targeted Chinese goods, following China’s move to hike trade levies on US$75 billion worth of US goods.
Trump said US tariffs on US$250 billion of Chinese imports will increase from 25% to 30% on Oct 1, while an additional 5% tax on US$300 billion worth of Chinese goods — raising the tariff to 15% from 10% — starts on Sept 1.
The president made it clear that the US was responding to China’s threat of additional tariffs on US$75 billion of goods including soybeans, automobiles and oil.
“This looks like a tit-for-tat [response] and I don’t see an easy resolution to the trade war, as there seems to be no middle ground between the US and China. It is very unsettling for the market because there is no direction from day to day,” said Inter-Pacific Securities Sdn Bhd research head Pong Teng Siew.
However, the tensions eased a bit towards the later part of yesterday, as Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said China was willing to resolve the trade dispute through calm negotiations, stating the nation was against the escalation of the conflict.
Trump responded positively to China’s suggestion and, on the sidelines of a summit in France, had hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping as a great leader and welcomed the latter’s desire for calm negotiations.
It remains to be seen how the trade dispute will be resolved, given the constant retaliatory tariffs between the two economic behemoths since early last year.
Several trade talks between the two nations have not brought any solutions to the trade war, still affecting investor sentiments towards global markets. For the KLCI, the trade war remains a major factor affecting analysts’ forecasts.
Kenanga Research said the index’s underlying trend remains bearish but does not discount the possibility of a technical rebound as the KLCI has been in oversold territory for about a month. “Look out for overhead resistance levels at 1,630 and 1,650. If selling pressure continues, the key support levels to keep an eye on are 1,570 and 1,550,” Kenanga Research wrote in a note yesterday. - Source link
I think it's necessary to include something Liu once said
that also applies here, “The world needs a new America. It needs an
America that is free of prejudice and intolerance. It needs an America
that understands respect, that matches words with deeds, that
understands the principles of benevolence, righteousness, propriety,
wisdom, and faithfulness. The world would be lucky if the new America
could become such a country.”
Trump has turned Twitter into a stage for his political
show, where he says things to gain votes for reelection. He repeats what
he has done for the US – to provide Americans welfare, and to “make
America great again.” But he is actually damaging the interests of his
own country and people.
In today's world of production patterns, no country can
marginalize China anymore. Whichever country forcibly cuts economic ties
with China will only harm itself. After Trump tweeted, he received
almost one-sided opposition and doubts, which showed how inappropriate
was his unrealistic proposal.
The past few months have been sad and depressing for
those who live in Hong Kong. The safety guaranteed on the streets of
Beijing and Xi'an should be available to the people of Hong Kong. China
should not be asked to compromise its sovereignty. If Americans want to
boycott anyone, they should do so with their politicians who support the
Hong Kong unrest.
Many Hongkongers are confusing right from wrong while
Western public opinion constantly delivers the ideological energy that
the radical protesters need.
The West has shed no tears for Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, which had gone
through similar hardships. Now, it is turning Hong Kong into the
forefront of the struggle with China, and, as usual, they will shed no
tears for the city's misery.
