Iraq was the top target for China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative last year, receiving US$10.5 billion in financing for projects including a heavy oil power plant, a study published on Wednesday said.
In total, China’s engagement through investments and contractual cooperation across the 144 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries was US$59.5 billion, in line with the US$60.5 billion in 2020, according to the report by the Green Finance and Development Center at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
In Arab and Middle Eastern countries, investment last year rose by about 360 percent and construction engagement by 116 percent compared with 2020, the study said.
Iraq, where the US ended its combat mission last year, has become the third-biggest partner in BRI for energy engagement since 2013, after Pakistan and Russia, the study said.
China and Iraq are cooperating to build the US$5 billion Al-Khairat heavy oil power plant in Karbalah Province in Iraq and China’s Sinopec Corp (中國石油化工) has won the contract to develop Iraq’s Mansuriya gas field near the Iranian border. The two countries are also cooperating on an airport, solar and other projects.
China’s BRI contract values last year were US$45.6 billion, up from US$37 billion a year earlier, while investments shrank to US$13.9 billion from US$23.4 billion.
Green energy finance and investment edged up to US$6.3 billion compared with US$6.2 billion in 2020, and China did not engage in coal projects last year, in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pledge not to build coal-fired plants overseas.
For this year, the researchers expect an acceleration of green projects, in line with government guidelines, although oil-related finance and investment under BRI surged to US$6.4 billion last year from US$1.9 billion in 2020.
The Fudan University researchers expect Chinese BRI engagement to decline, citing China’s five-year plan for 2021-2025 to invest US$550 billion abroad including non-BRI countries, down 25 percent from US$740 billion in the 2016-2020 period. Chinese BRI engagement declined by 48 percent last year from pre-pandemic levels, the researchers said.
After Iraq, Serbia and Indonesia were the top targets for BRI construction engagement.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day