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Apple supplier up to 40000 Bots in China

Apple supplier up to 40,000 ‘Foxbots’ in China

Apple supplier Foxconn so far up to 40,000 ‘Foxbots’ in China

Apple’s main assembly partner, Foxconn, has so far installed 40,000 production robots across China as it looks to minimize the number of people it employs, reports noted on Wednesday.

With the exception of some components like servo motors and speed reducers, the robots are being built entirely in-house, Foxconn’s Dai Chia-peng told Taiwan’s Central News Agency, as quoted by DigiTimes. It’s unclear how many of the so-called “Foxbots” are being used to manufacture Apple products.

The machines are, however, said to be operating an industrial facility in Zhengzhou, a tablet plant in Chengdu, and computer/peripherals plants in Kunshan and Jiashan.

Dai commented that Foxconn is currently manufacturing 10,000 robots per year. Each one can potentially go far towards replacing human labor — in Kunshan alone, Foxconn is known to have cut 60,000 workers.

Until recently it was often cheaper for Chinese companies to pay thousands or millions of people low wages rather than use robots. Rising labor standards and a lack of interest from young workers, however, has led some firms to make the high upfront investment in automation.

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Mark Schlarbaum

MARK SCHLARBAUM - Experienced in China - US business partnerships. Never giving up for those that never stop fighting! Help me join the fight against blood cancer and reach my fundraising goal! Visit My Fund Raising Page

China plans world’s biggest spaceplane to carry 20 tourists

Even China can’t resist the lure of space tourism. A state-backed firm is developing a gigantic spaceplane, New Scientist can reveal. The plane may one day fly up to 20 passengers to the edge of space – significantly more people than any other commercial spaceflight firm has pledged to fly to date.

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing has designed a simple, one-piece spaceplane whose design can be scaled up to carry more people, academy rocket scientist Lui Haiquang told the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, last week.

The academy will have plenty of competition. Big names include Virgin Galactic, whose SpaceShipTwo spaceplane will offer six passengers trips to near-space, and XCOR, whose proposed Lynx vehicle will fly a single passenger seated beside a pilot. Blue Origin’s suborbital space capsule, New Shepard, aims to carry six tourists. But academy team leader Han Pengxin and his colleagues believe consumer demand will be high enough to build a much higher capacity spacecraft.

“More and more common persons are interested in the experience of space flight,” the team wrote in their IAC2016 paper, adding that the project is “very attractive” to “bosses and businessmen”.

They have designed a winged rocket that takes off under its own power. That sets it apart from SpaceShipTwo, which must be carried to high altitude by an aircraft before firing its own rocket.

“The vehicle will take off vertically like a rocket and land on the runway automatically without any ground or on-board intervention,” Han says. It will burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen.

Han’s team has designed two versions of their rocket plane. The first has a mass of 10 tonnes and a wingspan of 6 metres. This one, he says, should be able to fly five people to an altitude of 100 kilometres – where space officially begins – at speeds up to Mach 6, giving 2 minutes of weightlessness.

But a scaled up 100-tonne version, with a 12-metre wingspan, could fly 20 people to 130 kilometres at Mach 8, giving 4 minutes of weightlessness. That larger spacecraft is fast enough to help deliver small satellites into orbit, with the help of a small rocket stage add-on that would sit on top of the vehicle. And that payload-carrying capability will reduce tourist ticket prices, says Han. They also intend to make it reusable, so each plane should be good for up to 50 flights.

Test flights soon
Tests are advanced, Han adds. “The test flights will be finished in the next two years, because almost all of the ground tests have been finished and all the subsystems of the test vehicle worked very well.”

He imagines flights will launch from a commercial spaceport – whose location is as yet undecided – with payload launches in 2020. The plane will carry people when it is considered safe enough.

Han predicts that a ride will cost between $200,000 and $250,000.

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China’s elderly population 240 mln by 2020

The National Health and Family Planning Commission predicts the number of China’s elderly (above 60) to reach 240 million – or 17 per cent of the population – by 2020.
The Commission’s deputy head Liu Qian said the government would improve the medical insurance system and basic public health services.

But he also said that there were about 260 million Chinese afflicted with chronic disease.

The growing number of elderly and the falling number of working age people is a concern for Chinese leaders. China faces the risk of ending up with an outsized elderly population before it becomes a developed economy

Earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics released figures showing China’s working age population dropped by 4.87 million to 910.96 million in 2015, up from the previous year’s drop of 3.71 million.

China’s working age population, those aged 16 to 59, has been on the decline since 2012, and it is expected to reach 830 million in 2030, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security adds.

China’s 13th five-year plan for the period beginning 2016 and ending 2021 has taken into account a huge budget dedicated to elderly care.

In order to meet as yet undisclosed consumption targets during this period, the Communist Party of China (CPC) will push to fashion an economic strategy that it says is based on balanced, inclusive and sustainable economic development.

The CPC communique indicates that this will be achieved by looking at China’s existing demographic realities. One of the most significant and far-reaching decisions is the rescinding of the 30-year-old one-child policy and allow some 90 million eligible couples to have up to two children.

The CPC sees this as a socio-economic imperative because of its extensive ageing population and as a means to increase domestic consumption. It will lift the mandatory retirement age.

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Mark Schlarbaum

CHINA’S SECRET OIL STOCKPILES EXPOSED

CHINA’S SECRET OIL STOCKPILES EXPOSED IN NEW SATELLITE IMAGES

Winter energy prices are likely to rise, but not because of this week’s decision by OPEC. Instead, energy traders say, look to China.

Earlier this week, OPEC—14 nations representing just under half of the world’s oil production—reached a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts to trim crude oil production by 700,000 barrels a day from more than 33 million barrels a day sometime later this year. That announcement briefly nudged oil prices back up toward $50, but prices have eased again on concerns that OPEC, notorious for not sticking to its agreements, won’t stick to this one either.

What’s more likely to keep winter energy prices propped up, energy traders say, is the secretive stockpiling of crude oil by China, the world’s second-largest consumer of oil next to the U.S. New data released on Thursday by geospatial analytics firm Orbital Insight shows that China has been under-reporting its oil stockpile—and continues gobbling up supplies on the global market.

“China seems to be building tanks and filling them fast—and building more tanks just as fast or even faster,” Orbital Insight’s CEO James Crawford tells Newsweek. He notes that satellite images obtained and analyzed by the company confirm China’s oil supply has risen to 600 million barrels as of May 2016 and shows no sign of slowing down.

That’s up from 585.6 million barrels in 2015 and 519.9 million barrels in 2014, Crawford says, citing earlier data from satellite images also analyzed by Orbital. Total supply includes both commercial and strategic barrels, he said. The company’s data does not differentiate between the two, as both types of barrels are often commingled inside the same tanks.

China’s oil imports hit a new record earlier this year, surging above 8 million barrels a day and climbing 16 percent on the year as of June. Notably, its rising imports in the first half of the year overlapped with higher U.S. energy prices headed into the summer. Crude oil prices started out in 2016 below $30 a barrel, with retail gasoline prices in many parts of the U.S. dropping below $2 a gallon. But oil jumped above $50 by June, partly due to petroleum purchases by China, a price point it’s now targeting again.

Orbital also revealed Thursday that its satellite images uncovered oil storage tanks in China previously unknown to international organizations, noting that as of 2014, China had 2,100 commercial and strategic petroleum reserve tanks with a storage capacity of 900 million barrels. That’s four times what industry reports indicated at the time, the company says. While Orbital Insight is still in the process of analyzing storage capacity data for 2015 and 2016, Crawford says so far there’s no indication that China is easing up on building more storage.

“Storage capacity seems to still be rising along with supply,” Crawford said. “It really represents China’s capacity to take advantage of any price swings in the market,” because the more storage it has, the more room it has to buy oil when prices are low.

Given its outsize influence, China’s activity in the market is likely to have greater ramifications than OPEC going forward, although any reduction in the global oil supply would make petroleum products such as gasoline and heating oil scarcer going into winter.

“At the end of the day, the reality of the OPEC cut is that it may not mean much, because OPEC members often don’t comply,” a bank trader told Newsweek, asking not to be named because it is the policy of his firm, one of the world’s top physical buyers of oil. “And if that happens, that will leave the onus on Chinese demand over OPEC.”

Oil prices leapt as much as $3 a barrel following OPEC’s announcement of its agreement, but edged back to hover at $45 a barrel Friday, as details of OPEC’s plan won’t be cemented until its next meeting November 30. And even then, nothing is guaranteed, experts say, because none of OPEC’s members have to follow any agreement they hammer out. (That’s why calling OPEC a “cartel” is a misnomer: Obedience is not mandatory.)

Meanwhile, China’s role as a major oil buyer could keep prices firm going into 2017, the trader says. He expects China likely will be very selective about when it dips into the market. “They’re very market-savvy, so they’re not going to buy above $50,” he says. “They’re targeting the low- to mid-$40s.” That means prices may have trouble falling below the mid-$40s and staying there as long as China is buying.

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Thanks to Trump, China is poised to dominate

This Chinese province has produced the second most billionaires in the world

The ranks of the super-wealthy are growing quickly in China — and nowhere more than Zhejiang province.

Zhejiang has produced 72 billionaires, second only to California with 92, according to exclusive data from the Hurun Report.

Within Zhejiang, 32 billionaires live in the capital city of Hangzhou, where the G20 was recently held. That’s more than Paris (30) and the city of San Francisco (28).

So, what exactly makes this area such a wealth creator and magnet?

As a Hangzhou native, I asked Jack Ma, my hometown’s richest and most recognized entrepreneur.

“[It’s] Hangzhou’s surroundings, Hangzhou’s culture, Hangzhou’s history,” the Alibaba founder said in an interview at the company’s headquarters.

Ma launched Alibaba (BABA, Tech30) in Hangzhou in 1999 and has stayed put ever since.

The city, located 100 miles southwest of Shanghai, is a fitting homebase given its historic role as a trading hub and regional center.

Hangzhou served as China’s capital during the Southern Song dynasty, a period from 1127 to 1276, where there was immense economic, political and cultural development.

Thanks to its lush and scenic landscape, namely the West Lake, Hangzhou attracted scholars, artists, poets and philosophers. Because of its location in the Yangtze River Delta, it became the southernmost point for the Grand Canal, which enabled domestic and international trade.

Hangzhou’s modern history played a role in China’s greater development too. In 1972, President Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to travel to China. Hangzhou was one of the few places he visited.

“[The city] was an early participant in the opening of China,” said Ma, who was born in 1964. “And because Hangzhou became open, a lot of foreign visitors — a lot of American visitors — could come … I especially benefited from Hangzhou’s openness to foreigners.”

As a teen, Ma would ride his bike to the West Lake to practice English. This led him to develop lasting friendships and learn about Western culture early on.

When economic reforms first swept China in the 1980s, Hangzhou and other Zhejiang cities like Ningbo and Wenzhou were quick to jump on board and create private companies, according to Chen Zongnian, chairman of Hikvision, one of the world’s largest suppliers of surveillance cameras, and another Hangzhou-based firm.

The “first generation” of entrepreneurs during this period built businesses dependent on manufacturing and unskilled laborers, producing everyday goods like shoes and clothing. Chen called them “daring,” possessing a “you’ll succeed as long as you try” mentality that influenced the next generation.

The second group of entrepreneurs, which came about in the late 1990s and early 2000s, had more high tech skills.

Now, there’s a third wave — with businesses that produce internet-based services like platforms for smart homes and artificial intelligence.
“They can stay and build here because they have previous business models to look to, and access to more local capital,” he said.

Among the 72 billionaires from the Zhejiang region are Neil Shen, a venture capitalist and founder of Sequoia Capital China in Beijing; Ding Lei, founder of NetEase, also in Beijing; Frank Wang, founder and CEO of drone-maker DJI, based in Shenzhen; and Li Shufu, founder of Geely Auto Group, which owns Volvo and is based in Hangzhou.

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Meitu of China Built on the Selfie Could Be Worth $5.23 Billion

China’s yuan joins elite club of IMF reserve currencies

China’s yuan joins the International Monetary Fund’s basket of reserve currencies on Saturday in a milestone for the government’s campaign for recognition as a global economic power.

The yuan joins the U.S. dollar, the euro, the yen and British pound in the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) basket, which determines currencies that countries can receive as part of IMF loans. It marks the first time a new currency has been added since the euro was launched in 1999.The IMF is adding the yuan, also known as the renminbi, or “people’s money”, on the same day that the Communist Party celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

“The inclusion into the SDR is a milestone in the internationalization of the renminbi, and is an affirmation of the success of China’s economic development and results of the reform and opening up of the financial sector,” the People’s Bank of China said in a statement.

China will use this opportunity to further deepen economic reforms and open up the sector to promote global growth, the central bank added.

The IMF announced last year that it would add the yuan to the basket, so actual inclusion is not expected to impact financial markets. But it puts Beijing’s often opaque economic and foreign exchange policy in the international spotlight as some central banks add yuan assets to their official reserves.

Critics argue that the move is largely symbolic and the yuan does not fully meet IMF reserve currency criteria of being freely usable, or widely used to settle trade or widely traded in financial markets. U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he will formally label China a currency manipulator if he wins November’s election.

China stunned investors by devaluing the currency last year and the yuan has since weakened to near six-year lows, adding to worries about already feeble global growth.

Some China watchers also fear that Beijing’s commitment to further market opening and financial sector reforms will fade after its diplomatic success, despite repeated reassurances from Beijing it will continue with the process.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said on Thursday the yuan was “quite a ways” from true global reserve currency status. The new IMF status recognizes the “enormous” change in China in the last 10 years that had made the yuan more open, but Beijing still had work to do to make its currency and its economy more market-driven, he said. “Being part of the SDR basket at the IMF is quite a ways away from being a global reserve currency,” he said.

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China is in the middle of a new home buying boom

Chinese banks issued 949 billion yuan ($142 billion) in new yuan loans in August—and more than half of them were funneled into home buyers’ hands, amid a property market comeback.

The August figure, released today (Sept. 14) (link in Chinese) by the People’s Bank of China, is more than double the July figure, and beats analysts’ forecast by 20%.

56% of new bank loans issued in August went to households as “mid & long-term loans,” which are usually interpreted by China analysts to mean mortgage loans. That’s up 85% from a year earlier. In July, overall mortgage loans grew 8% from the month before. Those new loans represented over 100% of the total, because loan growth was offset by borrowers paying previous loans back.

Chinese banks are fueling the most recent home buying frenzy in first-tier cities. On Tuesday (Sept. 13), the National Bureau of Statistics said that home sale revenue and overall real estate area sold went up 39% and 26%, respectively (link in Chinese) in the January to August period, compared to a year earlier. In Shanghai, a rumor about stricter government controls over home buying pushed married couples to fake divorces, in order to qualify for a lower downpayment and interest rate when purchasing a second home.

Meanwhile, China’s M2, the widest measure of money supply—which includes cash in circulation and deposits—rose 11% in August year-over-year, also beating market expectations.

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China to become first trillion dollar aviation market

Airlines in China will spend more than $1 trillion on new airplanes over the next two decades to meet the country’s booming demand for air travel, Boeing said in its annual China market outlook.

It estimates 6,810 new aircraft purchases by China in the next twenty years, up 7.6 percent from its previous demand prediction until 2034.

“As China transitions to a more consumer-based economy, aviation will play a key role in its economic development,” said Randy Tinseth, Vice President of Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “Because travel and transportation are key services, we expect to see passenger traffic grow 6.4 percent annually in China over the next 20 years,” he added.

According to Tinseth, the country’s growing middle class and new visa policies “gives every reason to expect a very bright future for China’s long-haul market.”

Boeing predicts that three-quarters of new deliveries will be single-aisle aircraft that carry between 90 and 230 passengers. Demand for wide-body planes will also increase, with 1,560 new planes expected to triple the country’s fleet over 20 years.

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Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert

Two years ago, a California aluminum executive commissioned a pilot to fly over the Mexican town of San José Iturbide, at the foot of the Sierra Gorda mountains, and snap aerial photos of a remote desert factory.

He made a startling discovery. Nearly one million metric tons of aluminum sat neatly stacked behind a fortress of barbed-wire fences. The stockpile, worth some $2 billion and representing roughly 6% of the world’s total inventory—enough to churn out 2.2 million Ford F-150s or 77 billion beer cans—quickly became an obsession for the U.S. aluminum industry.

Now it is a new source of tension in U.S.-Chinese trade relations. U.S. executives contend that the mysterious cache was part of a brazen scheme by one of China’s richest men to game the global trade system.

Aluminum-industry representative Jeff Henderson says he is convinced that China Zhongwang Holdings Ltd., a Chinese aluminum giant controlled by billionaire Liu Zhongtian, tried to evade U.S. tariffs by routing aluminum through Mexico to disguise its origins, a tactic known as transshipping.

“My Moby-Dick has been Zhongwang,” says Mr. Henderson, president of the Aluminum Extruders Council, a U.S. trade group.

Mr. Liu, a member of China’s ruling Communist Party, denies any connection to the Mexican aluminum or transshipping. “These things have nothing to do with me,” he said in a June interview at his company’s Liaoning, China, plant, where he lives in an apartment inside the factory. He said he wouldn’t know how to establish a business in Mexico, joking that “in that sort of place, there are a lot of killers with guns.”

Company records, trade documents and legal filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, along with interviews of people who have done business with Mr. Liu, raise doubts about his account. They show that hundreds of thousands of tons of aluminum were shipped to Mexico from China through a series of companies, including one owned by Mr. Liu’s son and one by someone who describes himself as a longtime business associate of the Chinese billionaire.

The U.S. Commerce Department says it is investigating the Mexican aluminum’s origin as part of a slew of trade complaints by the U.S. metals industry against China, many of which include allegations of transshipping.

China’s booming industrial production has reordered global markets, few more dramatically than aluminum. Fueled by access to inexpensive electricity and tax breaks, Chinese aluminum output doubled between 2010 and 2015. With local demand slowing, more of it was sent to the U.S., which was importing 40% of its aluminum by 2015—up from only 14% in 2010.

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Google’s Former China Chief Raises $674 Million in New Funds

Sinovation Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by former Google Inc. executive Kai-Fu Lee, has raised more than $674 million for two new funds that will seek out investments in China and the U.S.

The firm formerly known as Innovation Works recently closed its second yuan-denominated fund and its third U.S.-dollar fund, taking the total amount under management to more than $1.2 billion. The seven-year-old investment outfit now plans to add to a portfolio of almost 300 startups that include app store Wandoujia and Meitu, a developer of selfie apps that’s close to listing in Hong Kong.

“The new dual–currency funds will strengthen our investment capacity,” Lee said in a statement. “Sinovation Ventures has investment teams both in China and in the United States, that could grasp pivotal investment opportunities in the two countries.”

Lee’s firm operates in a manner similar to Y Combinator Inc., the American startup incubator. Its successful fundraising comes as venture capital investment cools after 2015’s record pace. Chinese-based venture capital firms raised just $400 million in the second quarter, the lowest figure in almost three years, according to London consultancy Preqin Ltd.

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