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Monday, August 4, 2025

Rise of the machines in China


   

   

 When Sun Huihai first began working at a factory in the southern manufacturing belt of Guangdong some 13 years ago, his colleagues were all humans.

Now, they are joined by more than 200 robots which can work around the clock, seven days a week, to help produce air-­conditioners for home appliances giant Midea.

Rows of bright orange robot arms whir at all hours of the day, fishing freshly pressed plastic parts out of hot metal moulds and onto a long conveyor belt.

Driverless robots with blinking lights store these parts in a multi-­storey warehouse, and later take them to be assembled into units that are sold in China and around the world. 

The number of robots put to work on the factory floor increases every year, said Sun, 37, who heads the plant’s engineering department.

“Every day, we think about how to upgrade and make manufacturing here more intelligent,” he said.

Scenes like this have become more common across China, as the “factory of the world” turns to robotics to sustain and turbocharge its manufacturing juggernaut.

Over the past decade, the number of industrial robots on China’s factory floors has increased more than six times to over 1.7 million, as companies grappled with ri­­sing wages and a shortage of workers willing to staff production lines.

China now has the world’s third-highest density of robots in its manufacturing industry, trailing South Korea and Singapore in first and second place respectively, according to the International Federation of Robotics’ figures for 2023, the latest available.

Their deployment is poised to increase further as China conti­nues its transition from low-­value, labour-intensive production to advanced manufacturing – a national priority.

Policymakers in China, wary of the hollowing out of industries which can occur when countries get richer, have long pushed for greater automation to keep factories competitive.

Factories in China pumped out nearly 370,000 of industrial robots in the first half of 2025, up 35.6% from the previous year, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

But as robot adoption picks up pace, one question that arises is: What will happen to the more than 100 million workers whom China’s manufacturing sector employs?

Academics Nicole Wu and Sun Zhongwei, who interviewed and surveyed factory workers in southern China just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, found that these individuals were not too concerned about robots just yet.

“Contrary to the more pessimistic assessments of automation, most manufacturing workers in Guangdong – who are buffered by steady increases in demand and a chronic labour shortage – appear to be unfazed by technological change at present,” they wrote in a paper published this year.

Back at the Midea factory, Wang Liangcai, 26, an engineer, believes that his job is safe from automation for now.

“Equipment still needs to be maintained, it can’t do so itself,” he said.

“But if you think about the long run ... we also don’t know how things will be.” — The Straits Times/ANN

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Saturday, August 2, 2025

US revises tariff rate to 19%

 However, nation must urgently diversify its export destinations

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s revised tariff rate of 19% on exports to the United States offers a temporary competitive edge in the region but underscores the urgency for export diversification amid signs of growing US protectionism, economists warn.

Prof Emeritus Dr Barjoyai Bardai said the revised rate, down from 25% previously, positions Malaysia on par with neighbou­ring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines.

ALSO READ: Malaysian industries can breathe easier now

He said the rate is still more favourable than those imposed on Myanmar (40%), Vietnam (20%) and Taiwan (20%).

“We seem to be able to compete with our neighbouring countries. But we are far behind Singapore at 10%, as well as Japan and South Korea at 15%.

“With India at 25%, we are in a better position,” he said when contacted. What we really want to see is that the tariff imposed on Malaysia is as low or better than that of countries that are our competitors because we are exporting to the United States.

“So, if those countries have equal or higher tariffs than us, then our ability to compete remains intact,” he added.

However, he said that certain Malaysian exports may be vulnerable, especially low-­margin products such as solar panels, and electrical and electronic goods.

On the trade balance with the US, he said it depends on whether Malaysian imports from the US increase significantly, especially luxury goods, following the government’s decision to scrap the luxury tax.

“Although the luxury tax has been included in the expanded SST, the rate is still low,” he added.

He said Malaysia must urgently diversify its export destinations, as the US moves towards a more self-sufficient economy.

Barjoyai said semiconductors should be directed to countries with growing demand, such as China, India and Europe.

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For other items like solar panels, he said Malaysia should consider Latin America, Canada and Europe.

“There are still many untapped markets. In the long run, the United States will become a domestic-driven economy where they will seek to reduce imports.

“Today, they are already about 80% self-sustaining,” he added.

Echoing similar concerns, Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd chief economist Dr Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid said the tariff adjustment signals that the United States remains open to dialogue, but the economic implications for Malaysia remain.

“As a result of recent discussions, the previously imposed retaliatory tariffs of 25% have now been reduced to 19%.

“Consequently, the negative impact on Malaysia’s economy is expected to be slightly mitigated.

“In this regard, Bank Negara has revised its GDP forecast for 2025 to a range of 4.0% to 4.8%, down from the earlier projection of 4.5% to 5.5%,” he said.

Afzanizam also highlighted the potential global impact of US ta­riffs.

“The 19% import tariff is expected to impact American consumers’ purchasing power.

“This may, in turn, dampen economic momentum in the US, which is the world’s largest econo­my. It poses a potential risk to glo­bal economic growth in the coming years,” Afzanizam said.

He also called for a balanced approach to foreign relations and economic strategy.

“It is crucial to preserve strong bilateral ties with the United States, while simultaneously exploring new opportunities with countries in Europe, the BRICS bloc, and strengthening economic and diplomatic cooperation within Asean.

“At the same time, efforts to boost productivity, build capacity and enhance economic resilience must be intensified to safeguard Malaysia’s economic sovereignty.

“These measures will reinforce investor and business confidence, underpinned by pragmatic policies and the government’s proactive response to emerging challenges,” he added.

Centre for Market Education chief executive officer Carmelo Ferlito, meanwhile, said the tariff revision reflects a political strategy rather than a pure economic measure.

“The reciprocal tariff on Malay­sia to 19% is the proof of what I have mentioned earlier,” he said, adding that US President Donald Trump was not interested in ta­riffs per se, but to reopen negotiating tables.

He said this is to show that the United States is the biggest consumer in the world and force countries to get closer to the United States as well as grant commercial facilitations.

Ferlito criticised the use of ta­riffs as a policy tool, arguing that they hurt both consumers and workers.

“Tariffs are bad, not just for Malaysia, but for the world,” he said, adding that ultimately, ta­riffs reduce trade opportunities.

“This means less choice for consumers, but also job losses, on both sides,” he added.

Friday, August 1, 2025

Economic highlights of the 13th Malaysia Plan 2026-2030

 

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim received the 13MP document from Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan at Seri Perdana, Putrajaya. - Photo: AFIQ HAMBALI / Prime Minister's Office

KUALA LUMPUR: The following are the economic highlights of the 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP) 2026-2030 which was tabled by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Parliament today, with the theme "Melakar Semua Pembangunan” (Redesigning Development).”

- Investments of RM611 billion required to successfully implement 13MP

- Development allocation from the government is estimated at RM430 billion, with RM227 billion to be channelled to the economic sector.  

- Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is targeted at 4.5-5.5 per cent annually, to be led by domestic demand, particularly private consumption and investment 

- Average real private investment is expected to grow by 6.0 per cent per year, while average real public investment is projected to grow by 3.6 per cent per year. 

- RM120 billion will be allocated for national development investment for 2026-2030. 

- The federal government's fiscal deficit is expected to gradually decrease to below 3.0 per cent of GDP, with government debt not exceeding 60 per cent of GDP.  

- The average inflation rate is expected to remain stable between 2.0 per cent and 3.0 per cent annually. 

- Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is targeted to increase to RM77,200. 

- Gross exports are expected to grow by 5.8 per cent annually, with broader trade opportunities.

- Gross imports are expected to moderate to 6.1 per cent per year from 2026-2030, compared to 14.4 per cent during the first four years of 12MP. 

- The trade balance is expected to remain positive at RM116.3 billion, with a current account surplus of 2.2 per cent of GNI by 2030. 

- Malaysia aims for Electrical & Electronics product exports to approach RM1 trillion by 2030. 

- The government targets to increase halal export value to RM80 billion, with the halal industry contributing 11 per cent to GDP by 2030. 

- The manufacturing sector is projected to grow by 5.8 per cent per year. 

- RM61 billion will be allocated for development projects under public-private partnership (PPP).

- The services sector is projected to grow by 5.2 per cent per year. 

- The agriculture sector is expected to grow by 1.5 per cent per year. 

- The mining and quarrying sector is projected to expand by 2.8 per cent annually from 2026-2030, supported by increased production of natural gas and crude oil. 

- By 2030, Malaysia aspires to become a high-income nation and be among the world’s top 30 economies. 

- Malaysia must rise quickly to lead in technology and produce world-class ‘Made by Malaysia’ products and services by 2030. 

- Malaysia sets a direction to lead the Southeast Asian economy in artificial intelligence (AI), digital technology, and renewable energy, aspiring to be an influential global player. 

- The National AI Action Plan 2030 will drive talent development, research, and commercialisation of technology to support broad AI adoption. 

- Implementation of NIMP 2030 (New Industrial Master Plan), NSS (National Science Strategy), and NETR (National Energy Transition Roadmap) will be intensified in 13MP to drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth. 

- The government is considering nuclear energy as one of the clean, competitive, and safe energy sources. 

- Malaysia targets to increase the share of installed capacity to 35 per cent by 2030 from 29 per cent at present.

- The government is committed to accelerating the development of the rare earth industry, in cooperation with state governments.

- The government will strengthen the green economy through various initiatives. 

- Focus will be placed on strengthening economic integration through Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and resuming Malaysia-EU (European Union) negotiations. 

- Malaysia’s participation in FTAs such as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and Malaysia-Turkey FTA (MTFTA) will be enhanced to expand markets and strengthen trade relations. 

- Malaysia will continue to leverage BRICS and ASEAN to reduce dependency on existing trade partners. - Bernama 

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Thursday, July 31, 2025

Google is reaping rewards of its unfair AI advantage

 

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO. — Bloomberg

WITH two billion monthly users in 200 countries, Google’s AI Overviews can claim to be the most popular generative artificial-intelligence (AI) product yet released to the public.

The short summaries generated by the company’s Gemini AI model have turned Google from search engine to answer engine, settling the nerves of investors who were worried that ChatGPT was going to smash Google’s business model to pieces.

Then again, to describe those billions as “users,” as parent company Alphabet Inc did when announcing its quarterly earnings last week, is perhaps disingenuous.

No one consciously uses AI Overviews – it’s just there when users perform a regular search on Google, something billions of them have done several times a day for two decades.

That’s one key advantage Google has over its competitors: People already associate the service with finding things out.

The company has every right to capitalise on that reputation, one it built off the back of genuine innovation and quality (though, admittedly, it was later solidified with illegal multibillion-dollar deals to prevent competition).

Google’s second advantage with AI Overviews, however, warrants further scrutiny.

Like other generative AI tools, the feature draws heavily from content that Google does not own but is available on the open web.

Summarised answers are synthesised from one or more sources into a rewritten piece of information.

That’s useful for users; it saves them a click.

But it’s devastating for content creators, who lose a would-be visitor and the revenues that follow.

Startling Pew Research data released last week suggested users were considerably less likely to click through to websites if presented with an AI Overview, as is increasingly the case.

One in five searches in a March 2025 sampling contained an AI Overview, a frequency that rises to as high as 60% if the queries are longer or contain the bread-and-butter words of journalism: who, what, where, when or why.

Google has pushed back against the methodology of the Pew study, saying its dataset – 68,879 searches by 900 US adults – was too small to be representative. Other AI chatbots offer the same kind of functionality, of course.

But in those cases, content publishers can block these companies’ “crawlers” if they wish to do so by adding a line of code that acts as a digital bouncer at the door.

That approach doesn’t work with Google, however, because blocking its AI crawler means also blocking a site from Google’s search results as well – a death sentence for any website.

Dominant position

Google is leveraging its dominant position in one industry to force success in another.

It’s monopolistic behaviour and something that should be addressed immediately as part of the remedies being devised as part of the antitrust trial it lost last year.

This is about taking away Google’s cheat code.

“Google still thinks they’re special and that they don’t have to play by the same rules that the rest of the industry does,” Matthew Prince, chief executive officer of Cloudflare, told Bloomberg News in an interview last week.

New tool

His company recently launched a tool that would allow publishers to set up a “pay-per-crawl” model for AI use.

It works on crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and most others – but blocking Google AI would, again, mean blocking a site from Google’s search engine.

In Google’s defence, the launch of AI Overviews was a move spurred not by a desire to crush the economics of web – which has driven its entire business –but to stop its users from deserting the company in favor of AI chatbots.

“The consumer is forcing them,” Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski said.

Google was more than satisfied with the status quo, Gawrelski told me, which is partly why the company was beaten to market by smaller AI firms that didn’t need to worry about protecting an existing revenue stream.

Now the fight is on, Google is playing catch-up and doing rather well at it.

It has protected its advertising revenue, which in the last quarter was up 12% to a record-high US$54.2bil compared with the period a year earlier.

Supply constraints

Its AI and cloud business faces supply constraints, warranting an additional US$10bil in capital expenditure, bringing it to US$85bil for the year.

It recently added “AI Mode” to its search engine, which is like AI Overviews on steroids.

The company has barely started to integrate AI across its varied products like Gmail and Maps – the Financial Times noted that 15 distinct Google products have more than 500 million users.

Executives said they will be able to monetise all of these innovations quickly.

The company has less to say about what happens to the businesses that rely on Google traffic to stay alive, in turn providing the content that makes smart AI possible.

The shift is profound: Google’s creation democratised the web, making it possible for an ecosystem of new sites and services to be found and supported.

Now, the company’s strategy is to make it so users need to visit only Google.

“We have to solve the business models for the varying players involved,” Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, said in a call with analysts without elaborating.

AI wreckage

Salvaging content creators from the coming AI wreckage begins by forcing Google to relinquish its unfair advantage.

Only then will the company be compelled to enter into reasonable arrangements with content creators to utilise their content, as it has already done with the likes of Reddit.

We can be mildly encouraged by the fact that Google is reportedly seeking out content deals for use within its other AI products. Perhaps this is in anticipation that the unfair advantage won’t last. — Bloomberg

Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

Cambodia and Thailand hold trilateral informal meeting in Shanghai, China

 

An An informal trilateral meeting among China, Cambodia, and Thailand was held in Shanghai on July 30, 2025. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong, along with representatives from Cambodia and Thailand, attended the meeting. Photo: Courtesy of the Chinese Foreign Ministry 

An informal trilateral meeting among China, Cambodia and Thailand was held in Shanghai on Wednesday. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong, along with representatives from Cambodia and Thailand, attended the meeting, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. 

Both Cambodia and Thailand reaffirmed their commitment to the ceasefire consensus and expressed appreciation for China's positive role in de-escalating the situation. The meeting was conducted in an open, friendly and cordial atmosphere, the ministry said.

It is China's latest diplomatic effort to facilitate the implementation of the ceasefire and create conditions for quickly restoring peace and stability along the Cambodia-Thailand border, Guo Jiakun, spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a press conference on Wednesday. 

Thailand and Cambodia agreed on Monday to an "immediate and unconditional" ceasefire to end the border clashes starting at midnight on Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said, as the leaders of the two countries met in Malaysia after the conflict entered the fifth day, according to media reports.

Observation teams are to be deployed on Wednesday to monitor the implementation of a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, Cambodian Defense Ministry Undersecretary of State and spokesperson Lieutenant General Maly Socheata said, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

Socheata said in a press briefing on Wednesday that Malaysia, current chair of ASEAN, sent a high-level delegation led by Malaysian Armed Forces Chief of Defense Forces General Datuk Haji Mohd Nizam Bin Haji Jaffar to Cambodia on Tuesday, per Xinhua. 

However, Thailand's military accused Cambodian forces on Wednesday of breaching a ceasefire agreement at three separate locations along the disputed border, warning that continued aggression could compel Thai forces to respond more decisively, according to Reuters. 

ASEAN's role in facilitating the ceasefire agreement is undoubtedly commendable, Ge Hongliang, deputy director of the College of ASEAN Studies at Guangxi University for Nationalities, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

It has also created a valuable and favorable environment for Cambodia and Thailand to eventually resolve their border conflicts, Ge said. 

With observers present, the ceasefire is likely to be implemented. However, it still depends on whether the two sides can engage in dialogue and rebuild mutual trust in the future, Ge added.

China practices the Global Security Initiative, promotes the building of a model of security for Asia featuring common security, seeking common ground while shelving differences, and dialogue and consultation, and stays committed to keeping the region peaceful and stable. China does not seek any selfish gains on the matter, and supports ASEAN in facilitating a political settlement of the situation between Cambodia and Thailand through the ASEAN way, Guo said. 

We stand ready to continue to maintain close communication with regional countries, namely Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, to play a constructive role for cementing the ceasefire and restoring peace and stability at an early date, Guo said.
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