Skip to content

Global Times: TSMC Considering Building a Second Factory in Japan

Global Times recently reported that the Japanese government actively invited TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) to expand its manufacturing capacity in Japan and introduce EUV process. The TSMC CEO confirmed for the first time at a press conference that TSMC is indeed considering building a second factory in Japan. TSMC is currently building a fab with special process technology in Japan, which will use 12/16nm and 22/28nm process technology, and plans to enter mass production by the end of 2024. Though the first factory is still under construction, TSMC plans to build a second fab at the same time, as long as customer demand and the level of government support make sense. According to previous Japanese media reports, TSMC’s first factory is being constructed in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The Japanese government had previously decided to subsidize nearly half of the 1 trillion yen investment required by TSMC to build the factory. In response to foreign government invitations, TSMC is promoting the construction of factories overseas. In last December, TSMC announced that it would increase its planned investment of US$12 billion to US$40 to build two factories in Phoenix, Arizona. 4nm and 3nm chips will be put into production in 2024 and 2026. That represents TSMC’s largest investment outside of Taiwan and one of the largest foreign direct investments in U.S. history.

Source: Global Times, January 12, 2023
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/4BG6VCqka5b

Sing Tao: Uganda Cancelled Railway Contract with China

Primary Hong Kong news media Sing Tao News Group recently reported that, due to dissatisfaction with China’s reluctance to finance the project, the Ugandan government has terminated its contract with a Chinese company to build a railway in the local area. Uganda is seeking a Turkish company to take over. Ugandan officials in charge of coordinating the project confirmed the news. According to the contract, one of the conditions is that China is obliged to assist Uganda in obtaining financing for the project, but this has not happened. The Ugandan authorities sent a letter to China Harbor Engineering (HEC) to terminate the contract in December 2022. HEC has not raised any objections so far. This 273-kilometer railway connects Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and the border with Kenya. In order to connect with the international standard-gauge railway leading to Mombasa, Kenya’s Indian Ocean port, the new railway construction plan also adopts the international standard gauge. The entire project is estimated to cost US$2.2 billion. The Chinese spokesperson of the Foreign Affairs Ministry said China and Uganda have established a comprehensive cooperative partnership and that the pragmatic cooperation between the two countries is at the forefront of China-Africa cooperation.

Source: Sing Tao, January 14, 2023
https://bit.ly/3INEVpF

China’s December Imports/Exports Continued to Decline

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDQ: SINA) recently reported that, according to the data released by the Chinese General Administration of Customs, in U.S. dollar terms, the Chinese exports in December 2022 decreased by 9.9 percent year-over-year, and the imports decreased by 7.5 percent year-over-year. In December, the exports declined for the third consecutive month and the decline has continued to expand. This was mainly due to the increasing pressure of the global economic recession and the slowdown in external demand. December’s exports to the United States fell by 19.5 percent year-over-year. They have continued to be in a state of deep decline and there has been a negative growth for five consecutive months. This has mainly been due to the obvious decline in the demand for Chinese goods in the U.S. domestic market. The Fed’s continuous and substantial interest rate hikes have formed a strong inhibitory effect on the aggregate domestic demand in the United States. In addition, after the pandemic, U.S. domestic consumption has shifted from goods to services. It is very difficult for Chinese exports to the U.S. to turn positive in the short term. In the meantime, China’s exports to the EU fell by 17.5 percent year-over-year. This was a 6.9 percentage points widening loss from the previous month, and a negative growth for four consecutive months. Also, China’s exports to Japan fell by 3.3 percent year-over-year. Overall, China’s exports will slow down sharply in 2023. It is expected that the surplus of the trade in goods  will narrow significantly. In addition, as the outbound travel will gradually resume, the deficit in service trade may expand again.

Source: Sina, January 13, 2023
http://stock.finance.sina.com.cn/stock/go.php/vReport_Show/kind/search/rptid/726955017769/index.phtml

Beijing Is Working on Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines

Since the Communist Party’s 20th National Party Congress, Beijing has been adopting a “divide-and-conquer” strategy in its foreign policy with the Southeastern countries. It does not like multilateral relationships (China is likely to be against working with a group of countries), but prefers bilateralism (China has a bigger advantage in a one-on-one relationship) instead. Using its economic power. China has already captured Cambodia and Laos and is now working on Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Take Vietnam as an example. Sino-Vietnam trade increased 10 percent in the first nine months of this year, from the same period a year ago. Imports from China counted for 70 percent of Vietnam’s total imports.

Beijing invited Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, to visit China at the end of October. He was the first foreign dignitary to visit China after the  closing of the 20th Party National Congress. Both sides issued a joint statement, including a plan to accelerate cooperation between China’s “Belt & Road Initiative” and Vietnam’s “Two Corridors and One Circle” framework.

Later, Indonesian President Jokowi greeted Xi Jinping at a bilateral meeting following the G20 Indonesia Summit in Bali. Jokowi called Xi “elder brother.”

President Marcos of the Philippines visited Beijing in January and the two countries signed over ten agreements under the “Belt & Road Initiative” framework.

Source: China News, January 5, 2023
https://news.creaders.net/china/2023/01/05/2564180.html

Henan Province Announced It Has Passed The COVID Pandemic Peak

The Henan Provincial government announced on January 9 that the province has passed the peak of the COVID infection. At a news conference, the government stated that, by January 6, 89 percent of people in the province had been infected with the COVID virus; and that, according to the data of patients seeking fever treatment, the peak of the infection was reached on December 19, 2022. Since then, the count of the infected  has continuously been decreasing.

The Chinese Communist Party has been hiding the COVID infection count in China. Using the province’s population in 2021 – 98.83 million people – it means 88 million people in Henan, one province alone, had been infected with COVID.

Source: Zhengzhou Daily, January 9, 2023
https://www.zzrbnews.com/kangyi/202210/content-e9c1f68b86ac869b.html

Chinese Created a New Term: “Human Mine”

The Chinese have recently created a term to describe themselves: the term is: “human mine” (人矿). Some people created a term “huminerals.” It means that an individual human is treated as a mine; whereas the authorities (the communist regime) take the valuable resources from the mine and then dispose of it when its  resources are used up and it becomes useless.

An article discussed ten points that this term reveals to people. The following are some excerpts from the article:

1. You are a resource, not a subject; you are means, not an end goal. (You are) exhausting your whole life’s energy in order to benefit someone else, not for your own life goals.

2. The life of a human mine has three stages: Mining, Use, and Waste Treatment. The first dozen years of education were an investment in you to turn you into a usable mine. In the middle few decades, you are consumed. Eventually, when you are no longer usable, you will be disposed of in a way that is as non-polluting as possible.

5. The value of a human mine is similar to coal, oil, or other natural resources. It is cheap when there is an ample supply and expensive when there are few.

7. A related concept to “human mine” is the “mine owner.” The mine owner mines the human mine and gives that person (the human mine) a chance to “dedicate himself” to (the owner). [Note: the Chinese Communist Party has a propaganda slogan to ask people to “dedicate themselves” to the over-all society.]

10. The awakened human mine feels the pain if he cannot change anything. To reduce this pain, he has to muddle through and pretend he is asleep. So, when you see a group of silent man-mines, you don’t know how many are actually awake until a particular moment (when people finally speak or act out).

Source: China Digital Times, January 2, 2023
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/691612.html

Dalian University of Technology Posted 25 Obituaries in One Day; Quickly Deleted after Netizens Discovered Them

Taiwan news media Newtalk reported that China’s 2023 seems to be the “year of obituaries.” Dalian University of Technology in Liaoning Province issued 25 obituaries on January 3. All of the deceased were teachers and professors who died around New Year’s Day. After attracting attention from the outside world, the obituaries were immediately removed from the website, leaving the latest news as the ones posted before December 31 of last year.

According to the information available on the website, 33 party members and professors died in December, far more than in the past. This may be related to the authorities’ relaxation of the epidemic prevention policy.

Last month, some Chinese media found that Beijing University and Tsinghua University had a lot of recent obituaries. From the end of October to mid-December, 21 professors from Peking University passed away. 18 professors over 65 from Tsinghua University died between mid-November and early December.

Source: New Talk, January 5, 2023
https://newtalk.tw/news/view/2023-01-05/851770

Chinese Are Protesting for Unpaid Wages

Thousands of workers at Zybio, a pharmaceutical company in Chongqing City, held a protest inside the factory and even clashed with the special police force which came to suppress them.

Zybio designs and manufactures medical diagnostic reagents and instruments. According to an interview with a Zybio employee, the company hired around seven thousand temporary workers in early December, promising to pay them 1,000 yuan (US$146) as a bonus on top of their hourly pay if they would work until January 21 and another 2,000 yuan bonus if they worked until February 15.

On January 6, the company announced it would lay off 8,000 people. Most of them were those temporary workers. The company said they lost orders. It used to produce COVID nucleic acid extraction testing kits, which were in high demand when Beijing carried out the “zero-COVID” policy. It switched to producing antigen testing kits after the government stopped that policy. However, workers suspected that Zybio had enough orders but used a lack of orders as an excuse to avoid paying a bonus to the workers.

A smaller group of people started protesting on the evening of January 6. Since the company executives hid themselves and only let the factory manager arrange the layoff, people got furious and started smashing things. Several thousand workers gathered at the company on the next day. A few more company executives were found and beaten.

Special police came to the factory. Some videos posted online showed the clashes between the workers and the police, including a video showing that a small group of policemen retreated while the workers were chasing and throwing things at them.

The protesters shouted one appeal: “We just want our salaries.”

Zybio proposed a resolution: It would pay every worker their December salary on January 7 and their January salary on January 8. In addition, it would pay 1,000 yuan to those who left as their severance pay, or to those who stayed as a bonus.

Since people got the money they demanded, they accepted the proposal. The protesters all left the company immediately.

Demanding unpaid wages has been a big issue when the Chinese New Year has approached. The government has demonstrated the habit of delaying payments to its contractors and companies. It has also had the habit of delaying payment to, or not paying in the end, its subcontractors or workers. Since migrant workers usually go home for Chinese New Year, they started a protest to demand their money before the Near Year.

This year has been even harder as some companies have struggled to survive due to the bad economy in China.

A netizen posted 40 videos about people at different places, including Beijing, Guangdong,  Shandong, Hebei, and other locations, demanding the payment of their wages on either January 4 or January 5.

The authorities somehow belittled the workers who tried to defend their own rights, as their actions interrupted society’s stability. Sometimes the government uses force to drive the workers away. Some officials came up with a term “malicious wage collection” to defame those workers who were actually victims.

Recently an online posting showed a banner hanging at a company, saying, “Fiercely crack down on malicious wage collection actions; defend the company’s illegal action of not paying wages.”

It is yet to be seen how the salary demand protest will continue its development in China.

Sources:
1. Epoch Times, January 7, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/1/7/n13901673.htm
2. Radio Free Asia, January 5, 2023
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/kw-01052023132119.html