Government refusal to recognize the UEC due to 'national sovereignty', Kamalanthan said

 

School activity: Liow (right) with Eco World Foundation chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye (with cap) and its CEO Capt (R) Datuk Liew Siong Sing (on Lee’s right) with students from SJK(C) Bukit Tinggi after Eco World handed over its donation of new canteen tables and benches to the school.

Liow: Retract UEC statement

BENTONG: MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai wants Deputy Education Minister Datuk P. Kamalanathan to retract his remarks about the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).

He said Kamalanathan’s statement in Parliament that the Government’s refusal to recognise the UEC was due to issues of “national sovereignty” was never discussed in Cabinet meetings.

Kamalanathan and Muhyiddin“I urge Kamalanathan to retract his statement. This has nothing to do with the sovereignty of the country.

“This is his (Kamalanathan) personal view and not the Government’s. He may not have had the necessary information when he commented on the matter and this might mislead the public,” he said at SJK(C) Bukit Tinggi here after witnessing the handover of new canteen tables and benches yesterday.

Liow said if Kamalanathan did not understand the issue, he should have let Deputy Education Minister Chong Sin Woon explain it, adding that the statement might hurt the Chinese education system and the nation.

“The Education Ministry and the Higher Education Ministry have been in discussion over the recognition of the UEC,” he added.

Liow said the matter was discussed by the Malaysian Chinese Education Consultative Council Committee, comprising the United Chinese School Committees Association (Dong Zong), United Chinese School Teachers’ Association (Jia Zong) and Federation of Chinese Associations (Hua Zong), among others.

Responding yesterday, Kamalanathan maintained that his answer in Parliament was based on a Cabinet decision and not his personal view. His parliamentary reply was “verbatim” as per the Cabinet meeting on the matter on Nov 6 last year, he added.

However, he said it did not mean that it was impossible for UEC to be recognised.

“We (Education Ministry) have never closed the door on discussing (such) matters with any organisation because it is the ministry’s and everyone’s hope to see an improvement in the quality of our national education,” he said.

In KOTA KINABALU, Liberal Democratic Party president Datuk Teo Chee Kang said he was puzzled by Kamalanathan’s remarks in Parliament linking recognition of the UEC to national sovereignty.

“I regret that in answering a question in Parliament, the Deputy Minister said that the Government will not recognise the UEC for reasons of national interest and sovereignty.

“I wonder whether he knew what he was talking about. I cannot understand how it is related to national sovereignty,” he added.

- The Star/Asia News Network



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China start-up 'Little Red Book', Xiaohongshu valued at US$1bil

 

Colour of success: A Chinese actress dressed as a Red Guard and holding a ‘Little Red Book’ performs in front of a portrait of the late Chairman Mao Zedong at a restaurant in Beijing Xiaohongshu says its name has nothing to do with Mao’s famous tome. — Reuters

HONG KONG: The “Little Red Book” has become a symbol of capitalist success in Communist China.

E-commerce start-up Xiaohongshu, which means “Little Red Book” in Chinese, has raised US$100mil from Tencent Holdings Ltd and other investors at a valuation of about US$1bil, two people familiar with the matter said.

The online shopping site co-founded in 2013 by Charlwin Mao, which connects overseas merchants with local buyers, becomes China’s newest billion-dollar startup. It also attracted investment from Genesis Capital and Tiantu Capital in its latest round, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

The funds will help bankroll the Shanghai-based startup’s expansion. Xiaohongshu -- which calls itself RED and stresses its name bears no relation to Mao Zedong’s book of quotations - works by letting its mostly younger female users post pictures of favorite products. It then connects them with sellers abroad of everything from Body Shop anti-dandruff shampoo to Lotte peach liquor.

Its fundraising comes as venture capital firms grow more cautious about valuations in China, an economy forecast to grow this year at its slowest pace in a quarter-century.

Genesis Capital is a late-stage investment firm founded by Richard Peng Zhijian, who oversaw Tencent’s investment unit. Genesis and Tencent didn’t respond to e-mailed queries. Calls to Shenzhen-based Tiantu’s general line went unanswered. Xiaohongshu co-founder Mao said he couldn’t immediately comment.

Three-year-old Xiaohongshu claims 17 million registered users on its LinkedIn page and had attracted investment previously from GGV Capital and Zhen Fund.

It specialises in cross-border e-commerce, marketing foreign brands to increasingly wealthy local shoppers.

That’s a market forecast to reach 6.5 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion) by 2016, the state-run Xinhua News Agency cited the Ministry of Commerce as saying in March.

It didn’t elaborate on that figure.

The company says its name has nothing to do with Mao’s famous tome, considered one of the most-printed works in history and known to English-speakers as the “Little Red Book.” The late Communist leader’s book is called “Hong Bao Shu” or “red treasure book” in Chinese. “Why isn’t your website called ‘Little Black Book,’ ‘Little Blue Book,’ ‘Little Purple Book’ or ‘Big Red Book’?” reads a question posted by Xiaohongshu in a section of its website sketching out its origins. “We don’t know. But anyway, our name isn’t because of Hong Bao Shu.” — Bloomberg

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Hedge funds invasion of US treasuries puts bond at risk, more turbulence in US debt market

Hedge funds are crowding into U.S. Treasuries, and that has bond traders bracing for more turbulence.

While the Federal Reserve doesn’t break out hedge-fund ownership, a group seen as a proxy increased its holdings to a record $1.27 trillion in the past year, according to a quarterly report released by the central bank this month. That came as foreign central banks and finance ministries, the biggest buy-and-hold owners in recent years, culled their investments for the first time on an annual basis since 2000.

The surge of hedge funds into U.S. government debt is a worrying sign to Societe Generale SA and Commerzbank AG.

They say the firms, which often use borrowed money and jump in and out of trades at a moment’s notice, will boost the chances of sudden shocks in the world’s de facto haven market. That may compound swings in Treasuries, which by some measures have reached record levels as concerns about China, the global economy and diverging central-bank policies whipsaw bond traders. The Treasury Department is already looking into whether the market isn’t running as smoothly as it should.

Volatility Risk

Foreign central banks’ “market share is being replaced by private investors who take a much more active approach,” Rob VandenAssem, the head of investment-grade fixed-income for developed markets at PineBridge Investments, which oversees $85 billion, said in an e-mail. “Hedge funds in particular pose a risk to volatility.”

The potential that hedge funds will amplify Treasury swings adds to questions about the resilience of the $13.3 trillion market, especially as the Fed considers whether to raise interest rates this year. And because yields are so low, sudden shifts in momentum could lead to big losses, especially for less nimble investors.

Ten-year Treasuries yielded 1.89 percent today, more than a half-percentage point below their June peak of 2.5 percent.

In the Fed’s quarterly reports, domestic hedge funds are categorized under “households and non-profit organizations.” Most analysts consider it an accurate gauge of Treasuries held by those high-powered firms, and to a lesser degree, ownership by households and other groups like private-equity shops and personal trusts. The latest data released March 10 showed they were the largest buyers of Treasuries last year, adding $398 billion. That’s the biggest increase on an annual basis since 2009.

Hedge funds are also signaling their presence in the U.S. bond market in other ways. Since the end of 2013, investors domiciled in the Caribbean, a popular legal home for hundreds of hedge funds seeking lower taxes, have increased their holdings of Treasuries by 43 percent to $352 billion, Treasury Department data show. As a group, they’re now the third biggest overseas creditors, behind only China and Japan.

At the same time, foreign investors, who still hold 40 percent of America’s bonds, were the only net sellers in 2015 as central banks in China and other emerging markets raised cash to support their currencies. And Treasury Department figures showed they kept selling at the start of the year.

The rise of hedge-fund ownership may already be making fluctuations in Treasuries worse. This year, daily swings in 10-year yields exceeded one standard deviation -- equal to 0.043 percentage point -- about 39 percent of time, according to TD Securities. That eclipses last year’s figure of 34 percent, which was the highest for any year going back to 1975, the data show.

“This will likely add volatility” said Bruno Braizinha, a fixed-income strategist at SocGen in New York.

Treasury Review

Concerns over abrupt swings, whether it’s because of a lack of liquidity or an increase in high-volume traders, have already caught the attention of the U.S. government. Spurred by a 12-minute plunge and rebound in yields on Oct. 15, 2014, the Treasury Department is conducting its first comprehensive review of the market’s structure since 1998.

Some say hedge funds aren’t the problem, but a potential solution.

By stepping in to take the place of traditional Wall Street banks, whose bond-trading businesses have come under pressure from regulations and shifts in technology, hedge funds may actually increase liquidity. And their use of leverage, or borrowed money, means they have the wherewithal to trade vast quantities of securities.

Leverage, Liquidity

At least that’s the view of Ronin Capital LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm. When U.S. officials asked for comments on liquidity and market structure earlier this year, the firm wrote in a March 19 letter that “leverage and liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market go hand in hand.”

“If the only entities willing to hold positions in U.S. Treasuries are ‘buy and hold,’ meaningful liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market will be nonexistent,” the firm said.

Some sophisticated investors have also started to trade on Treasury platforms previously reserved for bond dealers, according to an October report from financial-services consulting firm Greenwich Associates. Christian Hauff, the co-founder of Quantitative Brokers LLC, says many of those funds now look a lot like Wall Street’s proprietary bond-trading desks from years ago.

“You’re seeing those that used to trade on Wall Street transition to working at hedge funds,” he said.

Even if hedge funds provide more liquidity, it doesn’t necessarily ensure the ride won’t be bumpy. That’s because while traditional dealers often served as buffers for their clients during times of stress, hedge funds have no such incentive.

When volatility picks up, hedge funds can “jump on another ship,” said David Schnautz, a London-based rates strategist at Commerzbank. - Bloomberg

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