Spain welcomed President Xi visit, signed 10 deals worth US$17.6 bln, pledged stronger BRI ties against protectionism, unilateralism

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China, Spain sign 10 deals worth US$17.6 bln 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid, Spain, Nov. 28, 2018. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

Chinese and Spanish enterprises have signed ten deals worth 17.6 billion U.S. dollars during President Xi Jinping's visit to Spain from November 27 to 29.

These deals cover the areas of finance, telecommunication, environment, machine, vehicle and medicine, hitting a new record of China-Spain trade and economic cooperation, said the spokesperson of China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

China and Spain also inked intergovernmental cooperation documents such as a Memorandum of Understanding in the Third Party Market, Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion and Inspection and Quarantine of Imported Pork Products and so on.

During the visit, China-Spain Business Advisory Council was formally established and the first meeting was successfully held, becoming another platform for deepening bilateral economic and trade relations.

Xi's visit coincides with the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, and the two sides have enjoyed excellent trade relations through all these years.

China is Spain's sixth largest trading partner in the world and the largest trading partner outside the EU. From January to September 2018, the bilateral trade volume hit 25.35 billion U.S. dollars, according to the MOFCOM.

China, Spain pledge stronger BRI ties against protectionism, unilateralism

China and Spain are cooperating in the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), yielding positive outcomes, and will continue to leverage the platform to oppose protectionism and unilateralism, Chinese experts said.

The comments came after a joint statement between the two countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping's three-day visit to Spain.

Zhao Junjie, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday that Spain has seen opportunities in cooperating with China on BRI.

"Although Spain faces pressure from conservatives who oppose free trade, the two countries' cooperation on BRI will not be interrupted," Zhao said, citing the freight train between China's small commodity hub of Yiwu and Madrid as a typical BRI achievement and an important bridge across Eurasia.

"Trains were not fully loaded when the line was first launched in 2014, but fully-loaded trains now depart every day from China," the research fellow said, while stressing that  Spain has a privileged position on the route.

Boosted by the route, Yiwu's imports from Spain surged 8.82 percent year-on-year to 60 million yuan ($8.6 million) in the first 10 months.

China is Spain's largest trading partner outside the EU, while Spain is the sixth-largest trading partner within the bloc for China. Bilateral trade reached $22.37 billion in the first eight months, up 10.6 percent year-on-year, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ding Chun, director of the Center for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Global Times that among EU members, Spain has shown stronger support for the BRI.

Both sides believe the Belt and Road initiative, as a platform of connectivity, will strengthen economic, trade and investment cooperation in third-party markets.

The two countries also stand ready to build synergy between BRI and related EU strategies, thus offering more mutually beneficial business and investment opportunities to Chinese and Spanish enterprises.

"On Spain's side, such cooperation in the third-party markets such as Africa will alleviate its refugee problem. It would also spark less geopolitical concerns than China-led projects in Europe," Ding said.  

China and Spain can cooperate on clean energy, including wind and tide energy, Zhao said, noting that cultural exchanges should also be strengthened through education, tourism and sports.

"Cooperation with Spain's small and medium enterprises should be given greater consideration," Zhao noted.  

"There are historical and geographic bases for China and Spain to conduct cooperation on the BRI," Xi said during a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

Sources: Global Times

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China's GPS rival BeiDou to go global

https://youtu.be/nG0HyU-Thg4 https://youtu.be/TeI2tNHA9y4 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-11-26/china-s-gps-rival-video

 APA model of the BeiDou Navigation System is displayed during the 12th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai earlier this month.

HONG KONG/BEIJING:China is taking its rivalry with the U.S. to the heavens, spending at least $9 billion to build a celestial navigation system and cut its dependence on the American-owned GPS amid heightening tensions between the two countries.

Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog’s neck and guided missiles -- and all those satellites are controlled by the U.S. Air Force.

That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it’s developing an alternative that a U.S. security analyst calls one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.

A model of the Beidou navigation system satellite.

Photographer: Imaginechina

“They don’t want to depend on the U.S.’s GPS,’’ said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. “The Chinese don’t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.’

“They don’t want to depend on the U.S.’s GPS,’’ said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. “The Chinese don’t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.’’

The Beidou Navigation System, currently serving China and neighbors, will be accessible worldwide by 2020 as part of President Xi Jinping’s strategy to make his country a global leader in next-generation technologies.

Its implementation reverberates through the corporate world as makers of semiconductors, electric vehicles and airplanes modify products to also connect with Beidou in order to keep doing business in the second-biggest economy.

Assembly of the new constellation is approaching critical mass after the launch of at least 18 satellites this year, including three this month. On Nov. 19, China launched two more Beidou machines, increasing the number in operation to more than 40. China plans to add 11 more by 2020.


A rocket carrying the 24th and 25th Beidou navigation satellites takes off in Xichang in Nov. 2017. Photographer: Wang Yulei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

Beidou is one element of China’s ambitious campaign to displace Western dominance in aerospace. A state-owned company is developing planes to replace those from Airbus SE and Boeing Co., and domestic startups are building rockets to challenge the commercial-launch businesses of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Next month, China is scheduled to launch Chang’e 4, a lunar probe that would be the first spacecraft to the far side of the moon. A Mars probe and rover also are scheduled for liftoff in 2020.

“It is classic space-race sort of stuff,’’ said Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research in Canberra.

China started developing Beidou in the 1990s and will spend an estimated $8.98 billion to $10.6 billion on it by 2020, according to a 2017 analysis by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The system eventually will provide positioning accuracies of 1 meter (3 feet) or less with use of a ground support system.


Chinese space-tracking ship Yuanwang-3 monitor the launch of a rocket carrying a Beidou satellite in Oct. 2018. Photographer: Imaginechina

By comparison, GPS typically provides accuracies of less than 2.2 meters, which can be improved to a few centimeters with augmentation systems, the commission said.

“The Beidou system has become one of the great achievements in China’s 40 years of reform,’’ Xi said in a Nov. 5 letter to a United Nations committee on satellite navigation.

The system, named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper star pattern, is at the core of an industry that will generate more than 400 billion yuan ($57 billion) of revenue in 2020, according to a forecast by the China Satellite Navigation Office.

Beidou Boom

China has increased the pace of satellite launches for its navigation system


Sources: China Satellite Navigation Office, International GNSS Service

*July satellite part of Phase-II

Beidou also has potential for export as part of China’s “Belt and Road’’ initiative to build political and economic ties through funding of infrastructure projects in other countries, the U.S.-China security commission said.

NavInfo Co., a maker of electronic maps that’s backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd., wants to begin mass producing semiconductors for navigation systems using Beidou in 2020, said Wang Yan, a project director.


Employees prepare a NavInfo car for data collection in Beijing, June 2018.

Photographer: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg

Beijing-based NavInfo, which supplies Tesla Inc. and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, expects annual demand of 15 million Beidou-linked chips for autonomous vehicles. In September, NavInfo started providing Beidou-enabled mapping and positioning services for the Singapore government.

“China needs to have its own satellite navigation system from a long-term, strategic perspective,’’ Wang said. “Beidou is the only option.’’

That carries potential implications for the balance of power between the nations, as Beidou’s deployment likely will fuel creation of a supply network for China’s People’s Liberation Army.

“The PLA will additionally have its own domestic ‘industrial chain’ on which to draw for secure components,” the U.S.-China commission said.

Qianxun Spatial Intelligence Inc., a Shanghai-based venture between e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and state-owned defense contractor China North Industries Group Corp., provides positioning services for cars, public safety and civil aviation using Beidou and other networks.

To help stay competitive against budding Chinese counterparts, foreign companies are including Beidou compatibility in their products. Qualcomm Inc., the biggest maker of chips used in smartphones, has been supporting Beidou “for a long time,” the San Diego-based company said. Those chip sets also are used in wearables and automobiles.

Most smartphones from global sales leader Samsung Electronics Co. support Beidou in addition to GPS, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said, as do handsets from local rivals Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp., according to state media. Huawei is the nation’s top-selling brand.

China also is the largest auto market, and the government wants all car-navigation systems to be Beidou-compatible within two years. Volkswagen AG -– the market leader in passenger car sales -- is changing the equipment in its vehicles to enable network access, the company said.

“At the moment, Volkswagen Group China does not sell cars with Beidou-enabled equipment, but the next infotainment system generation for cars in the Chinese market will be rolled out in 2020,’’ the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said. “This system will be ready to receive Beidou information.”

Toyota Motor Corp. is in discussions with companies about Beidou, the Japanese automaker said.


Comac C919 Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

In the sky, a regional jet developed by state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China, or COMAC, last year became the first plane to use Beidou.

Avionics-systems maker Rockwell Collins Inc., a supplier to Airbus, Boeing and COMAC, doesn’t offer products that can access the Chinese satellite network, the company said.

That may have to change. The Chinese government eventually will require airlines flying in the country to add Beidou equipment, Kaplan said.

“They will have to have the Chinese system on board,’’ he said, citing the government’s security concerns. “The Chinese will require airlines to have both systems.’’

Source: Bloomberg — With assistance by Bruce Einhorn, Dong Lyu, Jie Ma, Sam Kim, and Ian King

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Politicising education hurts the Chinese

 

https://youtu.be/1F2l-BKDXGA

As Malaysia tackles a RM1 trillion national debt, it may be wise for Lim Guan Eng to focus on revitalising the economy than to whip up a confrontation with his own community over a RM30mil grant

WHEN Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, in his Budget 2019 presented early this month, removed the RM30mil matching grant for Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TAR UC), it hurt not just the MCA but also the Chinese community.

The government will provide a mere RM5.5mil as development fund to TAR UC. The fuming Chinese community is now taking up the issue as TAR UC, along with Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), another institution of higher learning linked to MCA, has provided affordable education to many Chinese students over the past 50 years.

The removal of the matching grant to TAR UC – an annual amount given by the Barisan Nasional government to the university college previously to match the funds it raised – will negatively impact its continued survival.

Hence, emotive comments against Lim have been dominating the vernacular media since the grant issue emerged.

A petition against the Finance Ministry has also been launched.

Notably, though they are two non-profit institutions set up by MCA – TAR UC in 1969 and UTAR in 2001 – they are now seen as part and parcel of the Chinese community, which has been supporting their operation and expansion with billions in cash donations and land.

The late philanthropist of Penang, Tan Sri Loh Boon Siew, told me in an interview in 1991 that he had contributed land and cash to TAR UC. Other Chinese tycoons, too, have privately shared such information with me.

Together with the matching grants from the government totalling RM1.353bil over the last 50 years, MCA was able to expand the reach of the university college, from Setapak to Penang, Sabah and Pahang.

In the last 17 years, MCA also built UTAR campuses in Sungai Long (Selangor) and Kampar (Perak).

In the five decades since TAR UC started, children from poor Chinese families and other ethnic groups, regardless of political leanings, have benefitted from the education offered by it due to its affordable fees.

In fact, TAR UC and UTAR are two of MCA’s best non-political projects which have contributed tremendously to the Chinese society, to compensate for its past failure to safeguard Chinese rights in the Umno-dominated Barisan regime.

Putting into historical context, TAR UC – which started as TAR College before being upgraded to university college status in 2013 – was a product of political compromise when non-­bumiputra student intake into the five public universities then was limited by the introduction of the bumiputra quota. The one-to-one matching grant enabled TAR UC to provide an avenue for higher education for those from the lower-income group as well as performing students denied entry into public universities by the quota system.

Hence on Sept 15, 1972, Datuk Hussein Onn, the then-Education Minister, handed over the Instrument of Government to the institution.

A 77ha plot in Setapak was allocated for the construction of TAR College’s main campus.

Later, UTAR was set up and officially launched on Aug 13, 2002, by then Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad after higher education in the private sector was liberalised.

According to MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong, some 200,000 students have graduated from TAR UC/UTAR over the past 50 years.

Currently, the student population in the two institutions totals 28,000. Employees stand at 1,500 (60% Chinese, 40% non-Chinese).

These figures show that not just the Chinese have benefitted from the existence of UTAR and TAR UC but the Malays and Indians as well. Among the Pakatan Harapan leaders who were beneficiaries of the TAR affordable education are Cabinet ministers Teresa Kok, Datuk Salahuddin Ayub and Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail as well as Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow and exco member Chong Eng.

As these two institutions have become integral to the Chinese community, it is natural that vernacular newspapers are following closely the developments in this issue.

From the writing in the Chinese media, it can be seen that this issue is threatening to become a “Chinese community vs LGE/DAP” confrontation. This may not augur well for Lim.

While there are people who agree with Lim’s argument to separate education from politics, and that MCA must cut its links with these institutions, they form a miserable minority.

In a strongly worded comment piece “Play-killing UTAR”, Sin Chew Daily deputy editor-in-chief Tay Tian Yan points out that in speaking up on the grant issue, it is not meant to support MCA, but to show concern for the future generations of the Chinese community, particularly those from the poorer classes.

In response to Lim’s warning to MCA that the two institutions cannot raise tuition fees, Tay concludes: “UTAR will die an eventual death if it cannot raise fees and is not given a grant. What will be the future of our Chinese youth?”

Generally, Lim is seen as abusing his power to punish his political rivals and in the process undermine the interest of his very own community. Such political gimmicks should be stopped when dealing with taxpayers’ money, given that 80% of the country’s revenue is contributed by Chinese businesses and individuals in the form of taxes.

For many people, it is particularly repugnant when Lim threatened to “take action” against MCA if the institutions raise tuition fees.

In a China Press editorial yesterday, Lim was reminded that last year when he was Penang Chief Minister, he had said education allocations to schools should be given regardless of political backgrounds. And he acted fairly.

“But after LGE became Finance Minister, his statement last year on equality dissipated. Shouldn’t the former Penang CM give a big scolding to the current Finance Minister?” asks the writer mockingly.

The Pakatan government has also been reminded that 95% of Chinese voted them in to oust the previous administration in the May 9 general election. Their support should not be taken for granted and forgotten.

In short, TAR UC and UTAR should not be penalised just because of their parental link with MCA.

Looking at national development, these two institutions have nurtured much talent to serve the country, particularly in the field of accountancy.

File photo of UTAR's Faculty of Business and Finance in Kampar, Perak.

In fact, from my own observations, these institutions are more professionally run than many other private colleges and universities.

For this reason, and for their affordable fees, my husband and I sent our daughter to study in UTAR. She graduated last June.

As the country is confronted with a slowing economy and has to tackle a national debt of over RM1 trillion, it may be wiser for Lim to focus on revitalising the economy and other bigger national issues than to whip up a confrontation with his own community over a RM30mil grant.

By  Ho Wah Foon, The Star


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