TOKYO – NTT and KDDI, Japan’s top two telecom carriers, will cooperate in developing new telecom technology that aims for a 125-times increase in transmission capacity, a 100-times increase in energy efficiency and a 200-times reduction in end-to-end delay (latency) for mobile and optical networks. If successful, they could potentially set the global standard for […]Continue Reading
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is considered an ambitious long-term strategy to promote the expansion of Chinese influence by providing countries in the region with aid and infrastructure investment. But in contrast with some Southeast Asian states which have largely embraced the BRI with open arms, Vietnam has […]Continue Reading
US regulators’ swift reaction to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and two other lenders partially restored calm to markets, but concerns remain over the stability of the global financial system. The government is racing to orchestrate a US$30 billion rescue of First Republic Bank by the nation’s largest financial institutions after the California lender’s […]Continue Reading
The Federal Reserve is facing a rather sticky problem. Despite its best efforts over the past year, inflation is stubbornly refusing to head south with any urgency to a target of 2%. Rather, the inflation report released on March 14, 2023, shows consumer prices rose 0.4% in February, meaning the year-over-year increase is now at […]Continue Reading
Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed with enormous speed – so quickly that they could be textbook cases of classic bank runs, in which too many depositors withdraw their funds from a bank at the same time. The failures at SVB and Signature were two of the three biggest in US banking history, following […]Continue Reading
In February 2023, India’s government announced that the Geological Survey of India found around 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves in the Salal-Haimana region of Jammu and Kashmir. Lithium is sometimes termed “white gold” for its strategic importance as an essential metal in electrification. But India faces several challenges in capitalizing on its lithium deposits. […]Continue Reading
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Japan to reevaluate its energy strategy once again. A sharp rise in the price of LNG, a lack of energy alternatives to reduce reliance on Russian LNG imports and Tokyo’s commitment to phasing out Russian coal and oil imports — all while ensuring Japan’s energy security — are making this reevaluation […]Continue Reading
Silicon Valley Bank, which catered to the tech industry for three decades, collapsed on March 10, 2023, after the Santa Clara, California-based lender suffered from an old-fashioned bank run. State regulators seized the bank and made the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation its receiver. SVB, as it’s known, was the biggest US lender to fail since […]Continue Reading
Rapidus, Japan’s advanced logic foundry venture company, has chosen Chitose as the site for a new 5 trillion yen (US$37 billion) semiconductor production facility, a move that will pull the island nation’s northernmost region more firmly into its technology supply chain. Chitose, located 40 kilometers and 30 minutes by express train southeast of Sapporo on […]Continue Reading
Companies in traditional sectors should take the initiative in the coming decade to go digital under Beijing’s newly announced “Digital China” plan or they will be eliminated, according to some academics. “Digitalization is now a global trend,” Zhang Jun, dean of economics at Fudan University, told guancha.cn in an interview. “Without it, China’s service and manufacturing sectors […]Continue Reading