Yang Lan interviews Xie Zhenhua – One on One

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Chinese climate advisor Xie Zhenhua has been the lead negotiator for China at most United Nations climate change conferences since 2009. He led the Chinese delegation at the COP26 in November 2021. In an interview, Xie shares his view about why China is willing to take climate action and how the country will achieve its carbon neutrality goal.

Yang Lan, one of China’s top TV journalists and entrepreneurs, partners with Asia Times to showcase the ground-breaking series, “Yang Lan One on One.” Yang reveals the victories, wisdom and breakthroughs of the many global luminaries she’s interviewed. Learn how these trailblazers – from movie stars, scientists and economists, to entrepreneurs and government leaders – have ignited social progress throughout the world.

Asia Times is the distributor of the series.

Episode 1: Yang Lan interviews Michelle Yeoh – One on One

Episode 2: Yang Lan interviews Donnie Yen – One on One

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Work It podcast: DBS CEO on blame culture and ‘air cover’ when things go wrong

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The second big part is this: Received wisdom then and even now has always been that it’s very hard for old companies to change, it’s very hard for old people to change. And it’s something that I’ve never believed … look (at) those in their 40s and 50s and 60s. We’re all changing in our personal lives. 

When people have changed in their personal lives, why do we think they can’t change in a company? I have this big belief that the problem is not with human beings; the problem is with the company.”

ON HOW FAILURE CHANGED HIM 

Gupta: When you’ve seen the bottom of the barrel, which is what I thought I was seeing (when his own business went bust during the dotcom crash), it changes your outlook. It changed my appetite for risk. At the end of the day, the change is so rapid and change is accelerating … without making some bets, without taking some moonshots, or taking some risks, you’re not going to succeed.

In my 20s and 30s, building a career was probably my single biggest driver. How do I make sure that I can get ahead, I get promoted, I get a bigger job, I become the youngest managing director?

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Indonesia's social commerce boom comes with an unexpected casualty - struggling shopping malls

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Shopkeeper Hariyanti said she and her colleagues go live for two hours everyday between 12pm and 2pm, displaying one item after another using three smartphones to capture audiences from three different platforms: TikTok Shop, Shopee and Instagram.

So far, she said, the store generates more sales from TikTok Shop compared to the other two platforms.

“Maybe (TikTok Shop) is more suited to our demographics. Maybe because (TikTok Shop) has more promos like discounts and free delivery. I don’t know for sure,” she said.

SOME SHOPPING MALLS STRUGGLE TO RECOVER

Miranti Amelia, who owns a clothing shop at a mall in West Jakarta, said although her store still welcomes physical customers from time to time, their numbers are dwindling.

“They usually saw us on social media but insisted on coming to the store to try our clothes for themselves. They buy one or two clothes and once they are confident with our products, their next purchase will be done online,” she told CNA.

“I even had one customer who came to the shop, tried our products and bought the same items at our online store while she was still at my physical shop. When I asked her why, she said: ‘There are many promos online’.”

Amelia said with offline sales dwindling, her physical store now acts more like window dressing to her online store and a backdrop for her daily livestreams.

“I plan on moving everything to a two-storey store. It’s hard to operate an online store from inside a mall. There’s not enough space for my workers to pack our shipment. Our couriers have to go up and down the stairs and elevators,” she said.

But moving away from a shopping mall is not for everyone.

Shop owner Josh Sulistyo said although his store’s online sales are starting to catch up with its offline transactions, he will continue to operate from Tanah Abang shopping complex, which has a reputation for being a magnet for wholesalers from across Indonesia.

“We need this shop to show (wholesalers) that we mean business, give them extra confidence that we have ample stock and we can deliver no matter the size of their order,” he said.

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DBS CEO Piyush Gupta on blame culture and ‘air cover’ when things go wrong

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The second big part is this: Received wisdom then and even now has always been that it’s very hard for old companies to change, it’s very hard for old people to change. And it’s something that I’ve never believed … look (at) those in their 40s and 50s and 60s. We’re all changing in our personal lives. 

When people have changed in their personal lives, why do we think they can’t change in a company? I have this big belief that the problem is not with human beings; the problem is with the company.”

ON HOW FAILURE CHANGED HIM 

Gupta: When you’ve seen the bottom of the barrel, which is what I thought I was seeing (when his own business went bust during the dotcom crash), it changes your outlook. It changed my appetite for risk. At the end of the day, the change is so rapid and change is accelerating … without making some bets, without taking some moonshots, or taking some risks, you’re not going to succeed.

In my 20s and 30s, building a career was probably my single biggest driver. How do I make sure that I can get ahead, I get promoted, I get a bigger job, I become the youngest managing director?

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Cordial tone in Yellen’s Beijing visit

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China has called on the United States to take concrete actions to create a favorable environment for both sides to achieve mutual benefit.

Beijing hopes US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a dovish American official who began a four-day trip to China on Thursday, will take home to President Joe Biden a message: There will be no winners in trade wars and an economic “decoupling.”

Following China’s unveiling earlier this week of export controls of gallium and germanium, raw materials of semiconductors, Yellen met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

She told Li that the US seeks to have healthy economic competition, instead of a “winner-take-all” fight, with China, to benefit both countries over time. She also said that in certain circumstances the US would need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security.

Yellen is the second high-ranking US official to visit China after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on June 19.

These talks were held against the backdrop of an intensifying chip war in which Japan and the Netherlands will restrict the exports of their chip-making raw materials and equipment to China on July 23 and September 1, respectively.

Media reports said last week that Washington will soon announce its plan to ban Nvidia from shipping its A800 and H800 artificial intelligence chips to China, and also restrict US funds from investing in China’s high-technology sectors later this month. To retaliate, China said Monday that it will require companies to apply for licenses to export gallium and germanium from August 1.

‘Seeing rainbow’

When Yellen arrived in Beijing on Thursday, she tweeted that she was going to “seek a healthy economic competition that benefits American workers and firms and to collaborate on global challenges.” 

“We will take action to protect our national security when needed, and this trip presents an opportunity to communicate and avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding,” she said in the tweet.

Chinese officials and state media have so far used a more friendly tone to describe Yellen’s China trip than they did with Blinken’s. 

“I am very happy to meet you in Beijing,” Li told Yellen at the beginning of their meeting on Friday. “Not only China and the United States, but also people in the whole world, are paying close attention to your visit to Beijing.”

“Yesterday, the moment you arrived at our airport and left the plane, we saw a rainbow,” he said. “I think it can apply to the US-China relationship too: after experiencing a round of winds and rains, we surely can see a rainbow.”

“I also often say to Chinese entrepreneurs that we always have to go through a difficult time,” he said. “When we say it’s bad this year, it can be worse next year. We must survive.”

He said Chinese enterprises must observe the world economy and look forward and cannot just look at the water under their feet on rainy days. He said this practice can also be applied in Sino-US relations.

Before a meeting with Li, Yellen had a “substantive conversation” with former Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and the outgoing governor of China’s central bank, Yi Gang, AFP reported. They discussed the global economic outlook and the respective economic outlooks for the US and China. 

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets representatives of China-based US firms in Beijing on July 7, 2023. Photo: Twitter, @SecYellen

Equal relationship

On Friday, China’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement that Yellen’s visit to China is a concrete measure to implement the important consensus of last November’s Xi-Biden meeting. It said the trip will strengthen communication and exchanges in the financial area between the two countries.

“The essence of Sino-US economic relations is to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results. There will be no winners in trade wars and ‘decoupling’,” said an unnamed spokesperson of the Finance Ministry. “We hope that the US will take concrete actions to create a favorable environment for the healthy development of economic and trade relations between the two countries.”

Su Xiaohui, deputy director of the Department of American Studies at China Institute of International Studies, remarks in a video released on Friday that Yellen’s China trip was decided by both the US and China, was not a result of an invitation from China, meaning that Beijing is not asking the US for help in anything.
 
Su says the fact that Yellen will stay longer in China than Blinken means that both the US and China want to discuss matters in detail.

She says Beijing is willing to receive American officials as it feels that Washington has been aware that suppressing and containing China will have a negative impact on the US. She says Washington knows clearly that American firms want to see stable Sino-US relations.

“From China’s perspective, Yellen’s trip does not mean that the US can make demands on China, or that it can unilaterally pressure China and force it to compromise,” she says. “Her trip should emphasize that the development of the relationship between the two countries must be equal and mutually beneficial.”

She says Beijing’s statement of “no winners in trade wars” may touch Yellen, who had once questioned the Trump administration’s tariffs placed on Chinese imports. She says the United States’s so-called “de-risking” or “decoupling” from China does not fulfil the spirit of achieving mutual benefit and win-win results.

Diversification

In May, G7 leaders met in Japan and agreed that their members should “de-risk” from China. Beijing said there is no difference between “de-risking” and “de-coupling” as both will lead to the departure of foreign firms from China.

Yellen preferred to describe the United States’s strategy as “diversification.”

She told representatives of some China-based US firms in a Friday meeting that a decoupling of the US and Chinese economies would be “virtually impossible.” 

“We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilising for the global economy,” she said, adding that Washington was not seeking a “wholesale separation of our economies.”

Yellen said the US government is concerned by Beijing’s export controls on metals key to semiconductor manufacturing and is still evaluating the impact of these actions. She said the Chinese curbs reminded the US of the importance of building resilient and diversified supply chains.

“I also discussed concerns about barriers to market access, China’s use of non-market tools, and punitive actions against US firms,” she tweeted.

Luo Fuqiang, a military commentator, says in his latest vlog that he remains unconvinced that Washington will consider China’s interests and stop its suppression against China. 

But he says US officials, who visit China, will continue to be received by higher-ranking Chinese officials as Beijing wants them to help send authoritative messages back to the US.

Some commentators say Beijing does not have high expectations for the outcome of Yellen’s trip as the US-China conflicts are related to the US Commerce Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, not the Treasury Department.

Read: China squeezes key metal supplies in chip war escalation

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

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Phuket aims to become ‘safest city’

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Deputy governor and industry reps discuss ways to improve services and safety

Tourists relax on a beach in Phuket. (File photo: Achadthaya Chuenniran)
Tourists relax on a beach in Phuket. (File photo: Achadthaya Chuenniran)

PHUKET: An effort is under way to make Phuket the safest city in Southeast Asia following a number of incidents involving tourists.

Danai Sunantarod, deputy governor of the southern tourist province, expressed the aim at a meeting on Friday with representatives of tour and travel agencies.

Their discussion of security on the island highlighted several recent incidents that have been a cause for concern.

In May, a speedboat crashed into a channel marker in Chalong Bay, injuring 35 people, mostly Russian tourists. The boat driver was believed to have dozed off.

In February, Mr Danai said, a Chinese tourist was wounded in a knife attack by a travel agent after a disagreement over a refund for a day trip that the visitor missed. Tourists drowning in Phuket also raise questions about safety, he said.

“We have to learn from these incidents,” Mr Danai said. “We want to make our home safe for our visitors. We want to be the safest city in the region.”

He said the private and public sectors must cooperate to ensure the safety of tourists, while police officers must enforce the law.

“We will tighten safety measures because we don’t want to have scammers in Phuket,” he said, referring to the case involving the Chinese tourist.

“We also want tour operators to eliminate the dual pricing system because it makes our guests feel bad,” he said, referring to a system in which foreign visitors, including expatriates, are charged more than Thais for services. (Attractions that engage in the practice are listed on 2pricethailand.com)

Mr Danai said Phuket had become a famous destination due to its beautiful beaches, variety of food, unique culture and good hospitality. The province has received local and international recognition, including a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy listing in 2015.

Phuket welcomed 5.6 million tourists last year, who brought in about 200 billion baht for the resort island, he said. About 60-70% of them were foreigners. More tourists will come this year to reach the province’s target of 10 million, he said.

Ratchadaporn Oin, head of the Tourism and Sports Ministry office in Phuket, said tour guides and operators have an important role to play in keeping tourists safe. They must know the rules so customers will know what can and cannot be done, she said.

For example, Ms Ratchadaporn said, guides must inform tourists not to touch marine life for pictures or feed fish while snorkelling or diving.

“We urge you to take good care of tourists to make them feel safe,” she said. “It will help boost the good image of the island.”

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Meta’s Threads in Twitter’s crosshairs

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The launch of social media app Threads as a competitor to Twitter is a game-changer.

Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, launched the new platform yesterday, ahead of schedule. Threads was welcomed almost immediately – especially by hordes of Twitter users that have watched in dismay as their beloved platform crumbles in the hands of Elon Musk.

In less than 24 hours, Threads attracted some 30 million users. And with Meta already having more than two billion Instagram users who can directly link their accounts to it, Threads’ user base will grow fast.

Post by @zuck saying 'Wow, 30 million sign ups as of this morning. Feels like the beginning of something special, but we've got a lot of work ahead to build out the app.
Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads to celebrate its 30 million new users. Threads

With its simple black and white feed, and features that let you reply, love, quote and comment on other people’s “threads”, the similarities between Threads and Twitter are obvious.

The question now is: will Threads be the one that finally unseats Twitter?

We’ve been here before

In October of last year, Twitter users looked on helplessly as Elon Musk became CEO. Mastodon was the first “escape plan.” But many found its decentralized servers difficult and confusing to use, with each one having very different content rules and communities.

Many Twitter fans created “back up” Mastodon accounts in case Twitter crashed, and waited to see what Musk would do next. The wait wasn’t long. Platform instability and outages became common as Musk started laying off Twitter staff (he has now fired about 80% of Twitter’s original workforce).

Shortly after, Musk horrified users and made headlines by upending Twitter’s verification system and forcing “blue tick” holders to pay for the privilege of authentication. This opened the door for account impersonations and the sharing of misinformation at scale. Some large corporate brands left the platform, taking their advertising dollars with them.

Musk also labeled trusted news organizations such as the BBC as “state-owned” media, until public backlash forced him to retreat. More recently, he started limiting how many tweets users can view and announced that TweetDeck (a management tool for scheduling tweets) would be limited to paid accounts.

Twitter users have tried several alternatives, including Spoutible and Post. Bluesky, which came from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is gaining ground – but its growth has been limited due to its invitation-only registration process.

Nothing had quite captured the imagination of Twitter followers … until now.

Andrews: Everyone right to go? Albanese: Ready over here...
Threads has been joined by a number of popular figures, including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Oprah Winfrey, the Dalai Lama, Shakira, Gordon Ramsay and Ellen DeGeneres. Threads

Community is the key to success

Before Musk’s reign, Twitter enjoyed many years of success. It had long been a home for journalists, governments, academics and the public to share information on the key issues of the day. In emergencies, Twitter offered real-time support. During some of the worst disasters, users have shared information and made life-saving decisions.

While not without flaws – such as trolls, bots and online abuse – Twitter’s verification process and the ability to block and report inappropriate content was central to its success in building a thriving community.

This is also what sets Threads apart from competitors. By linking Threads to Instagram, Meta has given itself a significant head-start towards reaching the critical mass of users needed to establish itself as a leading platform (a privilege Mastodon didn’t enjoy).

Not only can Threads users retain their usernames, they can also bring their Instagram followers with them. The ability to retain community in an app that provides a similar experience to Twitter is what makes Threads the biggest threat yet.

My research shows that people crave authority, authenticity and community the most when they engage with online information. In our new book, my co-authors Donald O Case, Rebekah Willson and I explain how users search for information from sources they know and trust.

Twitter fans want an alternative platform with similar functionality, but most importantly they want to quickly find “their people.” They don’t want to have to rebuild their communities. This is likely why so many have stayed on Twitter, even as Musk has done so well to run it into the ground.

Challenges ahead

Of course, Twitter users may also be concerned about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Signing up to yet another Meta app comes with its own concerns.

New Threads users who read the fine print will note that their information will be used to “personalize ads and other experiences” across both platforms. And users have pointed out you can only delete your Threads account if you delete your Instagram account.

This kind of entrenchment could be off-putting for some.

Moreover, Meta decided to not launch Threads anywhere in the European Union yesterday due to regulatory concerns. The EU’s new Digital Markets Act could raise challenges for Threads.

Shutterstock

For example, the act sets out businesses can’t “track end users outside of [their] core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.” This may be in conflict with Threads’ privacy policy.

Meta has also announced plans to eventually move Threads towards a decentralized infrastructure.

In the app’s “How Threads Works” details, it says “future versions of Threads will work with the fediverse”, enabling “people to follow and interact with each other on different platforms, including Mastodon.”

This means people will be able to view and interact with Threads content from non-Meta accounts, without needing to sign up to Threads. Using the ActivityPub standard (which enables decentralized interoperability between platforms), Threads could then function the same way as WordPress, Mastodon and email servers – wherein users of one server can interact with others.

When and how Threads achieves this plan for decentralized engagement – and how this might impact users’ experience – is unclear.

Did Meta steal ‘trade secrets’?

As for Musk, he’s not going down without a fight. Just hours after Threads’ release, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro released a letter accusing Meta of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets.

The letter alleges former Twitter employees hired by Meta were “deliberately assigned” to “develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app.” Meta has disputed these claims, according to reports, but the rivalry between the two companies seems far from over.

Lisa M Given is Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Singapore winning on inflation, losing on growth

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SINGAPORE – Singapore’s central bank this week delivered a sobering economic assessment amid sluggish near-term growth prospects, ongoing inflationary challenges and predictions the economy is already in a technical recession.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) also emphasized that despite revising its 2023 headline inflation forecast downward, its battle against rising consumer prices is far from won.

The city-state’s trade-reliant economy faces mounting headwinds as external demand weakens amid a global economic slowdown.

Earlier this year, there were certain hopes that a post-pandemic economic rebound in China would lift Singapore above its tepid current growth forecast of between 0.5% to 2.5%.

Those hopes have since faltered as China’s economic recovery loses steam, with fewer and fewer independent economists predicting Beijing will hit its 5% economic growth target for 2023. 

Singapore’s economy contracted in the first quarter, falling to -0.4% from the previous quarter’s growth of just 0.1%. 

Economists believe that sluggish trade and industrial performance, driven partly by China’s faltering recovery, likely dragged Singapore into a technical recession in the second quarter, preliminary estimates for which are due later this month. 

“The boost from China’s reopening has been limited and fallen short of expectations. It’s far from clear whether any boost is on the horizon, as China’s economic recovery is losing momentum,” said senior economists Chua Hak Bin and Brian Lee Shun Rong of Maybank Investment Banking Group in a research note reviewed by Asia Times.

In an annual review published on July 5, the MAS said that Singapore’s growth outlook will remain weak in the near term, with key growth engines such as manufacturing and financial services expected to “remain in the doldrums” as the global economy is expected to slow in the second half of 2023. 

In comments accompanying the review’s release, MAS managing director Ravi Menon stated that growth in domestic-facing sectors is also expected to taper off as consumer demand slows due to higher interest rates and moderate wage increases.

Menon said Singapore’s 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) is set to slow “below-trend” within the official forecast range of 0.5% to 2.5%, down significantly from 3.6% in 2022.  Inflation, while still above the historical average, has “clearly peaked and discernibly moderated” from recent 14-year highs, said Menon.

MAS managing director Ravi Menon believes the economy will grow ‘below-trend’ in 2023. Image: Agencies

Imported inflation, he noted, has turned negative, reflecting the decline in global energy and food prices and the effects of a stronger Singapore dollar, which has risen in line with MAS’ aggressive monetary policy.

The MAS uses exchange rates, managed against a trade-weighted undisclosed basket of currencies from Singapore’s major trading partners, instead of interest rates as its primary policy tool to manage imported inflation.

It has enacted five rounds of monetary tightening since October 2021, causing the national dollar to appreciate by 8.3% and helping to curb imported cost pressures.

Core inflation, the central bank’s favored price measure which excludes private transport and accommodation, fell on a month-on-month seasonally adjusted annualized basis to 3.6% in May this year from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, according to MAS data.

Headline inflation slowed year-on-year to 5.1% in May, down from 5.7% in April.

“Our progressive tightening of monetary policy has helped to arrest the momentum of price increases and facilitated a gradual decline in inflation,” said Menon.

“But the fight against inflation is not over and the monetary policy stance remains tight relative to the business cycle,” he added, noting that MAS has no intention of pivoting from “inflation-fighting mode” to “growth-supporting mode.”

With a more “benign” outlook for consumer prices, the central bank has lowered its headline, or all-items, inflation forecast for 2023 to a range of 4.5% to 5.5% from a previous estimate of 5.5% to 6.5%.

The full-year core inflation forecast remains unchanged at 3.5% to 4.5%, but is expected to moderate closer to 2.5% to 3.0% by the end of the year.

After refraining from a sixth round of policy tightening during a policy review in April, defying the forecasts of many economists, Menon said the MAS is “closely monitoring the evolving growth-inflation dynamics and [remaining] vigilant to risks on either side. We stand ready to adjust monetary policy as needed, especially if inflation momentum were to re-accelerate.”

Song Seng Wun, an independent economist formerly with CIMB Private Banking, told Asia Times that while energy and commodity prices have stabilized off their peaks “consumption on the services side is where inflationary pressure remains.”

“Despite the higher prices, people are still willing to pay because they’re gainfully employed and they still are quite confident about job security,” Song said.

Singapore’s labor market remains tight despite a recent uptick in retrenchments, with the overall unemployment rate standing at 1.8% in April, its lowest level since early 2015.

But with the rising likelihood that Singapore entered a technical recession in the second quarter, observers are split on whether falling export demand and declining industrial production will lead to a new round of layoffs.

The city-state’s non-oil domestic exports, seen as a barometer for external demand, contracted for an eighth consecutive month in May, dropping by 14.7%.

Exports of both electronics such as semiconductors and disk media products and non-electronics like specialized machinery, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals registered steep declines.

Shipping containers at Singapore’s PSA port. Photo: Singapore Government

Similarly, Singapore’s manufacturing output contracted for an eighth straight month in May, falling 10.8% year-on-year in the first double-digit contraction recorded since November 2019.

“We are likely to get another quarter of contraction. A technical recession remains highly likely,” said Song. “The drag from manufacturing and related industries will probably offset the service sector recovery. Despite that, labor market conditions here remain supportive and so consumer confidence remains quite resilient, although some businesses have trimmed.”

Maybank’s Chua and Lee expect the manufacturing downturn to persist in coming months amid weak external demand, which they note is “broad-based, although most evident in the prolonged global electronics slump.”

They predict Singapore’s second quarter GDP contracted by 0.8%, marking the first technical recession in the city-state since the two-month Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, which halted nearly all economic activity.

Follow Nile Bowie on Twitter at @NileBowie

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