CelcomDigi submits proposal to be choice for building Malaysia’s 2nd 5G network

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  • 18k 5G-ready towers across Malaysia, most modern digital network by end 2024
  • Ready to accelerate country’s transformation into a 5G-AI powered digital society

CelcomDigi touts its just launched AI Experience Centre (AiX) as showcasing its capabilities to deliver value to the country's digital aspirations.The AiX is a one-stop innovation and collaboration hub with 40 examples of digital solutions that are in pilot stage or actual use across a range of sectors and verticals.

CelcomDigi Bhd has submitted its proposal for the deployment of Malaysia’s second 5G network to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) this morning.  

CelcomDigi submits proposal to be choice for building Malaysia’s 2nd 5G networkIdham Nawawi (pic), CelcomDigi’s CEO said, “The country is in prime position to be a regional leader in both 5G and AI development. CelcomDigi’s proposal sets out to build the most advanced 5G network to realise this ambition and accelerate widespread adoption for consumers and enterprises. We have an opportunity to capitalise and build on the existing solid infrastructure, financial strength and robust ecosystem that we have invested in. We believe that we have submitted a compelling case to deploy Malaysia’s second 5G network – either alone or in partnership with others – towards ensuring a thriving 5G ecosystem built for the nation, with the rakyat in mind.”

CelcomDigi submits proposal to be choice for building Malaysia’s 2nd 5G network

Best choice to build Malaysia’s second 5G network

CelcomDigi said it presents a strong resume for its ability to accelerate 5G and AI for all Malaysians by delivering the most affordable, fast, and efficient rollout of the country’s second 5G network. The company has a solid track record of over 30 years in rolling out mobile infrastructure projects efficiently and at scale. It operates the widest, most-modern 4G network in the country – now ready for 5G activation, supported by a highly competent engineering team, extensive supply chain, and the biggest network of tower and infrastructure companies to facilitate an expedient deployment of a world-class 5G network for Malaysia.

By end 2024, more than two-thirds of the company’s network will be modernised, making it the largest and most modern digital network in the country, it said. The 18,000-site strong 5G-ready network is primed to enable fast deployment of 5G and 5G-Advanced technology across its wide footprint.

To ensure millions of Malaysians benefit from the power of 5G and AI, the company has doubled down on efforts to enable the nation’s transformation into a 5G-AI powered digital society through the development of its 4G/5G product portfolio in the market and industrial-grade solutions.

The company is leveraging its growing ecosystem of global and local technology partners, and knowledge transfer from its shareholders Axiata and Telenor to drive rapid innovation of new emerging technology solutions for consumers and enterprises.

It also recently launched its CelcomDigi AI Experience Centre (AiX) – a one-stop immersive innovation and collaboration hub to lead, inspire, and advance the creation of world-class digital solutions across a range of sectors and verticals.

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Insurer tries to split S,000 bill for ‘questionable’ work injury claim with co-insurer, court rejects bid

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SINGAPORE: A court has rejected an insurer’s bid to get a second insurer to split a payout of about S$39,000 (US$29,100) to a worker who injured his finger at a building site.

The construction worker was covered by two insurance companies, but only one – HSBC Life (Singapore), previously known as AXA Insurance – took part in contesting the claim.

After reaching a settlement with the injured worker for about S$39,000 despite multiple new injuries being added on, HSBC Life contacted the second insurance company, MSIG Insurance (Singapore), asking for the sum to be paid.

HSBC Life later launched a court application to get MSIG Insurance to foot half of the bill.

In a judgment made available on Wednesday (Jul 31), District Judge Teo Guan Siew rejected the application, saying the settlement HSBC Life had reached with the worker was not “reasonable” in light of the “questionable nature” of the worker’s various injury claims.

THE CASE

The worker, who was not named in the judgment, was employed by Long Hui Construction. The company had an annual work injury compensation policy under HSBC Life that indemnified it against any sums it might have to pay to employees who were injured due to work-related accidents.

The worker was assigned to a building project, with the main contractor Soil-Build taking out an insurance policy with MSIG Insurance to indemnify itself against any work injury compensation claims by employees linked to the building project.

On Oct 26, 2019, the worker was engaged in hacking work when a breaker – a heavy-duty demolition tool – fell on his right hand.

He sustained a minor injury to his right index finger and was taken to a clinic at Fullerton Healthcare, which issued him two days of medical leave.

The worker’s supervisor gave a similar account of the accident on the same day, and said the worker had stated he felt pain only in his finger and not anywhere else.

As only two days of medical leave had been issued, his employer Long Hui decided there was no need to file any report with the Manpower Ministry (MOM).

The main contractor Soil-Build was later informed of the incident report, but did not notify its insurer, presumably because it also viewed the accident as minor, the judgment stated.

Three days after the accident, the injured worker visited Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH). He complained of back and shoulder pain in addition to his finger injury, claiming that he had also fallen when the breaker landed on his finger.

WORKER INITIATES CLAIM, ADDS INJURIES

He then notified MOM about the accident and initiated a claim process under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA).

Under the WICA claim process, the amount of compensation that an employer is liable to pay an injured employee is computed based on various factors, particularly the extent to which the injury has caused any temporary or permanent incapacity to the employee.

MOM sent a letter to Long Hui in February 2020 saying it had investigated the accident and would be admitting the claim by the worker over his injury to his finger and back. No mention was made of the right shoulder injury.

Two TTSH medical reports were prepared for the WICA claim, stating that the worker had sustained 15 per cent permanent incapacity for injuries to his back, shoulder and knee, and that he suffered 7.5 per cent permanent incapacity for his finger injury – for a total of 22.5 per cent permanent incapacity.

The judge noted that there had been no mention of the additional knee injury until, presumably, a subsequent assessment by TTSH.

MOM later issued a notice of assessment dated September 2020 for a sum of about S$19,700 based on a permanent incapacity rate of 12.5 per cent, lower than TTSH’s assessment.

The notice of assessment is a preliminary assessment by MOM that parties can dispute by filing objections.

The injured worker was dissatisfied with MOM’s notice of assessment and filed a notice of objection, which led to a series of pre-hearing conferences by the ministry in a bid to settle the claim without having to go to the Labour Court.

In the conferences, MOM asked if the injured worker had told the first doctor at the Fullerton clinic about his shoulder injury – and the clinic confirmed that this did not happen.

HSBC Life then told MOM that it was not agreeable to the assessment for the supposed additional shoulder injury.

However, a TTSH memo later showed that the worker had been attended to for knee and shoulder injuries in October 2019 at the hospital.

HSBC Life said this was the “turning point” because MOM showed parties the TTSH memo and supposedly advised HSBC Life to accept the assessment of 22.5 per cent permanent incapacity.

The judge said it was unlikely that MOM gave such advice based on its own notice of assessment, and the lack of evidence for such a claim.

After this, HSBC Life decided to settle with the injured worker and settled on a sum of about S$29,600 – an amount that was higher than indicated in MOM’s notice of assessment.

After adding in medical leave wages and medical expenses, the full sum was S$39,035.44.

Meanwhile, MSIG Insurance was unaware of the accident or the claim made by the injured worker because it had not been notified.

HSBC Life later wrote to MSIG Insurance asking for the sum of S$39,035.44. It later revised this demand to half the sum – at about S$19,500, on the basis of double insurance.

Under the principles of double insurance, an insurer who has fully paid for a loss covered by another insurer may be able to claim contribution, said Judge Teo.

However, the insurer called upon to contribute may resist the demand on the basis that it would not have been liable under its policy, for example, because the insured person failed to give notice in time under policy terms.

A co-insurer that has not been notified of the claim could also argue it had been prejudiced as it was deprived of the chance to investigate or take part in the handling of the claim.

“While the legal position is not fully settled as regards the significance of notice and whether the co-insurer should be given an opportunity to participate in the handling of the claim, it is clear that if the insurer making payment was actually not liable or had paid in excess of its actual legal liability, then the no right of contribution would exist at law,” said Judge Teo.

MSIG Insurance argued that HSBC Life had chosen to pay the worker’s claim by consent and not because MOM found Long Hui liable after a hearing. In doing so, HSBC Life had voluntarily assumed liability and should not be entitled to claim contribution from a co-insurer.

MSIG Insurance also said HSBC Life had acted unreasonably in failing to notify MSIG Insurance in good time of the claim and their intention to settle.

It added that the amount HSBC Life settled on with the worker was more than it was legally liable for, and so MSIG Insurance should not have to contribute to the sum.

JUDGE’S FINDINGS

Of the three reasons, Judge Teo dismissed the first and said the second might be a factor but was not determinative.

Instead, he said HSBC Life’s settlement with the worker was not reasonable, and there was nothing to contradict the evidence that the worker’s injury was minor. 
 
Judge Teo said HSBC Life had not done “everything it could reasonably have done to challenge the worker’s claim”.

“Indeed, it might be queried whether the circumstances of the accident were capable of causing injuries to the back, shoulder and knee, let alone injuries of an extent that causes permanent incapacity,” said the judge. 

“Based on the photographs in the incident report showing the work site and a re-enactment of the accident, the worker was squatting when the breaker fell on his right hand. The manner in which the accident took place would appear inconsistent with injuries to the back, and especially the shoulder and knee.”

Judge Teo said HSBC Life should have exercised greater due diligence in light of the questionable nature of the worker’s injury claims and made further investigations.

He added that his decision does not suggest that every WICA claim must be challenged by an insurer or every case taken to court before a co-insurer makes a contribution.

Instead, every case must be looked at on its own facts and circumstances.

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Less transparency, less faith in China stocks – Asia Times

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This week is offering quite the split screen to investors hoping China would step up efforts to raise its capital markets game.

On one screen, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) pledged to improve market operations, strengthen comprehensive research capabilities, deepen response mechanisms to manage market risks and hone regulations for trading.

On the other, signals that Beijing is increasing opacity surrounding the flow of capital. Specifically, how much capital international funds deploy into and out of Asia’s most volatile major stock market.

After August 18, analysts won’t be able to track net capital movements at the end of a trading day. The fact this follows a move in May to end intraday data flows with Hong Kong markets suggests this is no aberration.

And it generates more questions than answers about the state of Xi Jinping’s vision for making China a more attractive investment destination for the biggest of the globe’s big money.

Of course, there’s a third screen on which investors are keeping an eye. This one features a fresh round of stimulus.

On Tuesday, the Politburo, a Communist Party’s top decision-making body, signaled renewed efforts to reach this year’s 5% growth target focused on consumers.

Chinese leaders said the priority is increasing household income “through multiple channels” and increasing the “ability and willingness” of low- and middle-income groups to spend.

Yet the Politburo had less to say about financial upgrades at a moment when regulators are obscuring basic intelligence on capital flows.

True, exchanges still plan to provide data on turnover and trading volume in equities and exchange-traded funds through links with markets in Hong Kong.

But as regulatory signals go, making it harder to discern top-line levels of enthusiasm and pessimism about mainland shares isn’t likely to bolster confidence in Asia’s biggest economy.

Restoring trust on the part of global investors was a major goal of this month’s Third Plenum extravaganza. Though normally a five-yearly event, President Xi didn’t convene one in 2018.

Since the recently concluded Third Plenum was the first since 2013, expectations for bold reforms were – and still are – sky-high. Xi’s Communist Party pledged to “unswervingly encourage” the private sector in a bid to accelerate “high-quality development,” “Chinese-style modernization” and “innovative vitality.”

There’s still scope for China’s 24-member Politburo to bolster investors’ trust by detailing plans to make bigger alterations to the nation’s export- and investment-led growth model.

Suffice to say, though, announcing plans for reduced transparency the same month overseas money managers sold at least US$4.1 billion of Chinese shares might not go down well. Chinese and Hong Kong stock markets lost an epic $6.3 trillion from their peak in 2021 to January this year.

Xi’s team also faces confidence deficits on the economic front. The nation’s 4.7% economic growth rate in the second quarter amid weak consumer demand and housing prices disappointed many.

As economist Louise Loo at Oxford Economics observes, “discretionary retail spending fell at the sharpest sequential pace since the April 2022 Shanghai lockdowns.”

Hence the Politburo’s renewed focus on demand-boosting stimulus. To economist Zhang Zhiwei at Pinpoint Asset Management, it’s a sign Xi’s inner circle “recognizes that domestic demand is weak and plans to prepare some policy measures in the pipeline to address the problem.”

This backdrop explains why the People’s Bank of China surprised global markets with an interest rate cut on July 25. It trimmed the one-year policy loan rate by 20 basis points to 2.3%, the biggest move since April 2020. That came just days after the PBOC lowered a key short-term rate.

Robin Xing, economist at Goldman Sachs, is struck by the “reactive nature of easing” by PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng. Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, called it a “sign that the Chinese authorities are concerned about the state of the Chinese economy, which is more worrying for stock markets and for investors.”

All the more reason to use the recent Third Plenum as an opportunity to accelerate moves to increase the quality of growth, not just the quantity.

The weeks since the meeting have left unclear the status of Xi’s pledges to get bad assets off property developers’ balance sheets to avoid defaults. The same goes for creating social safety nets to prod households to save less and spend more, the fate of internet platforms uncertain about the regulatory outlook and moves to build more vibrant capital markets.

Though Xi has been promising to prioritize capital market development since 2013, the effort seemed to get a big lift last November. That was when Xi met with a who’s-who of top chieftains in San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit – including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla chief Elon Musk and Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman.

Other top executives on hand to rub elbows with the man leading an economy with which the US does roughly $600 billion of trade annually: Marc Benioff of Salesforce; Stan Deal of Boeing; Raj Subramaniam of FedEx; Ryan McInerney of Visa; Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates; Albert Bourla of Pfizer; Merit Janow of Mastercard; and Larry Fink of BlackRock.

There, Xi raised expectations for his inner circle, led by Premier Li Qiang, to strengthen capital markets in foundational ways. Since then, though, progress on the ground in China hasn’t matched the lofty rhetoric.

The speed with which capital has continued to flee China suggests that Xi’s efforts to communicate that Beijing is at the top of its myriad challenges are not getting through to investors. That includes efforts to stabilize a cratering property market and overall weak demand.

There’s confusion in international circles, too, about Xi’s commitment to giving the private sector and market forces “decisive” roles in Beijing decision-making. That 2012-2013 pledge was first called into question in 2015 when Xi’s government intervened aggressively to stabilize Shanghai stocks.

Questions only increased after Xi began cracking down hard on mainland tech platforms in late 2020, starting with Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group. The inquisition rapidly widened to Baidu, Didi Global, JD.com, Tencent and other top internet companies. It even had Wall Street banks debating whether China might have become “uninvestable.”

Now seems the time to get under the economy’s hood as rarely before. One law of economic gravity that Xi’s team has tried to beat these last 10 years is the idea that a developing nation must build credible and trusted markets before trillions of dollars of outside capital arrive.

In China’s case, this means increasing transparency, making local government officials more accountable, prodding companies to raise their governance games, crafting reliable surveillance mechanisms like credit rating companies and strengthening the financial architecture before the world shows up.

Too often during Xi’s first two terms as leader, China has tried to flip the script, believing it can build a world-class financial system after waves of foreign capital arrive. Whether fair or not, the Xi era’s efforts to communicate that a financial Big Bang is afoot continue to get lost in translation in boardrooms from New York to London to Tokyo.

The sense that Xi’s China tends to over-promise and under-deliver financial upgrade-wise set in back in summer of 2015, back when Shanghai shares plunged by one-third in three weeks. Beijing’s response was to treat the symptoms of the market rout, not the underlying causes.

Since then, Xi stepped up the pace of winning Chinese stocks places in top global indices – from MSCI for stocks to FTSE-Russell for bonds. Yet increases in access to yuan-denominated assets often outpace reforms needed to prepare China Inc for the global prime time.

Whether China can win back investors’ trust is an open question. As Chinese stocks are reminding us – the Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 Index is down more than 13% this year – there are certain laws of gravity that still apply to economies transitioning from state-driven and export-led growth to services, innovation and domestic consumption.

Trouble is, China’s bond market – totaling more than $23 trillion overall – is underpinned by a developing economy with limited liquidity and hedging tools, a giant and opaque state sector, and a rudimentary credit-rating system that can obscure risk and misallocate capital.

For all China’s promises, this makes it more of a buyer-beware market than many investors expected.

This gets at other split screens. On one, China’s inclusion in major benchmarks is luring bond giants like BlackRock. On screen No. 2: the crisis of confidence surrounding developers like China Evergrande Group offer a stark reminder of the mainland’s opacity and excesses. 

The prevalence of local government financing vehicles – roughly $13 trillion of such off-balance sheet LGFVs – can be a major turnoff for foreign bond funds.

Not only are they difficult to analyze but their fingerprints also touch the operations of everything from commercial banks’ wealth management units to mutual funds to hedge funds to insurers to the gamut of securities companies.

Hence the need for deeper bond markets. And, of course, for regulators in Beijing to avoid steps that spook global markets anew. Among recent missteps by Xi’s party: last year’s crackdown on foreign consultancy firms on which global investors and multinational firms rely for information and analysis.

The move, supposedly part of a nationwide anti-espionage campaign, reduced the appetite for investment from some overseas firms. When US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s team visits Beijing these days, the consultancy policy is among the examples of “non-market” practices and “coercive actions” against American firms that US officials highlight.

Deeper debt markets would help sort out the cart-before-the-horse problem that afflicts China’s economy. During the Xi era and before it, China too often believed that pulling in more foreign capital was a reform all its own. It’s been slower to strengthen China’s financial system ahead of those waves of overseas capital.

And pulling down new curtains of opacity won’t help to reverse recent capital outflows and flagging investor confidence.

Follow William Pesek on X at @WilliamPesek

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Legislation forces US firms to prepare for a Taiwan war – Asia Times

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Some American legislators have proposed a bipartisan legislative bill that will require United States-listed firms to disclose their assets and businesses in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and estimate the economic losses they will suffer if China invades Taiwan. 

The PRC Risk Transparency Act, if passed and implemented, will amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to require US-listed firms to annually disclose the percentage of total revenue, profits, capital investment and supply chain involvement in China and perform security analysis related to their exposures. 

The Act will require US-listed firms to make plans for a sudden loss of market access in China if the country invades Taiwan, a self-governing island over which Beijing claims to have sovereignty and has vowed to “reunite” with the mainland. 

These firms need to consider different case scenarios including a more than 80% decline in bilateral trade between the US and China, a complete cessation in the trade of goods with military end-use or dual-use applications and an extreme situation in which Beijing seizes all China-based assets of American companies that could be repurposed for military production. 

The bill was jointly introduced by the House Financial Service Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance and International Financial Institutions chairman Blaine Luetkemeyer and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party chairman John Moolenaar on July 25. 

The bill needs approval from both the US House of Representatives and Senate and the US president’s signature in order to become law. 

A spokesperson of Luetkemeyer’s office told the media that another way to push the legislation is to add this Act, together with the previously proposed Chinese Military Aggression Act, to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s coming legislation package, which aims to restrict US investments in China and punish the Chinese firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran.

Johnson said in early July that Congress targets to pass a significant legislation package by the end of this year to curb China as the country now leading an “axis” of adversaries that includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. 

John Aquilino, head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said in March that he believes China’s military will be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027. 

In April, Luetkemeyer introduced the Chinese Military Aggression Act, which will direct the Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to analyze, study and report on market implications and vulnerabilities related to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The PRC Risk Transparency Act was proposed two days before US State Secretary Antony Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Laos on July 27. 

During the meeting, Blinken expressed concerns over China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and provocative actions against Taiwan. 

Wang countered that Taiwanese separatists are the ones creating trouble in the Taiwan Strait and that China will not hesitate to take countermeasures. He said the US has been trying to alienate Beijing and Moscow since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out but China will not back down under external pressure. 

A Shanxi-based Chinese columnist says in an article published on Monday that Wang has already seen through Blinken’s tricks – Washington wanted to increase communications with Beijing but would not stop suppressing China. 

He says it was probably the last time for Blinken to visit Asia with the title of US State Secretary. He says Blinken may not be able to stay in his position after the US presidential election in November.  

Wider coverage

The PRC Risk Transparency Act covers several more sectors than the Executive Order signed by President Joe Biden last August. The latter only restricts and monitors US investments in Chinese semiconductor, quantum computing and artificial intelligence companies for national security reasons. 

The Act’s restrictions are also much wider than similar bills introduced by other US lawmakers.

Last November, US Senators Bob Casey and Rick Scott introduced the Disclosing Investments in Foreign Adversaries Act to provide transparency in investments made by American hedge funds and private equity firms in countries of concern like China and Russia.

The legislation would require these private investment funds to annually disclose any assets invested in countries like China to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Casey said it is vital to know if any US money is being used to boost the economies of some foreign adversaries who steal technological know-how and jobs from America.

In March this year, Congresspeople Victoria Spartz and Brad Sherman introduced four bills that aim to mitigate the strategic, commercial and national security threats posed by China to the American economy and financial markets. 

Among the four, the China Risk Reporting Act requires US-listed firms to disclose annually the degree to which they are dependent upon China and the risks China poses, such as supply chain disruptions, intellectual property theft or nationalization of assets. 

“If China invades Taiwan, Congress should be able to impose sanctions, knowing American companies have insulated themselves from the rupture,” Spartz and Sherman said in a press release. “Hopefully, this will deter such an invasion.”

The newly proposed PRC Risk Transparency Act demands more details, such as US-listed firms’ capital investment in China and their joint ventures’ revenues and profits. 

In recent years, many US companies have already started cutting their investments in China.

China’s foreign direct investment fell 8% to 1.13 trillion yuan (US$156 billion) in 2023 from a year ago, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The figure dropped 29.1% year-on-year to 498.9 billion yuan in the first half of this year. Chinese officials said it’s normal to have some fluctuations as FDI had grown during 2013-2022. 

‘US$1.6 trillion loss’

Before the US can estimate its economic losses from a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Beijing has already made an estimation and used it to warn of the consequences of US decoupling from China. 

“Statistics show that ending the permanent normal trade relations with China would lead to a $1.6 trillion-economic loss for the US,” Xie Feng, Chinese Ambassador to the US, said in a speech at the Symposium in Commemoration of the 45th Anniversary of China-US Diplomatic Relations on July 27. 

He said over 70,000 American companies are benefiting from China’s development while their exports to China have supported 930,000 American jobs. 

“To our two countries, respective success means mutual opportunities, not challenges, and the two sides should help each other succeed, not undermine each other,” he said. “We need to make the list of cooperation longer and the negative list shorter.”

Xie’s speech was posted on the website of the Chinese Embassy in the US on Tuesday. 

Read: US targets Hong Kong chip transshipments to Russia

Follow Jeff Pao on X: @jeffpao3

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Pattaya City gets ready to erect new monorail line

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PUBLISHED : 31 Jul 2024 at 05:46


Pattaya City is looking forward to welcoming a new monorail line which, according to the results of a recent study, would be an ideal mechanism to improve the coastal city’s public transport system and contribute greatly to its economic development.

Called the Red Line, the new monorail system will comprise ten stations and stretch 17.37 kilometres, according to a feasibility study conducted on the new monorail presented at Tuesday’s public hearing, the second such hearing on the new project.

Tuesday’s meeting was conducted by a group of consultant companies hired to design the new electric rail project and conduct an environmental impact assessment on it.

A large number of local business owners with a keen interest in the new line also attended to offer feedback.

Pattaya’s Red Line monorail route will start at Thappraya Intersection, continue onto Thap Phraya Road and then Jomtien Second Road until meeting Jomtien Intersection, turn left onto Chaiyaphruek 1 Road, then enter Chaiyaphruek 2 Road and continue until reaching the Eastern National Sports Training Centre, according to the same report.

The monorail style of electric rail systems was chosen for this project because it will likely take up the least traffic space on these roads and is most suitable to the city’s tourism context, said the report.

These advantages, however, come with the higher costs of construction and maintenance, said the report.

Each station on the line is designed to be about 1km from the next, said the study.

The most suitable format of investment selected for this project is the public private partnership (PPP) one, said the study.

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Commentary: Watch what China does, not just what it says, after unsurprising economic plenum

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WATCH WHAT CHINA DOES, NOT JUST WHAT IT SAYS

That said, businesses and investors should watch what China does, not just what it says.

There are useful policies that are already in place, such as the Real World Evidence (RWE) programmes for medical technology companies entering China. The first RWE programme, launched in Hainan province in 2019 and followed by the Greater Bay Area in 2020, gives medtech companies early access to the market through trials and studies for rare diseases and clinically urgent needs, and the opportunity to fast-track regulatory approvals, reimbursement listing, and/or commercialisation, potentially enabling them to influence and shape the market.

The plenum stated that it is focused on creating a “beautiful China”, by accelerating green transformation and pursuing green, low-carbon development, among others. This alone may not say much.

But if taken together with its directions of improving the mechanism for modern infrastructure construction and the resilience and security of industrial supply chains, the opportunities in environmental sustainability could be vast.

For instance, the plenum proposed deeper reforms of its railway system and further develop the “low-altitude economy” (such as drones and flying cars). This means demand for renewable energy will likely increase. The need to secure the supply chain in the production of these assets would be critical.

Perhaps the most telling sign that businesses should keep their eyes on China’s actions is that the plenum specified a timeline to achieve the reforms. In past plenums, the CCP had not set such timelines.

This time, unusually, Beijing has given clear indication of a 2029 deadline – an important year as the People’s Republic of China celebrates its 80th anniversary. Some analysts see this as an effort to focus the CCP on implementing the reforms.

This, in a way, provides a direction for businesses and markets on China’s roadmap.

While the road ahead is fraught with challenges, businesses that can navigate these complexities and leverage emerging opportunities will be well-positioned to thrive.

Thomas Kwan is Managing Director of Hong Kong at Penta Group.

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Graft claims hit BMA officials

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Probe links 25 to gym gear scandal

PUBLISHED : 31 Jul 2024 at 05:00

Local residents use fitness equipment at Wachirabenjathat Park, or Suan Rod Fai, in Chatuchak district. (Photo: Pornprom Satrabhaya)
Local residents use fitness equipment at Wachirabenjathat Park, or Suan Rod Fai, in Chatuchak district. (Photo: Pornprom Satrabhaya)

At least 25 officials at the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) are believed to have been involved in alleged bidding price collusion, which resulted in the BMA purchasing gym equipment for seven projects at vastly inflated prices totalling 77.22 million baht, City Hall said on Tuesday, citing results of a preliminary investigation.

One of those suspects has already resigned, while the rest will be transferred to inactive posts pending a further probe to determine whether their respective roles in the procurement projects amount to serious disciplinary misconduct, said Nuthapong Disayabutr, a deputy city clerk speaking in his capacity as director of the BMA’s anti-corruption centre.

He said the findings from the preliminary probe will also be forwarded to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) as further legal action is considered.

The NACC has the authority to investigate any suspected collusion in bidding prices, he said.

Mr Nuthapong said the BMA has so far found that an unjustifiable requirement was imposed on bidding contenders, making the bidding for these seven procurement projects unfair as it rendered many other contenders unqualified. The requirement was that all eligible contenders must have previously won at least 40 contracts worth at least the value of the BMA’s seven projects.

This was unnecessary and far more than the requirement recommended by the Ministry of Finance, he said.

The controversy first emerged when the Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand (ACT) posted about the matter on its Facebook page, prompting the BMA to act.

Only two companies won the right to bid to supply the gym equipment in the seven projects, worth 17.91 million, 15.69 million, 12.11 million, 11.52 million, 11.01 million, 4.99 million and 4.99 million baht, respectively, according to the ACT.

The reserve prices were tactically set at a very high level which explained why the winning bids appeared lower than the median prices set, said the ACT. Certain items sold for even higher than a brand new car, the ACT said, adding that a treadmill was purchased for 759,000 baht, while a similar product sold elsewhere cost only between 100,000 and 300,000.

Responding to the probe’s findings, Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt said corruption was a lamentable reality at the BMA that required ongoing suppression. He blamed some of the problems on loopholes in the state procurement law, which he said need fixing. Other state agencies have similar problems, he said.

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Why did US miss the China-led battery revolution? – Asia Times

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In: Asia, Technology

Once in a great while, Twitter X can still be a place for interesting discussions instead of breathless political screeching. July 29 was one of those times. I wrote a thread asking why America missed the battery revolution and got a lot of very interesting responses. So I thought I’d redo that thread as a blog post and expand on it a bit.

Basically, batteries are a technological revolution in progress. They’re a key part of a larger, more general revolution: the replacement of controlled combustion with electricity as the main way that human beings produce energy and move it around.

The key advantage of batteries – the thing that no other technology or energy source can really do well – is that they let you store energy, move it around, and then remove it again. They’re a way to move energy through both time and space.

I first realized the transformative power of batteries when I saw people using battery-powered leaf blowers as a weapon in the riots of 2020. But what really drove it home for me was when I invested in a startup called Impulse that makes battery-powered appliances. Once you’ve seen a battery-powered stove boil a pot of water in a few seconds, it’s hard not to think the world has changed:

YouTube video

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This kind of magic wasn’t possible even a few years ago – batteries didn’t have the power density required to do this. The technology has been advancing by leaps and bounds in recent years.

That’s why you’re seeing battery-powered drones suddenly take over the modern battlefield, e-bikes transform transportation, and China’s car companies conquer the automotive industry.

It’s why you’re seeing solar power suddenly become smooth and reliable instead of intermittent. It’s why your phone can run all day without needing to be recharged. And these are only the beginning of what batteries will be able to do, since the technology is still improving rapidly at a fundamental level.

But what’s strange is how surprising this all feels – not just to me, but to the United States as a whole. I knew about Tesla and the coming of EVs years ago, of course. And from reading climate pundits, I knew that battery storage would be an important complement to solar power. I knew about Barack Obama’s attempts to support American battery companies.

But I didn’t have any idea how many different things batteries would be used for, or how good they would get. Relatively few media outlets, politicians, or intellectuals talked about batteries as a transformative technology. This is still true today — outside of solar storage and EVs, I don’t see many people gushing about batteries.

The US government, too, seems to have been caught a bit flat-footed. Obama did support some battery companies (including Tesla!). But there was never any big government push for better batteries, the way there was for genetic sequencing, fracking or even solar power.

When you read a history of the lithium-ion battery, it’s all just a scattered network of researchers at British and Japanese universities — and, strangely, Exxon — creating the chemistries that enabled the revolution.

The key discoveries happened in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but it wasn’t until the 2000s that US government research started making some important contributions and US policy started supporting the commercialization of batteries.

Batteries are the first big technological revolution that the US missed

The failure of both American media and the American government to anticipate the battery revolution is actually a huge historical outlier.

When it comes to any other major technological revolution I can think of, the US was very early to the party — driving the key research and development, hyping up the technology well before it was commercially viable, and making a major effort at early commercialization. Here are a bunch of examples:

Computers: The US was very early to the computer revolution, including technology, theory, and applications. It produced the first digital electronic computer and the first modern computer (ENIAC) in the 1940s. The US defense establishment recognized the importance of computing early on, and supported it over the years. No other country has done as much to advance computing technology or commercialize computers.

Space: This was the case where the US came closest to getting “scooped” on a technology. Both the US and the USSR recognized the potential importance of space and rocketry after World War 2, but the USSR’s big push in the field allowed it to get to space first.

The US made a mighty — and ultimately successful — effort to catch up and overtake its rival, and still dominates the space industry and space innovation to this day. The hype about space in the US was absolutely enormous, especially after the “Sputnik moment.”

Nuclear power: The US and USSR both developed nuclear power at around the same time in the 1950s. Both countries hyped the technology heavily and poured government funding into building and improving nuclear reactors.

Semiconductors: The US invented the semiconductor, and its potential applications for civilian computing and for military weaponry were recognized and widely discussed shortly afterwards. The US also invented the microprocessor, extreme ultraviolet lithography, and most of the other core technologies associated with semiconductors – always with heavy government support. Much has been made of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor fabrication in recent years but the US still holds the pole position in research, design and many key areas of tool manufacturing and software.

Solar power: The US was very early to the idea that solar power would be a replacement for fossil fuels. The Carter administration heavily promoted the technology (famously putting solar panels on the White House), more than 30 years before it became cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Popular consciousness of solar’s potential was high; my parents told me from a young age that solar would eventually power the country. US government-funded research was the main force pushing solar costs down until the mid-2000s.

The internet: The US invented and/or funded the invention of all of the key technologies of the internet up until the 2010s. It built out most of the key internet infrastructure. Excitement about the internet’s potential was off the charts for decades, and US policymakers supported the industry’s development with far-sighted laws.

Fracking: The US government heavily funded and supported the development of hydraulic fracturing technology since the 1970s, and the US is still overwhelmingly dominant in this technology.

Genetics: The US promoted research into genetics from the very start, doing much of the basic discovery work, and funding the famous Human Genome Project that unlocked a revolution in biotechnology. The US also pioneered mRNA vaccines and many other biotech breakthroughs, again with the help of far-sighted government and industry support.

AI: The basic technologies of modern AI were invented in the US, with far-sighted investments from big companies (especially Google) and heavy support from the US government. Although the big breakthroughs in the 2010s came as a surprise, US policy has always acted rapidly to make sure that the US has a #1 position in the field.

In other words, the US almost always anticipates each technological revolution, supports that technology with far-sighted government and industry action, invents many of the key technologies, innovates many of the key products, and at least attempts to commercialize the technology via American companies. This is overwhelmingly the norm.

But for batteries, the US did only some of these steps. The potential of batteries doesn’t seem to have been widely anticipated decades in advance by the US media or government.

Battery technology received a bit of support, but not a huge amount. Some of the key invention was done in the US, but more was done in Japan and the UK, and the key products were innovated and successfully commercialized in Japan.

And in recent years, it has been the People’s Republic of China that has seized the lead in battery technology. China is the leader in battery manufacturing, of course, just as it is the leader in solar manufacturing. That has allowed China to electrify its economy much faster than the rest of the world:

Source: RMI

But in batteries, China is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. CATL, China’s leading battery company, appears to have invented a new kind of semi-solid lithium-ion battery that has enough energy density to power an airplane.

The country is launching a big effort to invent the first commercially viable solid-state batteries. There are various other cutting-edge efforts happening in the country as well.

This is not to say that China anticipated the battery revolution well in advance either. But had the US done so, we might have had a bigger head start on China.

So why did the US fail to anticipate this one technological revolution, while catching all the others? Maybe no country gets a perfect 1.000 batting average. But when I asked this question in my thread, I got a number of interesting hypotheses in the replies.

Hypothesis 1: Supply chains

The first hypothesis, suggested by Glenn Luk and some others, was that innovation in batteries comes from supply chains. Battery manufacturing is dominated by China, since it’s a low-margin, capital-intensive, heavily polluting industry.

China also dominates the upstream primary industries that create the components and materials used in batteries — graphite mining and processing, lithium processing, and so on. And China dominates the downstream electronics industries — consumer electronics, drones, and now EVs — that use lots of batteries. These factors probably helped China innovate faster than America in the space.

When you control the upstream industries that feed into batteries, you’re able to get cheaper inputs. That allows faster iteration and cheaper experimentation.

When you control battery manufacturing itself, you have a lot of knowledgeable battery engineers and scientists who sit around thinking about ways to make batteries even better. You also have big dominant companies like CATL who are motivated to invest in basic battery R&D.

And when you control the downstream electronics industries that use batteries, you get better and faster input about what kinds of battery breakthroughs would be most useful. This helps steer the direction of innovation.

I generally buy the “supply chains” hypothesis for why China is innovating faster than America in batteries right now. But it can’t easily explain why the US paid insufficient attention to the technology before it was commercialized, back in the 1980s and 1990s.

All of the points above are equally true about solar power, and yet Americans have been excited about solar power for many decades, while arguably they’re not even that excited about batteries right now.

Also, the US has long been dominant in the design of phones and laptop computers, which are some of the most important downstream industries that use batteries. And for many years, the US was dominant in EV manufacturing too, thanks to Tesla. It’s worth asking why that didn’t give the US the opportunity to steer battery innovation more than it did.

Hypothesis 2: Political and industrial opposition

Matt Yglesias suggested that Republicans blocked America from making a big push for batteries during the Obama years. In general, Americans will turn anything into a culture war, and there certainly does seem to have been quite a lot of battery-skepticism from the right:

Many others suggested opposition from oil companies. It is true that oil companies have tried to discourage adoption of electric vehicles, which probably held back an important downstream industry to some degree. But I can’t find information about whether they also tried to stop battery research.

Anyway, opposition from Republicans and oil companies is plausible, but there are reasons to doubt that this is a full explanation either. For one thing, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and other government granting agencies are neither partisan Republicans nor in thrall to Big Oil.

Neither are America’s major newspapers, TV stations and other media outlets. And yet these actors also weren’t as excited about batteries as they should have been.

Also, GOP and oil-company opposition was probably even stronger in solar, and that didn’t stop America’s writers, researchers, engineers, and bureaucrats from maintaining a strong interest in it for decades. Batteries, in contrast, were an afterthought.

Also, it’s worth noting that despite GOP domination and a strong oil industry presence, the state of Texas is charging ahead with battery storage — beating out even California:

Source: Cleanview

This may represent a sea change from 10 or 20 years ago, but I have my doubts.

Hypothesis 3: A few bad bets and some unfair competition

Much of the discourse around America’s difficulties in the battery industry revolves around the story of A123 Systems. This was a promising battery startup in Massachusetts that received a lot of support from the US government, but ultimately failed and was sold to a Chinese company in 2012.

Sam D’Amico of Impulse (the guy who made the super-powered battery stove) argues that A123’s failure, in addition to some other smart bets by Chinese manufacturers, was decisive in China pulling ahead:

Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, wrote a thoughtful thread in response to my own thread. He thinks that technology theft was another key reason for A123’s demise:

He also points out that like in solar, China subsidizes its producers to produce both batteries and EVs below cost, making it very hard for other countries’ companies to stay in those markets:

Screenshot

A number of other people also pointed out the case of a cutting-edge battery technology, invented in the US, that the Department of Energy licensed to China — undercutting American startups that were trying to use it, and strengthening China’s own industry.

These examples are all concerning and should prompt changes in how the US handles R&D, industrial policy, and technology licensing. They all help explain how China has managed to take the lead in batteries and related technologies.

But they don’t really explain why concerted efforts at battery research got started so late in the US, or why these efforts have still received only modest funding, or why the media and scientific establishment generally failed to anticipate how big of a deal batteries would be.

Although other countries — Germany, Japan, the USSR — all laid claim to the mantle of “country of the future” at various times throughout the 20th century, there was never any real doubt that the title still belonged to the US.

America had the institutional competence, market size, industrial prowess, and cultural foresight to almost always see the Next Big Thing well before it hit the shelves. But as the failure in batteries shows, the mantle of “country of the future” is not America’s by birthright.

The US didn’t totally miss the battery revolution – it did eventually start supporting some research and some companies and excitement built gradually.

But given the fact that batteries are pretty much the only way of storing energy in a portable form (to be joined by synthetic fuels at some unspecified point in the future), it seems pretty obvious that the US should have gotten a lot more excited about them a lot earlier than it did.

All of the potential explanations for why America didn’t see the potential of a battery-powered future, as it had seen the potential of so many other transformative technologies, fall short in some way. The true answer remains something of a mystery.

Whatever the reason, though, the US should respond by A.) playing catch-up in batteries the way we caught up to the USSR in space in the 20th century, and B.) making sure our scientific, governmental and media institutions aren’t broken in some way that causes them to miss other revolutions coming down the pipe.

This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here and become a Noahopinion subscriber here.

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US needs to double down on directed energy weapons – Asia Times

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In the 1980s, the United States faced a profound challenge: winning a conventional war in Europe against a numerically superior Soviet army. 

Technological innovation – most notably the development of smart, precision munitions – provided a solution. Instead of needing tens or even hundreds of unguided munitions to hit a target, one smart munition would often suffice. 

This meant that a single plane could destroy a whole series of Russian tanks in a single mission, or strike a series of logistics and infrastructure targets, with the expectation of hitting nearly every one. 

This produced a revolutionary asymmetry and made huge Soviet investments obsolete. Precision provided a way to defeat scale. 

Today, the US faces a similar situation: its adversaries are mass-producing drones and missiles at enormous scale. A revolutionary new technology is desperately needed in order to make this investment obsolete.

Today, China controls 70% of the world’s production of enterprise drones and 90% of the commercial drone market. They supply technology and components to Russia for its war on Ukraine. Russia uses hundreds of drones and missiles every day to attack civilian and infrastructure targets in Ukraine. 

Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, has an estimated stockpile of 150,000-200,000 rockets and missiles, more than enough to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. The defensive munitions for Iron Dome cost around US$40,000 per missile while the offensive munitions can, in many cases, cost much less. 

SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, used to intercept ballistic missiles, cost between millions and tens of millions of dollars each. Drone and missile-based air war is currently offensive-dominant.

To stop China from invading Taiwan, Russia from destroying Ukraine and Iran and its proxies from ravaging Israel requires the establishment of uncontested air superiority over these territories. Creating even small bubbles of safety around cities and critical infrastructure could be revolutionary. 

Though the defense against seaborne surface and underwater drones would remain a problem, the creation of bubbles of safety over critical maritime choke points for air defense of commercial shipping could be impactful. And the ability to arm commercial ships with anti-missile defenses at modest cost would be revolutionary. 

The United States now faces the possibility of a four-front war launched by Eurasian autocratic regimes. However, the US industrial base is simply not tooled up to provide surge capacity or build the relevant munitions. Even if it were, the economics of defending against sophisticated airborne threats en-masse would be prohibitive with existing technology.

But there is a technological solution: directed energy weapons. Directed energy systems already work –  the Royal Navy has demonstrated their Dragonfire system working in the field and the US Navy is about to demonstrate a 300KW system. Israel has demonstrated Iron Beam, which is expected to have a range of over 10 kilometers and can defeat missiles, mortars, drones and aircraft.

Estimates show that these systems will take seconds to defeat incoming munitions from miles away at a very modest cost-per-shot with an infinite magazine capacity limited only by power generation capability. 

This will shift air war – and drone, missile, and mortar attacks in particular – from offensive to defensive dominance. To break through a dense directed-energy defense, enormous numbers of munitions would need to be fired simultaneously.

Hezbollah and Iran are almost certainly looking at Israeli development and upcoming deployments of the Iron Beam system and considering the possibility that their immense investment in missiles could become obsolete. They could thus perceive a “use it or lose it” situation for their missile arsenal.

Most current drones rely on GPS or human guidance for navigation and targeting, making them vulnerable to electronic jamming. But future drones will be fully autonomous, meaning that to achieve mission kill, either the sensors (i.e. cameras) or the drone itself will need to be disabled. For that, laser-based directed energy systems are the best solution.

Today, the United States spends around a billion dollars per year on directed energy. This is nowhere near enough. Instead, multiple, competing efforts need to occur in parallel using a diversity of technical approaches – and on a much larger scale.

Lasers need to be developed at multiple wavelengths to directly defeat munitions and to achieve mission-kill by destroying sensors. Radio frequency and microwave-directed energy to disrupt electronics is also a useful and potentially critical technology.

Spending needs to focus on systems that can be brought rapidly to production, not just on demonstrators or technology development, while the ecosystem for building these systems in large quantities needs to be built out rapidly.

Critically, component technologies need to be sourced in the United States and in closely allied states in order to ensure that the supply chain for these systems is secure.

The challenges in making directed energy into a practical warfighting technology relate to engineering, not basic science. Unlike during the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) era of the 1980s, the technological improvements that are needed are comparatively straightforward.

Contract vehicles with commercial terms, based on payment on delivery, can be deployed to bring commercial players to the table to deliver systems quickly and at low risk to the government. Semiconductor lasers already improve by a factor of 10x every eight years. With money and effort, this can be accelerated dramatically.

Multiple alternative laser architectures are already available that can be pursued in parallel. The same goes for bulk optics, feedback systems and thermal dissipation tools, as well as the systems integration. A diversity of systems needs to be built for different applications, from squad-level protection of infantry, to city- and theater-level protection against ballistic missiles. 

One of the key impediments – atmospheric propagation – is absent in space: Revisiting the idea of space-based systems for anti-ballistic missile applications is worthwhile, especially in the context of SpaceX’s dramatic reduction in launch costs.

Directed energy weapons have the potential to revolutionize warfare by providing a cost-effective and efficient way to defend against drones, missiles and aircraft.

The United States needs to make a significant investment in directed energy research, development and production in order to deter potential adversaries and protect both America and its allies. 

By leveraging commercial technologies and adopting a rapid, commercial contract-based acquisition process, the US can quickly field directed energy systems that will provide a decisive edge on the battlefield. Doing so will be every bit as disruptive as the development of precision munitions was in the 1980s.

Michael Hochberg earned his PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University and the President of Periplous LLC, which provides advisory services on strategy, technology and organization design.

He co-founded four companies, representing an exit value over a billion dollars in aggregate, spent some time as a tenured professor and started the world’s first silicon photonics foundry service.

His publications include a co-authored, widely used textbook on silicon photonics and his articles have appeared in Science, Nature, National Review, The Hill, American Spectator, RealClearDefense, Fast Company, Naval War College Review, etc. Michael’s writings can be found at longwalls.substack.com, and his twitter is @TheHochberg.

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Thailand’s new carbon tax won’t move the climate needle yet, but could push region to tackle emissions together

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Like in Singapore, the tax rate and types of industries targeted in Thailand are expected to expand. For example, a higher tax could eventually be introduced to battery production and the transport or manufacturing sectors.

“As the time goes by, we will see an increase from 200 baht per tonne. How high, we don’t know. There’s no ceiling,” said Associate Professor Wongkot Wongsapai, deputy director of the Multidisciplinary Research Institute at Chiang Mai University.

The tax will be part of a broader legislative package under the Thailand Climate Change Act, expected to take one to three years to implement and could include mandatory emissions reporting, a formal climate change fund and an emissions trading scheme where firms can buy and sell carbon credits.

Under such a scheme, the government would set a cap or a maximum amount of emissions allowed, and a firm that manages to reduce its emissions below that cap could sell its extra allowance to a high-polluting firm.

“That would allow those companies to have more flexibility … They can purchase carbon credits or they may install new technologies instead,” said Assoc Prof Nattapong Puttanapong from the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University.

“Maybe the new technology might be too expensive, so you just trade the credits, or if you realise that the new technology is affordable enough, (you) can implement them,” he explained.

COULD MALAYSIA, INDONESIA BE NEXT?

Other countries in the region have also taken steps on carbon pricing.

Indonesia was supposed to introduce the tax in 2022 but postponed its implementation to 2025, saying it needs time to make sure the scheme would not clash with existing laws and regulations.

A Malaysian minister said this month the country will have to start implementing carbon pricing to facilitate carbon trading, and look into carbon taxing as its trade partner the European Union (EU) prepares to start its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2026.

The CBAM puts a carbon emissions price in the form of a tariff on imported goods and aims to level competition, ensuring that EU-produced goods subject to a carbon tax do not lose out to imported goods without one imposed.

“Under CBAM, the export of steel and the other five listed items from Malaysia will be taxed by the EU, unless Malaysia collects the tax,” said the country’s investment, trade and industry deputy minister Liew Chin Tong, as reported by news agency Bernama.

“Carbon pricing, trading, and taxing are crucial aspects of the decarbonisation agenda.”

With the CBAM, the Thai government will negotiate with the EU to ensure Thai exports are not penalised twice – once the carbon tax is active – and allow Thai products to be promoted as more climate-friendly.

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