Some of the biggest solar factories in Vietnam owned by Chinese people are reducing manufacturing and firing employees as a result of the rising US industry tariff burdens on it and three other Southeast Asian nations. However, in nearby Indonesia and Laos, a slew of new Chinese-owned thermal plants areContinue Reading
IsroIndia recently announced a host of ambitious space projects and approved 227bn rupees ($ 2.7bn, £2.1bn ) for them.
The programs include the construction of India’s traditional space station, sending an spacecraft to Venus, and creating a fresh, reusable, heavy-lifting rocket to launch satellites.
Although it is the largest allocation of funds to area projects ever made in India, they are not spectacular and have once again highlighted the cost-effectiveness of the country’s space program.
Experts around the world have marvelled at how little Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) Moon, Mars and solar missions have cost. India spent $74m on the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan and $75m on last year’s historic Chandrayaan-3 – less than the $100m spent on the sci-fi thriller Gravity.
Nasa’s Maven orbiter had cost $582m and Russia’s Luna-25, which crashed on to the Moon’s surface two days before Chandrayaan-3’s landing, had cost 12.6bn roubles ($133m).
Despite the low cost, scientists say India is punching much above its weight by aiming to do valuable work.
Chandrayaan-1 was the first to confirm the presence of water in lunar soil and Mangalyaan carried a payload to study methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Images and data sent by Chandrayaan-3 are being looked at with great interest by space enthusiasts around the world.
How does India manage to keep the prices so small?
Screenshot from DoordarshanSisir Kumar Das, a retired civil servant who oversaw Isro’s funds for more than 20 years, claims that the prudence dates back to the 1960s, when scientists second presented a space program to the state.
India was struggling to serve its inhabitants and maintain adequate hospitals and schools, and it had only been granted independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of Isro and scientist, had to persuade the state that a space program was not just a powerful comfort that had no place in a poor nation like India. He explained to the BBC that spacecraft could improve the way India serves its members.
But India’s space programme has always had to work with a tight budget in a country with conflicting needs and demands. Photographs from the 1960s and 70s show scientists carrying rockets and satellites on cycles or even a bullock cart.
Years later and after several successful interstellar missions, Isro’s funds remains modest. This year, India’s budgetary allocation for its space programme is 130bn rupees ($ 1.55bn )- Nasa’s budget for the year is$ 25bn.
According to Mr. Das, the key factor in why Isro’s operations are so inexpensive is that all of its equipment is made in India and its technology is developed locally.
In 1974, after Delhi conducted its first nuclear test and the West imposed an sanctions, banning transfer of technology to India, the limits were “turned into a blessing in disguise” for the space program, he adds.
” Our scientists seized it as a motivating factor for the development of their own technologies.” All the tools they needed was produced locally, and labor costs and pay were noticeably lower in this country than in the US or Europe.
IsroAccording to research author Pallava Bagla, Nasa outsources dish production to private businesses and also takes out plan for its operations, which add to their costs, in contrast to Isro.
” Also, unlike Nasa, India does n’t do engineering models which are used for testing a project before the actual launch. We only have one unit available, and it’s designed to travel. It’s difficult, there are possibilities of accident, but that’s the risk we take. And we are able to get it because it’s a state programme”.
Mylswamy Annadurai, commander of India’s first and second Moon operations and Mars vision, told the BBC that Isro employs much fewer people and pays lower wages, which makes American jobs dynamic.
He claims that because they were so excited about what they did, he “led small, dedicated team of less than 10 and people frequently worked extended periods without any extra pay.”
The small budget for the jobs, he said, often sent them back to the drawing board, allowed them to consider out of the field and led to new innovations.
” For Chandrayaan-1, the allocated resources was$ 89m and that was fine for the initial design. However, it was later decided that the aircraft would need to transport a Moon effect probe, which may add 35 kg.
Scientists had two options: carrying the mission with a heavier spacecraft, which may cost more, or removing some of the equipment to lighten the load.
Getty Images” We chose the second choice. We decreased the number of tension vehicles and batteries from two to one, and the number of jets from 16 to eight.
Reducing the number of capacitors, Mr Annadurai says, meant the release had to take place before the end of 2008.
The aircraft may have two years while orbiting the Moon without experiencing a protracted solar eclipse, which would have an effect on its potential to recharge. Therefore, in order to satisfy the release date, we had to stick to a strict job schedule.
Mangalyaan value but small, Mr Annadurai says, “because we used most of the equipment we had previously designed for Chandrayaan-2 after the next Moon vision got delayed”.
Mr. Bagla calls India’s affordable area program” an incredible feat” because it comes at such a low cost. But as India scales off, the cost may fall.
At the moment, he says, India uses small rocket launchers because they do n’t have anything stronger. But that means India’s spaceship take much longer to reach their destination.
But, when Chandrayaan-3 was launched, it orbited the Earth many times before it was sling-shot into the solar circle, where it went around the Moon a few times before takeoff. On the other hand, Russia’s Luna-25 escaped the Earth’s gravity fast riding a strong Rocket jet.
” We used Mother Earth’s inertia to push us to the Moon. We needed months of meticulous planning. This is something that Isro has mastered and effectively accomplished.
But, Mr Bagla says, India has announced plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2040 and it would need a more powerful rocket to fly the astronauts there quicker.
The government recently said work on this new rocket had already been approved and it would be ready by 2032. This Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV) will be able to carry more weight but also cost more.
Additionally, according to Mr. Bagla, it’s possible that the cost of opening up the space industry will be so minimal once that happens.
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CHILDREN PARTICULARLY VULNERABLE More than 40 times the WHO’s recommended acceptable levels of fine particulate matter ( fine particulate matter ) were present in the air on Saturday, making it dangerous PM2.5 pollutants. PM2.5 degrees on Sunday night exceeded that before decreasing significantly. The municipal environmental protection agency placed newContinue Reading
Cook and his team might have experienced the exact difficulties that other businesses are facing. The US State Department’s 2024 Investment Climate statement on Indonesia cites “restrictive regulations, legal and regulatory confusion, economic nationalism, business isolationism, and conferred interests” as the primary headwinds complicating its foreign funding view. Some of these obstacles may be worked on by politicians.
Indonesia’s market is also largely driven by supplies. Some successful initiatives have succeeded in bringing electric-vehicle power plants to the nation thanks to laws that require foreign companies to obtain raw materials to carry out some of the processing directly. However, the World Trade Organization has likewise condemned them.  ,
Some of the protectionist policies have n’t had the same level of uncertainty and additional headaches that have n’t paid off more broadly. Manufacturing as a percentage of Indonesia’s GDP has ticked down during the past president’s time in office.
Apple, for its part, may find a way to work this out.  ,
Even though it currently controls a sizable portion of the Indonesian smartphone business, it still has a direct and 40 % of the premium market, which represents devices over US$ 600. And the top end had 70 per cent year-on-year progress in supplies last quarter, driven largely by Samsung and Chinese phone manufacturers.  ,
Progress in Indonesia and another emerging markets, according to Apple’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri, was cited as a positive development in the wake of earlier this year’s income difficulties in China.  ,
Apple has noticed some flaws in this country as a result of the rise of local laptop manufacturers. However, these rivals even rule Indonesia: Four of the top five device manufacturers are Chinese.  ,
In general, Chinese cash has poured in while US companies have slowed their foot on foreign opportunities in the Southeast Asian peninsula. It was more than twice as high as it was last time in comparison to the US.  ,
US government data shows it notched a US$14 billion trade deficit with Malaysia across the first eight months of this year, and a US$77 billion trade deficit with Vietnam in the same period. Its trade deficit with Thailand was around US$28 billion.
Vietnam has been “very successful” in getting firms to look at locating some or all of their production processes in the country, explained trade expert Deborah Elms.
“As Vietnam is well connected to key markets via free trade agreements, it has been an important spur to new inbound investment,” said Ms Elms.
Some of this investment is currently coming from Chinese firms looking to diversify their risks, lower production costs or avoid high tariffs that apply to goods directly shipping from China.
“In general, this should not pose a problem. Of course, Vietnam has to educate firms on the rules of these agreements so that firms are following the right steps to legally claim origin,” said Ms Elms of the Asian Trade Centre, a trade-related consultancy in Singapore.
“However, if Trump gets re-elected, Vietnam (especially) may face a problem as Trump is obsessed with the bilateral trade deficit numbers for goods. Vietnam sends way more products to the US than the reverse and he is likely to want to stop this,” she added.
But American firms with sizeable business interests in, and with, China could wield some influence, believes Dr Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at Singapore Institute of International Affairs think tank.
Tariffs and sanctions could be “routinely waived” under heavy lobbying by such firms in the scenario of a second Trump presidency, he said.
“It remains to be seen if a second Trump administration will robustly enforce these hostile measures against China and, by extension, these US tariffs and sanctions-evading destinations in Southeast Asia,” he said.
Additional reporting by Melissa Goh
Skydio, the largest drone manufacturer In the United States, has failed to obtain the batteries made by Japanese TDK’s unit in mainland China after it was sanctioned by the Chinese government three weeks ago.
The California-based company last week sought help from the Biden administration as its Chief Executive Adam Bry met with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and senior officials at the White House, the Financial Times reported.
The Chinese government last month announced its sanctions against Skydio, Huntington Ingalls Industries and Edge Autonomy Operations LLC, as well as 10 senior executives of American defense contractors, and accused them of providing substantial military assistance to Taiwan. Observers couldn’t help noticing that the date of the announcement, October 10, marked the 113th anniversary of the Republic of China.
After the announcement, Chinese officials visited Skydio’s suppliers, including Dongguan Poweramp, a subsidiary of Japan’s TDK, and ordered them to cut ties with the American drone maker, a person familiar with the situation told the Financial Times on Thursday.
“This is a clarifying moment for the drone industry,” Bry told Skydio’s customers in a note obtained by the Financial Times. “If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.”
He said Beijing wants to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers.
Bry told US media that Skydio has a substantial stock of batteries on hand but it does not expect new sources of battery supply until next spring, He said the company has invested in domestic production and sourcing outside of China but batteries are one of the few components it has not yet moved out of China.
Skydio, which has sent more than 1,000 drones to Ukraine for intelligence gathering and reconnaissance purposes, is seeking alternative suppliers in Asia. It has been in touch with Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-him about the issue.
China’s moves to curb Skydio’s battery supply coincided with North Korea’s plan to deploy troops to support the Russian army in Ukraine. US State Secretary Antony Blinken said Thursday that about 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed on the Russian border and are preparing to join combat in Ukraine “in the coming days.”
Although Beijing’s curbs have not yet been able to disrupt Skydio’s drone production, many Chinese commentators are now celebrating.
“China’s sanctions against certain US companies and individuals have initially shown their effects,” A Henan-based columnist using the pseudonym “Spirit No.1” says in an article published on Friday. “The curbs are having a real impact on American firms, as Skydio now has a limited battery supply and needs to seek alternative suppliers.”
The commentator adds, “It is difficult for the US government to help companies overcome the challenge in the short term given the complexity and time required to reconstruct the supply chain.”
He says, with its complete supply chain in the drone sector, China is able to limit the production and supply of the US military drone makers that rely on the Chinese manufacturing sector.
He says that the incident is only reflecting the intensifying technology war between China and the US. He says the US should think twice whether it wants any escalations as it will hurt itself one day.
According to an article by a Hainan-based writer using the pseudonym “No.14 Observation Room,” “China has previously launched several rounds of countermeasures against US firms but people do not know whether these measures really work. Now people are satisfied after seeing Skydio’s failure in getting Poweramp’s batteries.”
He adds that “the US has made up excuses when sanctioning Chinese firms and individuals, and it thinks China can’t do anything to its arms sales to Taiwan. Now China’s counterattack is completely beyond the United States’ expectation. Skydio does not have an alternative supplier.”
That writer says the current Chinese sanctions, which target US defense contractors and drone makers, have displayed only a small part of Beijing’s retaliation capabilities. He says the US defense contractors’ suppliers in China can be targeted.
John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the US and Chinese Communist Party, said the administration and Congress need to work together with industry to set guardrails that protect US companies from CCP economic coercion.
He said China’s control of supply chains for drones, pharmaceuticals and other sectors was a “loaded gun” aimed at the US economy. He said Beijing is weaponizing these supply chain dependencies against US people.
While Skydio is working on sourcing batteries elsewhere, TDK is also implementing its China Plus One strategy by adding new production facilities in India.
TDK Chief Executive Noboru Saito told Nikkei in 2022 that it is diversifying its manufacturing network by expanding in countries such as India. He said at that time that TDK no longer saw China as the world’s manufacturing hub although it would continue to treat the country as its main battery production base.
TDK and a long-term partner, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), in 2021 set up two joint ventures in Xiamen, Fujian province, for the making of electric vehicle batteries.
Saito said in a speech on Investor Day on May 22 this year that TDK has started production of back-end processes for battery packs in India in 2017 to implement its China Plus One strategy. He said the company also started cell production in India in 2022 and will commence production in a new factory in Sohna of the same country in 2025.
“We will continue to expand gradually in line with growth in local demand,” he said. “In our materials procurement efforts, we will maximize business value by strengthening our value chain, including pursuing strategic initiatives such as investing in material suppliers.”
Meanwhile, several US academics co-write in an article published by The Conversation on Friday that, among the 23 battery plant projects announced or expanded since the Inflation Reduction Act became law in the US, construction for 72% of expected production is on track.
They say these 23 companies’ new US factories are expected to create about 30,000 new jobs, with projects mostly in the US Southeast, Midwest and Southwest.
Read: Latest Taiwan drills show off PLA deterrence
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As part of the review, the workgroup will conduct a peer benchmarking exercise with the Guangzhou Metro Corporation and the Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation.
“This will allow us to exchange insights, and benchmark against the two leading metro operators with world-class safety and reliability records,” SMRT said.
“SMRT remains committed to making continual improvements … for the benefit of our commuters and workers.”
National Transport Workers’ Union executive secretary Melvin Yong said the tripartite approach “takes into consideration the views of all stakeholders to bring about win-win-win outcomes”.
“We look forward to contributing to this review, which also draws on successful practices from regional rail operators.
“With studies showing that unionised companies consistently achieve better workplace safety and health outcomes, it is crucial that we bring forward the perspectives and sentiments of our members, as safety improvements should arise from collaboration at all levels, not solely from the top down,” he said in a Facebook post.
“Unlike United Nations’ sanctions, US sanctions are unilateral,” explained S Rajaratnam School of International Studies research fellow Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman.
“But they carry significant weight as the US is the largest economy in the world by GDP (gross domestic product) and it is the global power that dominates the international financial system.”
He said that foreign firms under US sanctions would find it difficult to do business with American entities or individuals, and sell or procure goods and services from the US market.
Such sanctions would also isolate these companies from the international financial system, said Mr Faizal.
“These sanctions could also function as indirect political pressure on other countries, especially those in the non-western world, to do more to rein in the sanctioned companies and be more aligned with the West in efforts to weaken the Russian economy and military-industry complex,” he said.
Dr Shashi Jayakumar, executive director of security consultancy SJK Geostrategic Advisory, noted that this is not the first time that Singapore entities or individuals have been designated under the OFAC sanctions list.
“Singapore entities and individuals have been designated under OFAC in the past on account of their links with, or dealings with, North Korea, Iran or Myanmar,” he said.
In March 2022, Singapore imposed financial measures targeted at designated Russian banks, entities and activities in Russia, as well as fundraising activities benefiting the Russian government.
The Singapore government also imposed export controls on items that can be “directly used as weapons to inflict harm on or to subjugate the Ukrainians”, as well as items that can contribute to offensive cyber operations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said then.
After decades of decline, a new boost in US manufacturing is garnering considerable media attention. In particular, the semiconductor industry has been prioritized for US government support through the CHIPS Act initiative with some US$50 billion worth of state funding.
But what will be needed to increase and sustain US high-technology manufacturing? A serious resurgence of advanced manufacturing (chips being the most demanding) will require much more than investing in more sophisticated equipment in new plants.
It will require training a new generation of highly skilled personnel to operate such plants successfully. While increasingly sophisticated technology is key to much of competitive manufacturing, it is productive only with staff with very specialized training to operate in complex plant environments. Badly managed mechanization will hinder rather than promote value creation.
I learned from experience in semiconductor manufacturing. Early in my career at RCA, I was tasked with designing and operating one of the first silicon transistor factories to manufacture the 2N2102, a transistor I had developed for use in building computer and other electronic systems.
I outfitted the factory with equipment scaled from my laboratory. At the time, no commercial production equipment existed. For example, the optical lithographic equipment was built by the local photography shop in Somerville, New Jersey, for a few hundred dollars.
When production volume needed to increase, new equipment was required and we purchased new, more automated commercial production equipment then coming to market. I had hoped that such equipment would increase production volume and yields.
However, volume increased but product yields declined. The cause, we discovered, was inadequate process definition for the automated equipment.
We found that with the original manual processes, the production technicians introduced changes as they deemed necessary to maintain quality and production rates in the face of small changes, for example, in the temperature of chemical solutions.
The new machines were designed to operate under fixed pre-set conditions and changes were not automatically adjustable. To make the factory operate, we had to invest time and effort in defining all of the production elements and avoid human intervention randomly introduced to correct anomalies.
The machines had to be programmed with great precision for desired results. This required much process research to understand variables.
Here, I learned a valuable lesson in production management—the importance of very precise process definition and control. As new, more automated equipment was introduced, product yields frequently declined initially.
They did not improve until the production process was refined to new levels because new automated equipment required new levels of process knowledge and control.
To enable successful production required a close working relationship between production process engineers and equipment operators. These engineers had to be trained to fully understand the technology. This was a new engineering discipline.
This necessitated change in production methodology was costly and hard to accept by production managers trained in the old days of low levels of automation. But change they did as a new generation of production managers entered chip manufacturing.
However, I found that, given the same equipment, plant performance was a strong function of local management quality and staff training. The variables to be controlled and adjusted with automation were practically endless and the plants had to develop their own process engineering skills to perform economically.
In effect, starting with devices designed in the laboratory, moving them into production was a whole new endeavor requiring talent as valuable as that of the original design team.
It is evident that as chips increased in complexity, production became extraordinarily demanding in capital and human resources. For my original transistor, the device dimensions were in fractions of a centimeter and a photoshop could make the equipment to form the dimensions.
Today, integrated circuit chips have billions of transistors interconnected with dimensions approaching atomic ones. Whatever challenges I faced, today’s plants have them in far greater complexity and cost.
Fast-forward to 2024, and my simple homemade lithographic tool has evolved for the most sophisticated chip production to a huge piece of ultraviolet laser-powered equipment produced by ASML (the sole producer globally), which sells for about $300 million and requires specially trained staff to operate.
Faced with such costs and management challenges, it is easy to understand why the leaders of so many chip companies decided that manufacturing was too challenging and outsourced production to Taiwan’s TSMC, which is exclusively committed to chip manufacturing.
TSMC’s success is not based on the invention of unique equipment. Rather, it is rooted in outstanding management of human and capital resources. The company trains its staff to a high level of performance and operates its plants to get the best possible performance from its costly equipment.
A new fully equipped plant costs $20 billion but it is the highly trained management and staff that make it work. At this time, TSMC produces over 90% of the highest-performance chips in the world. Anyone looking to compete has to invest in the human resources needed, not just the equipment.
Henry Kressel is a technologist, inventor, author and industry executive. He is a long-term private equity investor in technology businesses. Incidentally, the original 2N2102 product is still commercially available.
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30 that tech companies are seeking to capitalise on. Around 22,000 Google Pixel phones had entered Indonesia this year, according to industry ministry data. Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in theContinue Reading
