National Quantum Strategy with support beyond regular science funding
Urgent to revive efforts towards development of robust quantum ecosystem
Leveraging quantum technology (QT) is crucial for national security, the digital economy, and sovereignty in the immediate future. Quantum physics laws suggest not only a significant leap in communication efficiency and computational power but…Continue Reading
Ambitious target to generate US$20.97mil in economic impact
Support from global leaders such as Mitsubishi Electric, Kobashi Industries
Japan based Leave a Nest Group (LVNS) has introduced the Center of Garage Malaysia (CoGMY), a pioneering initiative set to revolutionise the Deep Tech Ecosystem in Malaysia. CoGMY is poised to position Malaysia as a…Continue Reading
The recent decision to strengthen dealing restrictions indicates a concerted effort by authorities to maintain markets as China struggles with an economic downturn and stock rout.
The erratic trading that caused stock to fall to a five-year poor has forced policymakers to reconsider their approaches.  ,
A departure from the smaller steps is required due to the cumulative impact of three years of economic decline, which erased a remarkable US$ 7 trillion in value.  ,
It’s time for Beijing to take more audacious, “open- door,” globally conscious, and clear actions to rekindle growth and boost confidence in the second-largest economy.
A dedication to flexibility and global cooperation must be at the heart of Beijing’s restoration method.  ,
Through international cooperation, China’s financial would has increased, and a renewed focus on an open-door policy will not only draw foreign investment but also make it easier for ideas and technologies to be exchanged.  ,
This strategy is consistent with the interconnectedness of the contemporary international business, where cooperation frequently results in mutually advantageous results.
Transparency, which is frequently regarded as the cornerstone of investment trust, must also be given top priority.
Both domestic and foreign investors are concerned about the new opaque financial sector crackdown. Beijing needs to promote a more open regulatory setting and offer precise policy and reform direction.  ,
Trust will be increased and risks reduced through an open discussion with partners, including the financial sector and global partners.
A comprehensive strategy that focuses on promoting private consumption and innovation is needed to address poor financial information.  ,
Beyond foreign relations, an open-door policy embraces a business environment that supports entrepreneurship and creativity. China is diversify its economic landscape and produce sustained growth by developing a friendly ecosystem for startups and small companies.
Financial security is severely hampered by escalating geopolitical tensions, particularly with the US. Beijing needs to approach politics pragmatically and with an international perspective, preferring speech to clash.
Prioritizing assistance on issues like climate change and public health is foster goodwill and foster an environment that promotes economic recovery.
Another important aspect of China’s financial problems, the worsening property crisis, necessitates audacious and open intervention. In this situation, taking a proactive approach entails working with the real estate sector to put intended stimulus measures into place.  ,
Restricting consumers, promoting sustainable development methods, and ensuring accountability in property transactions can all help to stabilize the industry and stop a wider economic downturn.
Beijing’s dedication to an inclusive strategy focuses on both luring foreign investment and fostering a different and encouraging environment for its local businesses.
Reforms that simplify administrative procedures, cut down on red tape, and improve business efficiency should be taken into consideration by the government. To create a more effective and competitive financial habitat, adopting an international perspective entails learning from international best practices.
Using more audacious fiscal and monetary policies may offer vital support for the recuperation in addition to these geopolitical measures. Targeted governmental stimulus and open disclosure of the government’s intentions had increase investor confidence.  ,
It is wise to adjust interest rates and liquidity measures to strike a balance between immediate financial needs and long-term economic stability.
Beijing must then take the helm with quality, flexibility, and a dedication to fostering global cooperation.
The founder and CEO of deVere , Group is Nigel Green. @nigeljgreen on Twitter, follow him.
Attracting co-working spaces a key metric for overall building success
All of WORQ’s Klang Valley locations are located at train stops
WORQ, a leading coworking space provider, expanded the footprint of its largest coworking space at Menara 1 Sentrum in KL Sentral, the Klang Valley’s main transit hub, by taking up space on…Continue Reading
Summit set to attract over 1,000 attendees
Aims to unite startup investors, corporate innovation communities for long-term collaboration
NEXEA has announced the annual DisruptInvest Summit on the 23rd of May 2024. This gathering is touted as Malaysia’s largest startup and corporate innovation event, aiming to invigorate the startup ecosystem, fostering connections and collaborations…Continue Reading
Reflects continuous commitment to back local funds, nurture pioneering startups
Sime Darby, AEI Capital earlier investors, enabling industry to invest into tech companies
Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (MAVCAP), Malaysia’s largest venture capital firm, announced that it is investing as a limited partner (LP) in Vynn Capital’s latest Mobility and Supply Chain Fund….Continue Reading
The battle to keep the government open may feel just like the crisis of the day. But these fights pose immediate and long-term risks for the US.
The federal government spends tens of billions of dollars every year to support fundamental scientific research that is mostly conducted at universities. For instance, the basic discoveries that made the Covid-19 vaccine possible stretch back to the early 1960s.
Such research investments contribute to the health, wealth and well-being of society, support jobs and regional economies, and are vital to the US economy and national security.
If Congress can’t reach an agreement, then a temporary government shutdown could happen on January 19, 2024. If lawmakers miss a second February 2 deadline, then automatic budget cuts will hit future research hard.
Even if lawmakers avoid a shutdown and pass a budget, America’s future competitiveness could suffer because federal research investments are on track to be billions of dollars below targets Congress set for themselves less than two years ago.
I am a sociologist who studies how research universities contribute to the public good. I’m also the executive director of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, a national university consortium whose members share data that help us understand, explain and work to amplify those benefits.
Our data shows how endangering basic research harms communities across the US and can limit innovative companies’ access to the skilled employees they need to succeed.
Less than two years ago, in August 2022, university researchers like me had reason to celebrate.
Congress had just passed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. The “science” part of the law promised one of the biggest federal investments in the National Science Foundation – America’s premier basic science research agency – in its 74-year history.
The CHIPS Act authorized US$81 billion for the agency, promised to double its budget by 2027 and directed it to “address societal, national, and geostrategic challenges for the benefit of all Americans” by investing in research.
But there was one very big snag. The money still has to be appropriated by Congress every year. Lawmakers haven’t been good at doing that recently. The government is again poised to shut down.
As lawmakers struggle to keep the lights on, fundamental research is likely to be a casualty of political dysfunction. The budget proposals released so far fall $5 billion to $7.5 billion short of what the CHIPS Act called for in fiscal year 2024. Deal or no deal, science is on the chopping block in Washington.
That’s bad because fundamental research matters in more ways than you might expect.
Lagging research investment will hurt US leadership in critical technologies like artificial intelligence, advanced communications, clean energy and biotechnology. Less support means less new research work gets done, fewer new researchers are trained and important new discoveries are made elsewhere.
But disrupting federal research funding also directly affects people’s jobs, lives and the economy.
Businesses nationwide thrive by selling the goods and services – everything from pipettes and biological specimens to notebooks and plane tickets – that are necessary for research.
Those vendors include high-tech startups, manufacturers, contractors and even Main Street businesses like your local hardware store. They employ your neighbors and friends and contribute to the economic health of your hometown and the nation.
Nearly a third of the $10 billion in federal research funds that 26 of the universities in our consortium used in 2022 directly supported US employers, including:
When Congress’ problems endanger basic research, they also damage businesses like these and people you might not usually associate with academic science and engineering. Construction and manufacturing companies earn more than $2 billion each year from federally funded research done by our consortium’s members.
Disrupting or decreasing research funding also slows the flow of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – talent from universities to American businesses. Highly trained people are essential to corporate innovation and to US leadership in key fields, like AI, where companies depend on hiring to secure research expertise.
In 2022, federal research grants paid wages for about 122,500 people at universities that shared data with my institute. More than half of them were students or trainees. Our data shows that they go on to many types of jobs, but are particularly important for leading tech companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Intel.
More comprehensive numbers don’t exist, but that same data lets me estimate that over 300,000 people who worked at US universities in 2022 were paid by federal research funds. Threats to federal research investments put academic jobs at risk.
They also hurt private sector innovation because even the most successful companies need to hire people with expert research skills. Most people learn those skills by working on university research projects, and most of those projects are federally funded.
The last shutdown was the longest in 40 years, but even short delays in research funding have big negative effects on the scientific workforce and lead expert researchers to look outside the US for jobs. Temporary cuts to research funding hurt too because they reduce high-tech entrepreneurship and decrease the publication of new findings.
Lasting stagnation or shrinking investments would have even more pronounced effects. Over time, companies would see fewer skilled job candidates, academic and corporate researchers would produce fewer discoveries, and fewer high-tech startups would mean slower economic growth.
America would become less competitive in the age of AI. This would make one of the fears that led lawmakers to pass the CHIPS and Science Act into a reality.
Ultimately, it’s up to lawmakers to decide whether to fulfill their promise to invest more in the research that supports jobs across the economy and American innovation, competitiveness and economic growth.
Whether the current budget deal succeeds or fails, basic research is on the table and the stakes are high.
Jason Owen-Smith is Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Winners will receive up to US$10,600 in equity funding
Aims to empower women entrepreneurs in Malaysia & Southeast Asia
1337 Ventures’ Alpha Startups™ is launching a new cohort exclusively for women-led startups. In a statement, the pre-accelerator programme said this initiative, in collaboration with Freda Liu, a respected Malaysian author, broadcast journalist, and…Continue Reading
If there’s any surprise over the fact that China dethroned Japan in 2023 to become the world’s top automaker it relates to how fast that happened.
Overall, auto exports jumped 58% last year from the prior one, topping 4.91 million units, says the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Along with deploying its increasing strength in electric vehicles, China Inc managed to tap Russia’s sanctions-hit market with unexpected aplomb. Detroit is not thrilled, of course.
But the truly tantalizing question is how all this goes over in Japan, where, 12 years on, officials are still struggling to get their heads around China’s surpassing Japan in gross domestic product terms. That GDP changing of the guard happened, depending on your preferred data set, sometime between 2010 and 2012.
Since then, Japanese governments in succession have convinced themselves that GDP isn’t the key metric: It’s per capita income, in which Japan leads what’s now Asia’s biggest economy by nearly three times. Yet the blow to Japan’s collective psyche from losing the GDP crown was a devastating one.
Arguably, shock over trailing China helped Shinzo Abe retake the premiership in late 2012. Abe’s economic revival scheme wasn’t pitched as a beat-China strategy – but that’s precisely what his strategy to loosen labor markets, cut red tape, rekindle innovation, catalyze a startup boom and revive Tokyo’s role as Asia’s indispensable financial hub amounted to.
Years of Tokyo complacency since then have been good to China, enabling Xi Jinping’s economy to fill the void created by deflation-racked Japan. The 12 years since Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party returned to power have been a lost period for major economic retooling.
Efforts to produce more tech “unicorns,” for example, went particularly awry. Today, Japan is trailing Indonesia in the race to generate $1 billion-plus valuation startups.
The same muddle can be seen in Japan’s almost linear obsession with hybrid vehicles as the EV market shifts into overdrive.
True, officials at Toyota Motor and Japanese peers are realizing their mistakes in having dismissed the EV future that’s fast coming into view. Toyota is playing catchup with new models. Japan’s top automaker is tripling EV output as it chases China’s BYD, which recently surpassed Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The question, of course, is whether it may already be too late as Tesla, Detroit, Germany and China beat Toyota to the market. “No one,” says Michael Dunne, CEO of auto industry advisory ZoZoGo, “can match BYD on price. Period. Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”
Toyota’s blunder is reminiscent of Japan Inc missteps of the past. It’s worth nothing that hybrid transport — including the Prius — was always a compromise, not a technological destination. But because Toyota pioneered it, the company refused to admit that something better had come along.
A similar lost opportunity played out in the 1980s during the Betamax versus VHS video competition. Sony argued that its Betamax technology was superior; the global market favored the more user-friendly VHS format. The years that it took Tokyo to accept defeat set Japan back.
Will China’s stunning success in an industry that Japan long dominated in the Asia region and beyond catalyze officials in Tokyo and the greater Nagoya region?
“For the first time, I came face to face with the competitiveness of Chinese components,” Toyota EV Chief Takero Kato said in September. “After seeing manufacturing processes not used in Japan,” Kato says he thought, “We’re in trouble!”
China Inc is, for example, making big inroads into once reliably Japanese markets such as Thailand. Already, EV models account for 10% of the Thai market. The so-called “Detroit of Asia” is now China’s number 2 destination for Chinese EVs. Ditto for plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Perhaps sensing the risks, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last month met with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. In Tokyo, Kishida proposed a dialogue framework to ensure that Thailand’s auto industry will strengthen its competitive advantage in EVs and the range of next-generation automobiles. More importantly, that Thailand will remain in the Japan camp.
Also last month, Srettha, a businessman-turned-politician, announced that four Japanese automakers will invest 150 billion baht ($4.3 billion) in EVs in Thailand over the next five years. They include Toyota, Honda Motor, Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi Motors.
At that time Srettha’s spokesman said, “The prime minister has stressed that Japanese carmakers can play an important role in promoting EV production in Thailand.”
In Japan, Kishida’s government is offering decade-long tax incentives to boost production in EVs and high-quality chips to lure more foreign direct investment. The tax breaks will be part of Tokyo’s fiscal 2024 tax reform framework. They will include 400,000 yen ($2,755) for battery-powered EVs and hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
Tesla, unlike many global peers, won’t be roadkill as China grabs more market share, ZoZoGo’s Dunne argues. Musk’s wares benefit from a first-mover advantage and also the goodwill that comes from Tesla’s choice of the Shanghai area as the site of its first production facility outside the US.
“What does this mean for global automakers not named Tesla?” Dunne asks. “BYD will continue to win large chunks of market share from legacy automakers worldwide.”
What’s more, Dunne says, “China’s market, the world’s largest, no longer needs or wants foreign makers. Jeep, Suzuki and Mitsubishi are already gone. VW, Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, and others will depart within five years. GM, once the poster child for successful US business in China, will likely be gone, too. GM sales in China are already down by more than 50% from their 2017 peak.”
Challenges abound, of course,and they include building greater trust among mainland consumers.
“China is the global leader in the transition to electric vehicles, but even its carmakers haven’t been able to resolve consumers’ ‘range anxiety,’” says analyst Ernan Cui at Gavekal Research. She argues that households are increasingly demanding hybrid vehicles that burn fossil fuels as backup, meaning the transition to a fully electric fleet will be slower than the most optimistic forecasts.
Nor is the Chinese market devoid of risks as 2024 opens. “Investors remain cautious as China’s auto market has had a volatile start to the year as competition and macro uncertainties persist,” says analyst Tim Hsiao at Morgan Stanley.
Chinese EV demand is seen cooling as the nation’s post-Covid rebound continues to disappoint. As consumer sentiment and demand stagnate, automakers may find it becoming harder and harder to hit this year’s sales targets. In the first week of January, mainland EVs came in short of expectations, falling 20% on the month, according to Citigroup analyst Jeff Chung.
That means that even BYD “will need to refresh its model lineup or have more competitive model launches given the challenging sector competition into 2024,” notes analyst Shelley Wang at Natixis Asia.
The Warren Buffett-backed company also risks a continued price war with Tesla as buyers “continue to expect ever cheaper cars.” When the price-cutting has to stop, that “may keep consumers from purchasing.”
Yet, some are far more optimistic about the performance of China’s “new economy” sectors, which drive 12% of gross domestic product, helping growth top 5%. “Together with strong performance across new economy sectors, such as EVs and high value-added manufacturing, this should help to support a broadening in China’s economic recovery,” says economist Carlos Casanova at Union Bancaire Privée.
Casanova notes that “more easing is still required to stabilize activity. Fiscal policy stimulus will take over from monetary policy stimulus in 2024, although both will have to be deployed in 2024.”
Last year, Casanova notes, the government delivered targeted support measures, including approximately 2% of GDP in additional fiscal spending for 2024. The People’s Bank of China also injected liquidity via open market operations. A rate cut is less likely, although there is ample room to reduce reserve requirement ratios this year.
Clearly, in any event, China is increasingly committed to developing its green economy. “This policy promotion has already crowded investment into green sectors such as solar, batteries, and EVs,” says Herbert Crowther, analyst at Eurasia Group. “Green loans expanded by 36.8% in 2023, with new market entrants ranging from traditional manufacturers and local governments to fossil energy companies and large state-owned enterprises.”
China’s EV industry growth fueled a 20% expansion in private auto manufacturer fixed asset investment in the first three quarters of the year, Crowther says.
The auto sector outperformed national export and industrial value-added growth in 2023. This surge, Crowther says, was largely powered by EVs – which accounted for 42% of Chinese auto exports over the past year (up from 30% in 2021) and 27% of auto production volume (up from 12% in 2021). Private sector manufacturing investment increased overall by 9.1%, despite the 0.3% contraction in overall private spending.
As China raises its economic and innovative game, the interesting question is what alarm bells – and responses – are triggered in Japan. Competition is always a positive dynamic between Asia’s two biggest economies. In the EV space, Japan is about to get more than it ever bargained for.
Georgetown is 2nd highest-ranked city in Malaysia with KL at 4th spot
Supporting startup ecosystem part of plan to attract high-tech industries
In a statement, Digital Penang marked a significant milestone for Penang’s technology startup ecosystem as it received the “Outstanding Ecosystem among Medium-Sized Population Cities in Southeast Asia 2023” award from StartupBlink, a leading startup…Continue Reading