Tag: Factories and Manufacturing

What Retail Sales and Other Data Say About China’s Economy

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China’s trains, planes, stores and beaches were a little fuller last month than a year ago, and the pace of activity picked up at factories, particularly those making mobile phones and semiconductors. A batch of numbers released on Friday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed a modest improvement in the country’s overall retail sales and industrial production during August. A series of small steps taken by the government over the summer, including two rounds of interest rate cuts, seems to be yielding a slightly better-than-expected improvement in the country’s…

Toyota’s Dominance Threatened by Rise of Electric Vehicles

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Rachel Culin considered herself a Toyota loyalist, one of millions of people who appreciated the company’s reliable and fuel-efficient hybrids. But she recently bought an electric Chevrolet Bolt to replace her Toyota Prius because the Japanese automaker had been too slow when it came to selling electric vehicles. “Where are the options for those people who love Toyota?” Ms. Culin, a resident of Mesa, Ariz., said. “It’s really sad.” Once the leading brand for environmentally conscious car owners, Toyota has failed to keep up with changing consumer preferences and a…

China Is Flooding the World With Car Exports

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At a time when many of China’s exports are faltering and its consumers are spending less at home, the country is flooding the world with cars. Overseas demand for inexpensive vehicles made in China, mostly gasoline-powered models that Chinese consumers now shun in favor of electric cars, is so great that the biggest obstacle to selling more abroad is a lack of specialized ships to carry them. Chinese automakers have leaped to dominance in Russia since war began in Ukraine, transporting cars by train. The companies have also captured large…

Huawei Phone Is Latest Shot Fired in the U.S.-China Tech War

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In the midst of the U.S. commerce secretary’s good will tour to China last week, Huawei, the telecom giant that faces stiff U.S. trade restrictions, unveiled a smartphone that illustrated just how hard it has been for the United States to clamp down on China’s tech prowess. The new phone is powered by a chip that appears to be the most advanced version of China’s homegrown technology to date — a kind of achievement that the United States has been trying to prevent China from reaching. The timing of its…

China’s Economic Outlook: Pep Talks Up Top, Gloom on the Ground

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To the residents and business owners of Chedun, a working-class neighborhood in the southwestern outskirts of Shanghai, the signs of an anemic economy are all around. The factories that once drew workers from around the country have moved away. Those that remain have slashed wages. Around the affordable eateries and motley shops where workers once crowded, employees eagerly latch onto anyone passing by. “No one has money now, it’s obvious,” Cherry Qian, 25, said as she sat inside the electronics store she manages, which on Sunday afternoon had seen only…

How Geopolitics Is Complicating the Move to Clean Energy

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He is known as the Minister for Everything. From the government offices of Indonesia’s capital to dusty mines on remote islands, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan commands authority as the nation’s essential power broker. A four-star general turned business magnate turned cabinet officer, Mr. Luhut’s paramount aspiration is transforming Indonesia into a hub for the production of electric vehicles. But as he pursues that goal, he and his country are increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical forces beyond their control. Though this archipelago nation has long sidestepped entanglements in ideological rivalries, it is increasingly…

China’s Nickel Plants in Indonesia Created Needed Jobs, Plus Pollution

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For most of his 57 years on the island of Sulawesi, Jamal was accustomed to scarcity, modest expectations and a grim shortage of jobs. People mined sand, caught fish and coaxed crops from the soil. Chickens frequently disappeared from front yards, stolen by hungry neighbors. Mr. Jamal, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, regularly rode his motorbike to construction jobs in the city of Kendari, a half-hour away. Then, six years ago, a towering smelter rose next to his home. The factory was built by a company called…

China’s Economy Battles Debt, Slowing Trade and Specter of Deflation

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For more than a quarter-century, China has been synonymous with relentless development and upward mobility. As its 1.4 billion people gained an appetite for the wares of the world — Hollywood movies, South Korean electronics, iron ore mined in Australia — the global economy was propelled by a seemingly inexhaustible engine. Now that engine is sputtering, posing alarming risks for Chinese households and economies around the planet. Long the centerpiece of a profit-enhancing version of globalization, China has devolved into the ultimate wild card in a moment of extraordinary uncertainty…

Deflation Becomes a Threat to China’s Economy

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The United States has spent much of the past 18 months struggling to control inflation. China is experiencing the opposite problem: People and businesses are not spending, pushing the economy to the verge of a pernicious condition called deflation. Consumer prices in China, after barely rising for the past several months, fell in July for the first time in more than two years, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Wednesday. For 10 straight months, the wholesale prices generally paid by businesses to factories and other producers have been…

TSMC Chairman Mark Liu Says Company Will Keep Its Roots in Taiwan

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is manufacturing the world’s most advanced microchips, conducts business on the island of Taiwan, dead center in one of the most geopolitically volatile places on the planet. That makes people in Washington very nervous. TSMC dominates the semiconductor industry; it’s a company that the United States can’t do without, 80 miles off the coast of China. The U.S. government has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to strengthen America’s own semiconductor sector and help fund TSMC’s nascent operations in the United States, far from China,…