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Tuesday August 7, 2018

Shanghai lures more foreign investors

China launches exascale supercomputer prototype

Service consumption registers fast growth in fi rst half

Robots replace waiters in restaurantAT the forefront of China’s

opening-up drive, Shanghai is attracting more foreign investors with a spate of new measures in multiple sectors.

On July 10, authorities in Shanghai introduced a total of 100 new measures covering fi ve areas, including the banking and secu-rities sectors, in a bid to further expand the city’s opening up.

In less than a month, 74 of the 100 measures have gone into effect. The further opening up is not only a choice of Shanghai, but also a showcase of China’s determination to deepen reforms to embrace the world.

Since the central bank announced further opening up of the country’s fi nancial sector, Shanghai has rolled out 32 related measures to benefi t many overseas banks, insurers and asset management fi rms.

ICBC-AXA Life, partly owned by French insurance giant AXA, has won regulatory approval to set up an asset management fi rm in Shanghai. Willis Insurance Brokers Co. and JLT Insurance Brokers. Co. have became the fi rst two to benefi t from busi-ness scope expansion.

A survey of Renminbi qualifi ed foreign institutional investors by Standard Chartered Bank showed that investors are think-ing when to make investment on the onshore market, rather than whether or not.

Many countries and regions along the Belt and Road are also issuing bonds on China’s inter-bank bond market and the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

After increasing investment quotas for the Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connect program, local authorities are making

CHINA on Sunday put into operation a prototype exascale computing machine, the next-generation supercomputer, according to the developers.

The Sunway exascale computer prototype was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC), the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, east China’s Shandong Province, and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao).

The NRCPC led the team that

developed Sunway TaihuLight, crowned the world’s fastest com-puter two years in a row at both the 2016 and 2017 International Supercomputing Conferences held in Frankfurt, Germany.

“The Sunway exascale com-puter prototype is very much like a concept car that can run on road,”said Yang Meihong, director of the National Super-computer Center in Jinan.

“We expect to build the exas-cale computer in the second half of 2020 or the fi rst half of 2021,” said Yang.

Another prototype exascale supercomputer Tianhe-3 passed the acceptance tests July 22. Its fi nal version is expected to come out in 2020.

The two prototypes marked a further step towards China’s suc-cessful development of the next-generation supercomputer.

Supercomputers are chang-ing people’s lives in fi elds such as weather forecasting, calcula-tion of ocean currents, fi nancial data analysis, high-end equip-ment manufacturing, and car collision simulation, said Pan

Jingshan, deputy director of the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan.

Pan said the new-generation supercomputers will provide strong support to scientifi c research in more fi elds.

An exascale computer is able to execute a quintillion calcula-tions per second. In China, pro-totypes are being developed by three teams led by the NRCPC, Dawning Information Industry Co. (Sugon), and National Uni-versity of Defense Technology. (Xinhua)

CHINA’S consumption of services in sectors including tourism, culture, and sports registered fast growth in the fi rst half of 2018, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

In the fi rst half, service consumption in tourism, cul-ture, sports, eldercare, and housekeeping accounted for 40 percent of total household

consumption, according to Liu Yunan, an NDRC offi cial.

China’s tourism market con-tinued to expand, with domestic tourism revenue rising 12.5 percent year on year in the the fi rst half.

Both investment and con-sumption in the culture indus-try showed good performance in the the fi rst half. Fixed asset investment in the culture indus-

try climbed 17.5 percent from a year earlier, while China’s box offi ce sales went up 17.8 percent year on year.

With an aging population, demand for eldercare services have been on the rise. By June, the number of elderly care insti-tutions and facilities hit 156,000, with over 7 million beds and more than 700,000 workers.

Sports, a sector with great

potential in China, also saw marked growth, said Ou Xiaoli, another NDRC offi cial.

Ou forecasts that by the end of this year, the added value of the sports industry will contrib-ute to more than 1 percent of China’s gross domestic product, contributing to nearly a trillion yuan (about US$146 billion) in consumption and creating over 4.4 million jobs. (Xinhua)

THE little robotic waiter wheels up to the table, raises its glass lid to reveal a steaming plate of local Shanghai-style crayfi sh and announces in low, mechanical tones, “Enjoy your meal.”

The futuristic restaurant con-cept is the latest initiative in Chi-nese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s push to modernize service and retail in a country where robot-ics and artifi cial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being integrated into commerce.

Raising effi ciency and lower-ing labor costs are the objec-tives at Alibaba’s “Robot.He” diners, where waiters have been replaced by robots about the size of microwave ovens, which roll around the dining room on table-high runways.

“In Shanghai, a waiter costs up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) per month. That’s hundreds of thousands in cost every year. And two shifts of people are needed,” said Cao Haitao, the Alibaba product manager who developed the concept.

“But we don’t need two shifts for robots and they are on duty every day.”

The diners are attached to Alibaba’s new Hema chain of semi-automated supermarkets, where grocery shoppers fi ll their “carts” on a mobile app and have the merchandise brought to them at checkout via conveyor tracks on the ceiling, or delivered straight to their homes.

Alibaba now has 57 Hema markets in 13 Chinese cities, all of which will eventually feature the robotic restaurants.

Industry experts say they serve more as showcases of Alibaba’s tech prowess than a serious busi-ness model in a country where labor costs are relatively low.

With digital payments via mobile phone already now rival-ing cash for many purchases, growing numbers of pharma-cies, bookstores and other retailers have dispensed with cashiers, allowing customers to order and pay for their desired merchandise, which is often handed over by a robot.

Alibaba’s e-commerce rival JD.com has announced plans to open 1,000 restaurants by 2020 in which food will be prepared and served by robots. JD.com and others are also working to incorporate airborne drones into their delivery networks.

The movement could help companies reduce costs as growth rates in China’s e-com-merce boom begin to plateau.

“Before, everyone was all going for rapid expansion. Now the growth is gone and everyone has to focus on improving their opera-tions,” said Jason Ding, a China retail expert with Bain & Co.

“Operation is all about cut-ting costs and providing better service. So these automated machine technologies, in the right place, can play a role there.” (SD-Agencies)

preparations to launch the Shanghai-London stock connect program within the year.

Shanghai’s opening up is also expanding into advanced manu-facturing, and shipping and tele-communications sectors.

Also on July 10, U.S. carmaker Tesla Inc. announced that it will set up its fi rst overseas plant in Shanghai, with a planned annual capacity of 500,000 electric cars.

With the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project, Tesla became the fi rst to benefi t from a new policy that allows for-eign carmakers to set up wholly owned subsidiaries in China.

Other foreign carmakers are

also revving up expansion to get a larger share of the world’s largest auto market.

In the aviation sector, Chi-nese and Russian engineers are working on the develop-ment of the CR929 wide-body passenger aircraft, a 280-seat jet with a range of 12,000 kilo-meters, in Shanghai.

Shanghai is scheduled to host the fi rst China International Import Expo (CIIE), which signals a new round of China’s high-level opening up, from Nov. 5 to 10. Over 130 countries and regions and more than 2,800 companies have confi rmed par-ticipation in the CIIE.

The country’s fi nancial and

business center is also improving its business environment, includ-ing better protection of intellec-tual property rights and more effi cient government services.

The efforts have yielded results. In the fi rst half of the year, Shanghai’s contractual foreign investment hit US$21.5 billion, up 18 percent year on year. Meanwhile, further 17 mul-tinational fi rms set up regional headquarters in Shanghai, rais-ing the total number to 642.

In addition, foreign-funded businesses in Shanghai saw rev-enues and profi ts up 10.3 percent and 17.6 percent, respectively, in the January-May period.

(Xinhua)

Visitors enjoy the view of Pudong of Shanghai. China News Agency