Tesla stutters under tighter Shanghai lockdown; Beijing keeps hunting COVID-19 - CNA

SHANGHAI: Tesla operated its Shanghai plant well below capacity on Tuesday (May 10), showing the problems factories there face trying to ramp up output under a tightening COVID-19 lockdown, while China's capital kept up its fight with a small but stubborn outbreak.

Many of the hundreds of companies reopening factories in Shanghai in recent weeks have faced challenges getting production lines back up to speed while keeping workers on-site in a "closed loop" system.

Even if they manage to get everything right, such firms depend on suppliers facing similar challenges.

The latest sign of struggle with increasing output under COVID-19 rules came from Tesla's Shanghai plant, whose resumption three weeks ago received generous coverage in state media as an example of what can still be achieved despite restrictions.

The US automaker has halted most of its production at the plant due to problems securing parts, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

Tesla had planned as late as last week to increase output to pre-lockdown levels by next week.

Among Tesla suppliers facing difficulties is wire harness maker Aptiv after infections were found among its employees, sources said on Monday.

Videos posted online last week showed dozens of workers at Apple and Tesla supplier Quanta overwhelming hazmat-suited security guards and vaulting over factory gates fearing being trapped inside amid COVID-19 rumours.

COVID-19 curbs in Shanghai, Beijing and dozens of other major population centres and manufacturing hubs across China are taking a heavy toll on the world's second largest economy, with significant global spillovers on trade and supply chains.

China's export growth slowed to its weakest in almost two years, data showed on Monday. Unemployment was also near two-year highs.

Uncertainty is high, with economists unable to say with any accuracy when the country will bring COVID-19 under control and what the final cost is likely to be.

"Growth in China is likely to remain hostage to the course of the pandemic for most of the year," analysts at Fathom Consulting said in a note.

Chinese stocks were just off two-year lows, and the yuan traded near 18-month lows on Tuesday.

Shanghai, a vital centre for commerce, finance and manufacturing for China and beyond with a population of 25 million, was enduring its sixth week of a city-wide lockdown.

The prolonged, ruthlessly-enforced isolation increasingly jars with an outside world which is gradually returning to its pre-COVID way of life, even if cases spread.

China has threatened actions against critics of its "dynamic-zero COVID" policy, which it says aims to "put life first" and prevent the millions of deaths caused by the virus around the globe.

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2022-05-10 07:47:00Z
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US lobby fears 'exodus' of foreign staff in China due to COVID-19 measures - CNA

SHENZHEN: American businesses are struggling to persuade overseas staff to join them in China due to the country's strict COVID-19 control measures and ongoing lockdowns, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said on Monday (May 9).

In a survey of 121 members, 49 per cent said foreign workers are either significantly less likely to - or are refusing to - move to China because of COVID-related policies, with 82 per cent singling out uncertainty over how long quarantine and lockdown times will last as the main reason.

"We are bracing for a mass exodus of foreign talent this summer, with fewer employees overseas willing to take up open positions here in China," said chamber chairman Colm Rafferty.

International flights into China remain extremely limited and subject to short-notice cancellations, with passengers needing approval from overseas Chinese embassies before boarding, and most arrivals requiring three weeks of quarantine.

"We understand China choosing to prioritise health and safety above all else, but the current measures are throttling US business confidence in China," Rafferty said.

Overseas business groups continue to chafe against the COVID-19 controls that have seen most of the 25 million population of Shanghai in lockdown for over a month, with curbs also tightening in the capital Beijing.

The survey found that 51 per cent of respondents have either delayed or decreased investments as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, with 58 per cent having decreased their revenue projections for the year.

Last week a European Chamber of Commerce in China survey found that almost a quarter of respondents were considering moving current or planned investments out of China, more than double the number at the start of the year.

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2022-05-09 09:26:00Z
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Xi warms up China's economy, but COVID-19 narrows options - CNA

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

Analysts are waiting for details of the delivery behind sweeping promises of support from Beijing's policymakers.

China's tech firms have been under the state's microscope on concerns over data misuse and monopoly.

But shares of major tech firms soared as the government called for "healthy development" of the sector and shifted its language on completing its "rectification".

It is unclear if that signals an end to a punishing round of regulatory scrutiny.

Markets also cheered on as the government announced support for real estate and an infrastructure push to buoy economic and social development.

But China "does not have much room for further infrastructure building, (or) government borrowing on the local level", said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China.

"In reality, there's not much room to grow."

While it harks back to Beijing's four trillion yuan (US$600 billion at today's rates) stimulus package after the 2008 financial crisis - which included massive infrastructure investment - Zhaopeng Xing of ANZ Research said "we doubt the authorities will carry it forward at the cost of rising debts".

FADING CONFIDENCE

China's State Council has also said it would give cash handouts to jobless migrant workers and urged stronger support for small firms harried by lockdowns and shrivelling consumer demand.

But re-inflating the economy is a big task made more complicated by each new level of virus control, experts say.

"Those easing measures, even on a large scale, may not achieve their intended impact due to lockdowns and logistics disruptions," Nomura added in its note.

A path of regular mass testing - which China appears to be embarking on - may also come with a hefty bill.

It would cost between 0.9 per cent and 2.3 per cent of GDP for a regular testing mandate to expand across China, according to Nomura.

With the economy flagging, an effective bounce could be given by lowering the interest rate, while authorities could also turn up the spending to drive the infrastructure push.

But optimism is fading five months into a year already defined by the battle with the pandemic, with business activity collapsing and consumers afraid of what is to come.

"People had high hopes for this year," Wang said.

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2022-05-08 06:49:04Z
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China Premier Warns of 'Grave' Jobs Situation as Lockdowns Bite - Bloomberg

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1. China Premier Warns of 'Grave' Jobs Situation as Lockdowns Bite  Bloomberg
2. China Premier Li Keqiang warns of 'grave' jobs situation as Covid-19 lockdowns bite  The Straits Times
3. View Full coverage on Google News

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2022-05-08 03:03:00Z
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Fewer, costlier durians in Malaysia as production hit by heavy rain - CNA

DURIAN SEASON DELAYED TO OCTOBER: ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT

Mr Mohd Ali Hanafiah, an officer from the Raub Department of Agriculture (DOA), said a smaller harvest is expected in the coming months due to the unpredictable weather.

“If the weather in May is good, we could get a harvest in November. For now, it is hard to estimate. The weather has been a challenge for the farmers,” he said, adding that it takes about 150 days from flowering to the ripening of the fruit.  

Raub, a town in Pahang, is one of the main areas for the production of durian in Malaysia.

Malaysian Durian Exporters Association president Sam Tan told CNA that the typical durian season around June and July would be delayed because of the weather.

He estimated a decrease of almost 80 per cent in production this season.

“It usually starts to get hot in January but this year, it has always been raining. 

“The season will be delayed to October and prices are expected to go down then. There will still be durian in June, but little compared to usual,” he said.    

He said that prices will be about 30 per cent higher than usual, with the IOI variety costing about RM 30 per kilogram, compared to about RM22 last year.

Mr Tan predicted that the costs of durian will go down in a few years, as many people had started to grow durian in the past several years.

“There will be a huge supply in the coming years as the newly planted trees will be able to produce fruit,” he said.

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2022-05-06 10:44:00Z
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Drone swarms can now fly autonomously through thick forest - CNA

WASHINGTON: A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods.

The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction - and the authors in fact cite films such as Star Wars, Prometheus and Blade Runner 2049 in the opening of their paper published Wednesday (May 4) in the journal Science Robotics.

"Here, we take a step forward (to) such a future," wrote the team, led by Xin Zhou.

In theory, there are myriad real world applications, including aerial mapping for conservation and disaster relief work. But the technology has needed to mature so that flying robots can adapt to new environments without crashing into one another or objects, thus endangering public safety.

Drone swarms have been tested in the past, but either in open environments without obstacles, or with the location of those obstacles programmed in, Enrica Soria, a roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, who was not involved in the research, told AFP.

"This is the first time there's a swarm of drones successfully flying outside in an unstructured environment, in the wild," she said, adding the experiment was "impressive".

The palm-sized robots were purpose-built, with depth cameras, altitude sensors and an on-board computer. The biggest advance was a clever algorithm that incorporates collision avoidance, flight efficiency and coordination within the swarm.

Since these drones do not rely on any outside infrastructure, such as GPS, swarms could be used during natural disasters.

For example, they could be sent into earthquake-hit areas to survey damage and identify where to send help, or into buildings where it's unsafe to send people.

It's certainly possible to use single drones in such scenarios, but a swarm approach would be far more efficient, especially given limited flight times.

Another possible use is having the swarm collectively lift and deliver heavy objects.

There's also a darker side: Swarms could be weaponised by militaries, just as remote-piloted single drones are today. The Pentagon has repeatedly expressed interest and is carrying out its own tests.

"Military research is not shared with the rest of the world just openly, and so it's difficult to imagine at what stage they are with their development," said Soria.

But advances shared in scientific journals could certainly be put to military use.

COMING SOON?

The Chinese team tested their drones in different scenarios - swarming through the bamboo forest, avoiding other drones in a high-traffic experiment, and having the robots follow a person's lead.

"Our work was inspired by birds that fly smoothly in a free swarm through even very dense woods," wrote Zhou in a blog post.

The challenge, he said, was balancing competing demands: The need for small, lightweight machines, but with high-computational power, and plotting safe trajectories without greatly prolonging flight time.

For Soria, it's only a matter of a few years before we see such drones deployed in real-life work. First, though, they will need to be tested in ultra-dynamic environments like cities, where they'll constantly come up against people and vehicles.

Regulations will also need to catch up, which takes additional time.

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2022-05-04 22:47:00Z
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Sri Lanka tea exports lowest in 23 years - CNA

COLOMBO: Crisis-struck Sri Lanka's vital tea exports have dropped to their lowest level in 23 years, official figures showed on Wednesday (May 4), hit by a fertiliser ban and the war in Ukraine.

Tea is the island nation's biggest export commodity, bringing in about US$1.3 billion annually before the current economic downturn, the worst since independence in 1948.

But a bungled ban on fertiliser imports last year - introduced in a doomed effort to save foreign currency and avoid a debt default - hit growers hard, with production falling 18 per cent on-year for the period from November 2021 to February 2022.

Customs data showed that first-quarter exports in 2022 correspondingly plunged to 63.7 million kilograms, down from 69.8 million kilograms in the January-March period last year.

The tally was the lowest since the first quarter of 1999, when the country shipped out 60.3 million kilograms of tea.

Export earnings for the first quarter also declined, to US$287 million from US$338 million.

Tea brokering firm Asia Siyaka blamed the drop on the agro chemical ban, which was portrayed by the government as a push to turn Sri Lankan farming 100 per cent organic.

The ban was lifted by October following backlash from the industry, but farmers were left unable to access imported fertiliser as the country simultaneously ran out of dollars.

Industry officials added that about 10 per cent of Sri Lanka's tea exports had also been affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Both countries are top buyers of the island's aromatic black tea.

The country of 22 million lacks enough foreign currency to finance even the most essential imports such as food, fuel and medicines.

Dire shortages and galloping inflation have led to widespread protests calling for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down.

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2022-05-04 08:55:18Z
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