Industry & Economy

  • Bureau of Statistics: From January to February, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 35.1% year-on-year, an increase of 16.9% year-on-year, and an average growth rate of 8.1% in two years; total retail sales of consumer goods was 6973.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.8%; January-February , The national investment in fixed assets (excluding rural households) was 4.523.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.0%, an increase of 3.5% over the same period in 2019, and a two-year average growth rate of 1.7%; in February, the national urban survey unemployment rate was 5.5%, a year-on-year decrease 0.7 percentage point.
  • Central Bank: At the end of 2020, the total assets of China’s financial institutions were 353.19 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.7%. Among them, the total assets of banking institutions were 319.74 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.1%; financial institutions’ liabilities were 321.17 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase. An increase of 10.8%, of which banking institutions’ liabilities were 293.11 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.2%.
  • Post Office: From January to February, the total business volume of express service companies in China completed 13.11 billion pieces, an increase of 100.3% year-on-year; the cumulative business income was 138.33 billion yuan, an increase of 59.9% year-on-year. The proportion of express delivery business in the eastern, central and western regions was 77.6%, 14.6% and 7.8%, respectively, and the proportion of business income was 77.7%, 13% and 9.3%, respectively.
  • Strategy Analytics: In 2020, the global smartphone application processor (AP) market will reach US$25 billion, a year-on-year increase of 25%. Among them, Qualcomm maintained its leading position with a revenue share of 31%; Apple ranked second with a share of 23%; HiSilicon ranked third with a share of 18%; followed by MediaTek and Samsung LSI. 7nm and 5nm processors are very popular, accounting for nearly 40% of all smartphone AP shipments in 2020. In addition, TSMC will lead the smart phone AP foundry market with more than two-thirds of the market share in 2020, followed by Samsung Foundry.

Trade & Shipment

  • Guangxi opened the first heavy machinery China-Europe train. Recently, the 21,028 heavy machinery China-Europe train departed from Guangxi Nanning International Railway Port to Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, opening up a new route “Nanning-Xi’an (Xinzhu)-Nur-Sultan”.
  • Vietnam: Establish a target for the aquatic products industry by 2030. The annual growth rate of the output value is required to reach 3-4%, the total domestic aquatic product output in Vietnam will reach 9.8 million tons (including 7 million tons of aquaculture production and 2.8 million tons of aquatic fishing production), and the export value of aquatic products will reach US$14-16 billion.
  • The number of China-Europe express trains increased by 96%. From January to February this year, a total of 2,213 freight trains were sent between China and European cities, a year-on-year increase of 96%. The freight volume reached 209,000 TEU, a year-on-year increase of 106%.
  • Yangming’s performance in February reached a new high. Yangming Shipping announced its latest financial report. In February, revenue broke through the NT$20 billion marks, reaching NT$20.828 billion, an increase of NT$400 million from January’s NT$20.44 billion, setting a new monthly revenue again. In the first two months of this year, Yangming Shipping’s accumulated revenue was NT$41.274 billion, an annual increase of 74%. It is believed that Yangming’s profit in the first quarter will continue to grow.

Company

  • TSMC recruited another 9,000 people, and all employees increased their salaries by 20%.
  • Facebook accelerates its competition with TikTok. Facebook plans to place more ads on short video content in order to attract more influencer anchors and compete with TikTok. In the past, only videos longer than 3 minutes were eligible to display ads, and now videos as short as one minute will also be eligible for advertising.
  • TikTok was banned in Pakistan.
  • Bosch once again announced 750 job cuts. German automotive supplier Bosch recently announced that it will cut 750 jobs at its Rodez factory by 2025.
  • Bosch’s product in the area is diesel injectors, and its factory employees believe that “suppressing diesel” is the source of the layoffs. Three years ago, the Bosch leadership also promised to create 300 jobs.
  • A few days ago, Samsung demonstrated for the first time a chip manufactured with a 3nm process, which is a 32GB SRAM memory chip. On Samsung’s roadmap, 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, and 3nm are all-new process nodes. Samsung will apply GAAFET technology on the 3nm process for the first time, once again achieving a breakthrough in transistor structure.
  • Evergrande Automobile: It will join forces with Tencent to establish a joint venture company to jointly develop a world-leading in-vehicle intelligent operating system with independent intellectual property rights to create a world-leading intelligent vehicle ecosystem. Evergrande Automobile holds a 60% stake in the joint venture.
  • Xiaopeng Motors: Announced a strategic cooperation with Guangdong Yuecai Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. The two parties reached a 500 million yuan cooperation agreement on the investment by the Guangdong Provincial Industrial Development Fund in the Guangzhou Chengxing Zhidong Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Xiaopeng Automobile.
  • Juneyao Airlines: In February, passenger capacity input increased by 78.76% year-on-year;
  • China Southern Airlines: In February, passenger capacity investment increased by 65.14% year-on-year;
  • Air China: In February, passenger capacity investment increased by 21.0% year-on-year, and passenger turnover increased by 44.9% year-on-year

COVID-19 & Vaccine & Travel

  • The European Union announced an extension of the period of vaccine export control, from the original end of March to the end of March to the end of June this year.
  • India has the largest vaccine production capacity in the world. India is the global vaccine production center. It is home to the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and controls 60% of the global vaccine market. Recently, the Serum Institute of India stated that the company’s new crown vaccine production capacity could reach 1.5 billion doses in 2021, and it also plans to increase its annual production capacity to 2.5 billion doses by the end of the year. A world-renowned consulting company predicts that India’s new coronavirus vaccine production this year will be second only to the United States.
  • On March 14, Uzbekistan canceled mandatory COVID-19 testing for immigrants. At the same time, those entering Uzbekistan must provide a certificate of negative nucleic acid test within 72 hours.

World

  • United States: The economic growth rate this year is expected to be about 7%.
  • Russia: Corporate profits fell by 23.5% last year.
  • Germany: The consumer market is gradually picking up, and the economic outlook indicator and the purchasing propensity indicator have increased by 6.7 and 7.4 respectively from the previous month.
  • United Kingdom: The volume of trade between Britain and Europe plummeted in the first month of “De facto Brexit”. The category where the UK’s imports from the European Union has decreased the most is machinery and transportation equipment and chemicals.
  • Global: Demand for rubber gloves will remain strong. According to the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (Margma), the global supply of available rubber gloves in 2021 is estimated to be about 420 billion. The association also said that until the second quarter of 2022, glove demand will continue to remain strong.
  • India: Proposed legislation to prohibit cryptocurrency. Any holding, issuance, mining, trading and transfer of crypto assets will be sentenced to be illegal; the new law will give cryptocurrency holders 6 months to liquidate such assets. If this ban becomes law, India will be the first major economy in the world to illegally hold cryptocurrency.