NEWS in brief

CHINESE MEDIA

Xi Urges Stepping Up Final Preparations for Successful Winter Olympics

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged organizers to continue to work hard in the final stages of their preparations to ensure the complete success of the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.Xi made the remarks during his latest inspection of the Games’ preparatory work on January 4, 2022.

Xi said that a successful Beijing 2022 is China’s solemn commitment to the international community and after years of preparations, everything is ready.

Xi visited the National Speed Skating Oval, the Main Media Center, the athletes’ village, the Games-time Operations Command Center and a winter sports training base in Beijing,learning about preparatory work as well as Chinese athletes’preparations for the Games.This was the fifth time he inspected preparations for the Games in the past five years.

During the inspection tour, Xi said that thanks to years of efforts, work on all fronts was mostly ready.“We are fully confident and able to present a brilliant, exceptional and excellent Olympic Games to the world.”

The 2022 Olympic Winter Games will take place from February 4 to 20, followed by the Paralympic Winter Games from March 4 to 13.

South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regionhandled 346 China-Vietnam freight train trips in 2021, up 108 percent from the previous year, according to the China Railway Nanning Group Co., Ltd.Since its launch in August 2017, the freight train service has transported a huge variety of goods between China and ASEAN countries, including glass, cotton yarn, fruits, electronics, and daily necessities.

Among the imported fruits, 19,400 tonnes of durians, mangosteens, and longans were transported via the freight service in 2021, up 14.7 percent year on year.A total of 400 China-Vietnam freight train trips are expected to be made in 2022.

As of January 3, a month after the China-Laos Railway began operations, the line had handled 670,000 passenger trips and 170,000 metric tons of cargo, according to the China State Railway Group.It has facilitated travel for people in both countries and promoted economic and trade ties between China and Laos, the group said in a statement.

On December 3, 2021, the railway began its first journey from Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, to Vientiane, the Lao capital.The 1,035-kilometer line, which runs through lush tropical mountains and across the Mekong River, has shortened the journey from Kunming to Vientiane to about 10 hours.

Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertesigned on December 30, 2021 the nearly US$100 billion national budget for 2022 to fund the country’s sustained recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 5.024 trillion pesos (roughly US$98.44 billion) budget, 10 percent higher than the 2021 budget, will prioritize the people’s health by ensuring affordable and accessible healthcare for all Filipinos, said Duterte.

To guarantee the streamlined operation of the current health system, 88.9 billion pesos (US$1.74 billion) were allocated for the health facilities operations program and the procurement of drugs,medicines, and vaccines.

Duterte said the 2022 budget will also provide essential funding requirements to safeguard and support displaced workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to foster socio-economic recovery.

Cambodia inaugurated a China-funded national stadiumin the northern suburbs of the capital Phnom Penh with a sports parade, martial arts, and traditional dances on December 18, 2021.

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wentian presided over the event.Hun Sen said the 60,000-seat stadium will be the centerpiece venue for tournaments when Cambodia hosts the Southeast Asian Games for the first time in May 2023.

He expressed his gratitude to China for building the stadium, saying that it was a great achievement in the country’s sports sector.

Located about 18 kilometers north of the capital, the 39.9-meter-tall stadium was built in the shape of a “sailing ship” with both prows 99 meters tall, and was encircled by an ancient Angkor-style moat.

VOICES

“Another wave of widespread school closures would be disastrous for children.The evidence is clear:Prolonged, nationwide school closures; limited resources for students, teachers and parents; and lack of access to remote learning have wiped out decades of progress in education and rendered childhood unrecognizable.”

—UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chief Henrietta Foresaid on December 17, 2021, that closing schools should be last resort in Omicron fight

“We expect our GDP to grow by three to five percent in 2022.We will progressively phase out emergency support measures as businesses revive, though a few sectors will take longer.We will safely expand cross-border travel and re-connect with the rest of the world, Omicron permitting.”

—Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongsaid in his New Year address on December 31, 2021

“I will try my utmost to bring ASEAN from nine members back to an ASEAN with 10 members as this year’s chair.I have already stated that if ASEAN has just nine members, that would mean ASEAN is weaker with an unhealthy attitude and an unwell outlook.”

—Hun Sensaid on December 23, 2021, who will visit Myanmar in January 7-8, 2022, both as Cambodian prime minister and as chairman of ASEAN

Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry announced on January 3,2022, that the country’s GDP grew by7.2 percentin 2021, rebounding from the 5.4 percent contraction in 2020.

In the fourth quarter of 2021,Singapore’s GDP grew by5.9 percentyear on year.Singapore’s manufacturing sector expanded by14 percentyear on year and12.8 percentin the whole year of 2021.The construction sector expanded by2 percentyear on year in Q4 and 18.7 percent in the year.The services producing industries expanded by4.6 percentyear on year in the quarter and5.2 percentin the year.

Global debt rose to a recordUS$226 trillionin 2020 as the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and a deep recession,the International Monetary Fund(IMF) said on December 15, 2021.

Global debt rose by 28 percentage points to256 percentof GDP in 2020, the largest oneyear debt surge since World War II.Debt increases are particularly striking in advanced economies,where public debt rose from around70 percentof GDP in 2007 to124 percentof GDP in 2020.Meanwhile, private debt rose at a more moderate pace from 164 to178 percentof GDP in the same period, according to the IMF.

The Asian Development Bank(ADB) forecast a5.1 percentrise in gross domestic product for Southeast Asia in 2022.That represents an acceleration from the3 percentestimate for 2021, when the coronavirus shut down factories in Malaysia and Vietnam during the summer, contributing to global supply chain turmoil.

The economic recovery will likely spur central banks, which largely kept their rates unchanged last year, to shift to monetary tightening.Economists increasingly expect interest rate hikes to be on the table in major economies during the second half of 2022.But the threat of the coronavirus complicates the picture for central banks.

ASEAN MEDIA

VNAJanuary 4, 2022

Vietnam Still No.2 Coffee ExporterVietnam’s 2021 coffee export revenue is estimated at over US$3 billion despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an industry official.The country remains the second largest exporter of the drink in the world, second only to Brazil, accounting for 8.3 percent of the global market share.

Coffee is one of the six agricultural products that bring back over US$3 billion per year for Vietnam.It is now present in more than 80 countries and territories, mainly the European Union (EU), the US, Russia, Japan, and the UK.

Yet, the value of coffee is not high as most of it is exported raw.The average price for a tonne of processed coffee is nearly US$3,600 while that of coffee beans is only about US$2,400.To improve the situation, enterprises have promoted processing instead of exporting coffee beans.

The Strait TimesJanuary 3, 2022

China’s Astronauts Mark New Year with Live Stream from Space

From hosting a children’s art gallery in space to answering questions about manned spaceflight, the three astronauts onboard China’s Tiangong space station celebrated the New Year by cultivating science and inspiration in the country’s youth.On January 1, astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu hosted a live video call and interacted with college students at venues in Beijing as well as Hong Kong and Macau.They are the first Chinese astronauts to welcome the New Year in space.

On October 16, 2021, the Shenzhou XIII mission sent the three astronauts into the core module of the Tiangong space station called Tianhe, meaning “Harmony of the Heavens”.Since then, they have conducted two spacewalks and are scheduled to spend six months working in the station, making it China’s longest space mission.

The Jakarta PostJanuary 4, 2022

How China Beats US as Trade, Investment Partner for Indonesia

Indonesia has gotten closer to China than the United States in goods trade and foreign direct investment in the past few decades, benefitting from the rapid development of the world’s second-largest economy.

Indonesia’s trade with China picked up following the East Asian giant’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.Trade between the two countries grew further after ASEAN implemented a free trade agreement with China,called ACFTA, in 2010.

In 2020, exports to China accounted for 19.45 percent of the total, expanding from 4.45 percent in 2000, according to the United Nations Comtrade Database.The share of imports from the country also expanded to nearly 28 percent in 2020 from 6.03 percent in 2000.This growth puts China as Indonesia’s top trading partner.

The StarJanuary 2, 2022

China to Scrap Subsidies for Electric VehiclesChina will end subsidies for electric and hybrid cars at the end of the year, authorities have announced, saying the strength of sales in the sector meant state support was no longer needed.

In a statement published on December 31, 2021, the Ministry of Finance said purchase subsidies would be reduced by 30 percent from the beginning of 2022 before being scrapped completely by the end of the year.Sales of electric and hybrid cars have boomed in China,

with increases of more than 100 percent year-on-year in recent months.

The cars are set to represent 18 percent of all vehicle sales in 2022, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers(CAAM) estimated.In 2019, they accounted for only five percent.Of the 27.5 million vehicles set to be sold this year,according to CAAM, five million will be electric and hybrids.