02/09/2025

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | SEP 2, 2025

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

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China cluster now world’s top innovation hotspot

South Korea posts record semiconductor exports in August SEOUL: South Korea recorded its highest ever monthly semiconductor exports in August despite growing pressure from US tariffs and other restrictions on the crucial sector, government data showed yesterday. Seoul logged more than US$15 billion in exports of semiconductors last month, a new record and an increase by almost a third from August 2024. The surge was driven by strong demand from China and the exemption of chips from tariffs, the industry ministry said yesterday. The country’s other key exports – cars and shipbuilding – also performed strongly, with auto shipments climbing to US$5.5 billion and ship exports to US$3.14 billion, both marking their strongest August performance. Driven by the strong figures, overall exports reached US$58.4 billion, the highest ever recorded for the month of August. Exports to the United States, however, dropped 12% from a year earlier to US$8.74 billion, as tariffs weighed on steel, auto and machinery shipments. Asia’s fourth-largest economy was initially hit with a 25% across-the-board tariff by the United States but managed to secure a last-minute agreement for a reduced 15% rate. But 50% duties remain in place on some key exports like steel and aluminium. The strong export figures reflect “achievements born of the solid competitiveness of our companies and their determination to export, despite difficult external conditions such as US tariff policies”,South Korea’s Industry Mminister Kim Jung-kwan said in a statement. “To minimise the damage inflicted on small and medium-sized firms by US tariff measures, the government will announce in early September a three-pronged support package,” said Kim. Despite robust chip figures, shares of South Korea’s tech giants slumped yesterday, with Samsung Electronics down more than 2% and SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, plunging over 4%. The drop followed a US Commerce Department announcement on Friday that Washington would revoke waivers allowing the firms to use American technology in their Chinese operations. The department said it had “closed a Biden-era loophole that allowed a handful of foreign companies to export semiconductor manufacturing equipment and technology to China license-free”. The waivers will remain in place for 120 days, after which Samsung and SK Hynix will be restricted to manufacturing only older-generation chips in China. Both firms depend on their Chinese operations as key hubs for mainstream semiconductors, rather than high-end products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) vital for artificial intelligence. – AFP

The recalibrated rankings “highlight which clusters are turning scientific research into economic results”. Overall, the change in methodology has seen East Asian clusters drop while US clusters have made gains. The change boosted Indian clusters, while those in the European Union – where the venture capital markets are sometimes less vigorous than in the United States – have tended to see a decline. The top 100 innovation clusters are spread across 33 economies, uniting “top universities, researchers, inventors, venture capitalists and research and development firms in driving forward breakthrough ideas”, WIPO said. By country, China for the third consecutive year led the ranking with the most clusters in the top 100, at 24, followed by the United States with 22 clusters. WIPO said the clusters with the most innovation-intensive activity in proportion to population size were San Jose-San Francisco in the United States, followed by Britain’s Cambridge. – AFP

and scientific publishing data to identify local concentrations of world-leading innovation activity. “Venture capital investment activity helps capture how scientific and technological knowledge translates into start-up creation and, ultimately, new goods and services in the marketplace,” WIPO said. The agency said Shenzhen-Hong Kong Guangzhou and Tokyo-Yokohama “make a massive contribution to global scientific publications and patenting outputs”, together accounting for nearly one in five patent applications filed globally. The new ranking showed that San Jose-San Francisco has now overtaken Beijing, Seoul and Shanghai-Suzhou to grab the third place. London has shot up from 21st to eighth place, while Bengaluru has likewise jumped from 56th place to 21st on the back of venture capital deals. “Innovation clusters form the backbone of strong national innovation ecosystems, helping to anchor and strengthen the journey from ideas to market,” said WIPO chief Daren Tang.

GENEVA: Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou has overtaken Tokyo-Yokohama to become the world’s top cluster for innovation, the United Nations said yesterday. The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said the Chinese cluster had leapfrogged its Japanese rival in its 2025 Global Innovation Index. The change at the top of the world’s 100 leading innovation clusters was down to WIPO broadening the criteria to include venture capital investments to formulate the annual rankings. The UN agency dealing with patenting and innovation previously only used patent filing o WIPO broadens criteria to include venture capital investments to formulate annual rankings

Signage for Alibaba is seen on a building in the Xuhui district in Shanghai. – AFPPIC

Alibaba soars but Europe, Asia stocks mixed TOKYO: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba soared yesterday but Asian and European markets were mixed after Wall Street retreated from record highs. growing pressure from US tariffs. In Europe, London and Paris were higher in early trade but Frankfurt fell back. Oil prices edged up.

German inflation rose in August for the first time this year, data showed on Friday, which could lessen the chances for further European Central Bank rate cuts too. On tariffs, a US appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority in tapping emergency economic powers to impose wide-ranging duties. The tariffs remained in place for now though, and hitting out at the ruling Trump said that “the United States of America will win in the end”. Japan’s tariffs envoy cancelled a trip to Washington last week over plans for a presidential order including stepped-up Japanese purchases of US rice, the Nikkei reported. – AFP

On Friday US stocks fell, with the Dow and S&P 500 retreating from record highs ahead of the long Labour Day weekend. An acceleration of a key US inflation reading lowered prospects for sustained interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in the coming months. Although a September cut of 25 points is probably still on the cards, “it may be hard for them to move as quickly or aggressively as they’d like, with inflation moving higher”, said eToro analyst Bret Kenwell.

Alibaba rocketed almost 20% following bumper results on Friday, including a surge in AI revenue. Its US-listed shares added 13% on Friday too. Alibaba lifted the Hang Seng by 2% and Shanghai rose half a percent. Other Asian indexes were in the red, however, with Japan’s Nikkei off more than 1% as chip shares came under pressure. Seoul’s Kospi was also off even after South Korean data showed record monthly semiconductor exports in August despite