18/01/2016 Asia Business Report

China's property market has been struggling with massive oversupply

is. Can prices recover? Taiwan elects its first female president,

can she revitalise the flagging economy? Good morning. Glad you

could join us for the Monday edition of the Asia Business Report. We

start off with China's property market and it is one of the pillars

of the economy. Over the past few years it has struggled with a

massive supply glut. We're showing prices across its major cities today

and it will indicate whether government support is helping with a

recovery in the sector. The Hong Kong and Chinese stock market and

now open for trade and they are in negative territory. Let us cross

over now to our reporter who is in Hong Kong. Thank you for joining us

topping if you take a look at the markets in Hong Kong and China, very

jittery and crude prices and out below $29 per barrel. That is right

we are expecting more losses in China's market as well as here in

Hong Kong. The sentiment has not improved since Friday when the

markets ended at their lowest since 2014. Looking at what is happening

in Beijing, it is pretty clear that the authorities are trying to

stabilise financial markets by trying to inject optimism amongst

investors and traders. The central bank in China has set the midpoint

slightly stronger than what they have been setting previously. We are

also hearing on January 25 that banks will have two keep more money

on hand when they are looking at settling the currency -- to. Raising

the reserve ratio is one way of reducing the liquidity in offshore

market. Of course, in places like Hong Kong there have been concerns

that speculators are betting against the currency in places outside

China. And that is one way of trying to make it much more expensive to

speculative is to do that -- for speculators to do that. We have seen

the markets fall at the beginning of the year, of course, all eyes will

be on this key economic indicator, GDP which could move markets again

tomorrow. Absolutely. All eyes are on that. People are looking at the

real estate prices that are coming out this morning to see how they

actually economy is doing and to see whether it is slowing to the extent

that markets fear that they are. Certainly, the expectation tomorrow

is that the GDP will be slightly below 7%, and if that is the case,

that will be the slowest growth in 25 years and we will have to see how

markets react to that news. Thank you so much for updating us on the

latest market action in Hong Kong and China. We now have the latest

data on China property prices. It indicates a gain of 1.6% against .9%

in the month of November. Moving out to development across the straits.

Taiwan has elected its first female president. This weekend, the pro-

Democratic leader won a crucial vote for the party's future. She was a

law professor who now faces Motlop challenges going forward, whether

the island should get closer to China, its main trading partner.

Previously I spoke to an expert and asked about the risks. The

information on the economy is not good. They fell all the way through

2015. The criticism throughout the campaign is that some of her

policies lacked sophistication. Throughout the campaign she stressed

it is about the economy and not about China policy. But come in the

previous year, she will have two talk about other policies like the

environment and energy. Shula doing courage multinational companies to

invest more here in Taiwan. The governance to rout 2008, and her

record of economic development was not that great. There are risks of

business. There are challenges going forward for the first female

president of Taiwan, but how important is it that China factors

into it being the main trading partner for Taiwan? For the business

perspective, you would say you cannot avoid doing business with one

of the world's largest economies which is right next door. They will

have a very tough walk trying to distinguish between economic and

identity issues. Obviously, they have entered into a number of trade

facilitation is over the last few years and that will be hard to roll

that back. The question becomes, how much more will she be willing to do

and how much will China be willing to do in regard to trade

liberalisation? And that gets into the trade disputes and where the

governments will get into dispute. If you were to decide on her first

100 days in office, what should be her top three priorities rushing

yellow one of the biggest concerns is energy policy and her party has

been consistently against nuclear power, but it does provide a

significant amount of power for Taiwan. That is a long-term concern

needs to be addressed right away. The News of the victory was greeted

by mostly silence on the mainland, but it also was because China had a

big event of its own. The Chinese president launched a new

international development bank on Saturday. The Asia Infrastructure

Bank. It will be used to meet the enormous budget needs. A company is

struggling to stay afloat after prices fell after an decade lows. It

last week cut more than 200 jobs. The world economic Forum takes off

later this week with the theme of mastering the fourth Industrial

Revolution. Part of that is through smart factories where more machines

and computers are use to get things done. How will that work in India

which has millions of labour is in need of jobs. Replacing dozens of

workers with machines was a big step for this packaging company in

Bangalore. The huge investment paid off and production went up by 25%.

Unlike this one, many of India's factories remain labour intensive

and outdated. The government wants to change that push up the

contribution manufacturing makes to the economy. But if these factories

of the future use more technology and fewer staff, that poses an issue

here in India which has a million people coming to the job market

every month. Manufacturing has traditionally offered many of those

jobs, but here at United States firm, GE, India needs to face up to

the bigger picture. It is important that we remain productive, efficient

and we remain the most competitive in a global perspective. And I would

say that we would stomach should not overburdened that need to be

competitive by simply ensuring that we are creating more jobs. But

nearly 200,000 engineers, with companies like this, have expertise

in information technology and it sees what is being dubbed as the

fourth Industrial Revolution as an opportunity the new business. I feel

that to date's I, the companies are not looking at India as their base.

They are looking at the global market. For them to go and meet the

global challenges that other companies are facing they will have

to do. And they are embracing the industrial Internet phenomena. Being

less labour-intensive means that manufacturing cannot create the

manual jobs that India needs. But the success of smart factories like

these will rely on more skilled workers. Something that India

urgently needs to invest in if it wants to cash in on the next

industrial revolution. It is a weekday for Asian stock markets for

the start of the new trading week after the stock fell sharply due to

another slide in crude oil. We have a hard thing index down by one point

to and Australia giving back 1%. Thank you for investing your time

with a. Goodbye for now -- us. You are watching BBC News. Out of

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