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Chinese tech giants Huawei Technologies and ByteDance are planning major investments in Brazil’s cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence sectors, moves likely to deepen US concerns over Beijing’s expanding digital reach in Latin America.The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Monday that Huawei is set to announce a deal with Dataprev – a state-run technology company that manages the country’s social data systems – to use its data centres. Huawei is also in talks with Edge UOL, a cloud services arm of Grupo UOL PagSeguro, which also owns Folha.Executives...

Wealthy mainland Chinese are increasingly shifting their attention and capital away from the US to other real estate markets amid rising geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, according to property agents.In 2024, Chinese buyers’ demand for homes that cost more than US$5 million moved to Thailand, Australia and Canada, respectively, according to data tracked by Juwai IQI.By comparison, the US in 2023 was the top choice among Chinese buyers, according to the property portal, which has a network of over 50,000 real estate professionals across more than 30 countries.“Geopolitical friction,...

The global economy is inexorably moving towards a multicurrency system as China’s persistent efforts to internationalise the yuan and technological changes erode the US dollar’s dominant position, economists said at a conference on Monday.“Trade invoicing in yuan went from zero per cent to 30 per cent in the last 10 years, and half of Chinese capital flows are now in yuan, much higher than before,” said Jin Keyu, a professor at the London School of Economics, at a panel hosted by the Milken Institute, a US-based think tank.“The truth is...

Inefficient investments continue to be a drain on the economy, and debt-laden local governments need to ensure that the projects they back are actually needed in their communities.That was the message state-owned Economic Daily delivered in a commentary on Sunday as it put its weight behind national efforts to stimulate domestic demand.Written under the pen name Jin Guanping, the commentary said the incremental capital output ratio had risen from 2.84 in 2008 to 9.44 in 2023. The ratio is a key measure of investment efficiency where a lower value indicates...

India has “absolutely no interest” in undermining the US dollar, and its fellow members of the Brics grouping of emerging economies have not formed a unified position on a proposed alternative payment system, according to New Delhi’s foreign minister.Speaking at the London-based think tank Chatham House last week during a six-day visit to Britain and Ireland, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar described the dollar as a “source of international economic stability”.His comments followed repeated warnings from US President Donald Trump against any efforts by Brics – an acronym of founding nations Brazil, Russia,...