Asia In Brief Last week’s trade talks between the USA and China have seen the two countries ease some trade restrictions.
According to a fact sheet published by the White House on Saturday, the talks resulted in China lifting restrictions on the export of rare earths – the minerals needed to make most high-tech products.
Beijing also promised to “terminate its various investigations targeting U.S. companies in the semiconductor supply chain, including its antitrust, anti-monopoly, and anti-dumping investigations.” At the time of writing, China is investigating Nvidia, Qualcomm, and memory-maker Micron.
According to the White House, China will also “take appropriate measures to ensure the resumption of trade from Nexperia’s facilities in China, allowing production of critical legacy chips to flow to the rest of the world.”
At the time of writing, Beijing appears not to have commented on, or confirmed, the White House’s announcement.
But the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has commented on Nexperia, the China-owned chipmaker whose products are essential to the automotive industry. The government of the Netherlands recently prevented the local arm of the company from sharing certain intellectual property with China, which retaliated with an export ban of some Nexperia products made in the Middle Kingdom.
On Saturday, a Ministry spokesperson blamed the Dutch government for the situation, and said China will consider exemptions to its export ban.
Singapore seizes alleged scam camp cash
Singapore Police last week conducted an “enforcement operation” and seized assets linked to Chen Zhi, an individual indicted by the US Department of Justice for wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, and for directing the operation of forced-labor scam compounds in Cambodia.
The DoJ claimed those held captive in the compounds “engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as ‘pig butchering’ scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world.”
Singapore’s police issued prohibition of disposal orders against six properties and various financial assets, including bank accounts, securities accounts and cash, with a total estimated value of more than S$150 million ($115 million). “Other assets, including a yacht, eleven cars and multiple bottles of liquor were also subjected to prohibition of disposal orders,” according to the Singapore Police’s statement.
WiseTech raided over trades
WiseTech Global, the logistics tech company whose CEO Richard White last year stepped down amid allegations of improper behaviour, last week notified investors that Australia’s Securities and Investments Commission, and Federal Police, executed a search warrant to seek info related to share trades made by White and others.
It’s reportedly alleged some of the trades took place during blackout periods – times at which insiders are not allowed to trade in company shares because they have information that other investors do not.
Google India in massive AI giveaway
Google’s Indian operation last week announced it will give a free Gemini Pro account to all subscribers of mobile carrier Jio’s unlimited 5G plan.
The plan includes “expanded access to NotebookLM for study and research” and 2 TB of cloud storage, plus access to many models, and Google values it at just under $400.
Jio is India’s largest mobile carrier and has over 500 million subscribers – over 200 million of them using 5G plans, although it’s unclear how many are eligible for this offer.
Google’s giveaway includes two notable elements, one of which is that subscribers aged between 18 and 25 will the first recipients. The other is the web giant’s pitch that 2TB of storage will be useful “for backing up WhatsApp” – an admission that despite Google’s reach, Meta’s messaging app has become an essential part of Indian life.
ESA to open Japan office
The European Space Agency (ESA) last week announced it will establish its first permanent presence in Japan.
The ESA already operates an office in Washington, DC. The Tokyo outpost shares the same goal of ensuring the space agency can more effectively collaborate with its local counterpart, in this case the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
IDC predicts Indian infrastructure spend surge
Analyst firm IDC last week predicted India’s enterprise infrastructure market “is expected to witness a 16.4 percent YoY growth in value by CY2025.”
Professional services firms are significantly increasing investments in large-scale AI infrastructure
“The country’s rise as a key hub for global technology investment and innovation is fueling a transformational shift in the enterprise infrastructure landscape and offering dynamic growth opportunities,” the firm found.
One reason or the surge is build-out of AI infrastructure.
Another is that local organizations have made infrastructure modernization “a top priority.”
“Enterprises are increasingly investing in modern infrastructure platforms built on cloud-native, software-defined, and AI-ready architectures that provide the scalability and agility required to support the dynamically changing workload requirements,” the firm found.
“Professional services firms are significantly increasing investments in large-scale AI infrastructure buildouts to cater to local demand while meeting stringent data localization requirements to ensure compliance and security,” IDC found, while the financial services industry “is aggressively investing in digital transformation to deliver personalized financial services, seamless payment solutions, and enhanced fraud detection and risk management capabilities.”
Telcos are also buying up big, to modernize their systems, build content delivery networks, enable 5G, and to create the capacity needed for network and security log analytics.
The sums involved, however, remain modest: Last year IDC observed almost $5 billion infrastructure spending across India, so this year it expects around $6 billion – peanuts compared to the kind of money hyperscalers are currently spraying about and also far less than the $82 billion the firm last week found US organizations spent on compute and storage hardware in Q2 2025 alone. India’s population is roughly four times larger than the USA’s. ®
