China meeting global demand for cooling products amid heat waves
BEIJING: Inside the bustling workshop of Dongguan JHS Electrical Co Ltd, a manufacturer of mobile air conditioners and dehumidifiers in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province, the hum of machines filled the air as workers move swiftly through the assembly line, fastening, inspecting and packaging in early July.
A total of 458 portable air conditioners rolled off the production line, neatly boxed and ready for export to Mexico.
As sweltering heat waves grip many regions around the world, China's 'summer economy' is gaining momentum, with domestic manufacturers racing to meet soaring overseas demand for cooling solutions.
With operations spanning more than 40 countries and regions, the Chinese company has established itself as a major player in the global cooling equipment market.
'Our portable air conditioners are independently developed, compact in size, energy-efficient and offer strong cooling performance,' said Gao Yueping, the company's chairman.
'Compared with traditional wall-mounted units, they are more cost-effective to install and far more portable.'
Overseas demand has exceeded the company's expectations this year. By the end of April, its orders for portable air conditioners had surged 10% year-on-year, data from Huangpu Customs showed.
With a new 80,000 sq m factory becoming fully operational earlier this year, Dongguan JHS Electrical expects total orders in 2025 to exceed 2.3 million units, generating an estimated output value of 1.6 billion yuan.
To cope with unilateral trade policies in the United States, Gao said his company has expanded into new markets such as South-East Asia, where demand, particularly in less urbanised areas, is rising steadily.
While production ramps up in southern China, activity in the eastern part of the country is just as intense.
Roughly 1,400km from Dongguan, an air conditioner factory owned by Trane Air Conditioning Systems (China) Co Ltd in Taicang, East China's Jiangsu province, is also working at full capacity to ship products overseas as global demand for air conditioning systems continues to grow. — China Daily/ANN
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
China prepares to unseat US in fight for AI market
While humanoid robots faced off in a boxing ring at China's flagship artificial intelligence conference in Shanghai, a fight in the US-China tech war was fought in suits nearby over who gets to set the rules in the AI age. China's answer is a new global organisation to convene countries to foster safe and inclusive use of the powerful new technology. At the annual World AI Conference over the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Qiang warned of AI "monopoly' and instead called on foreign officials in the room – mostly from developing countries – to cooperate on governance. The new group, known as the World AI Cooperation Organization, embodies China's plan to jostle with the US for sway by positioning itself as a champion of AI for all. More favourable rules may give a global boost to Chinese companies competing with US firms to sell hardware and services in a market estimated to hit US$4.8 trillion (RM20.53 trillion) by 2033. For many of the countries represented at the conference, Chinese firms already offer competitive solutions, even if the US dominates the supply of cutting-edge AI chips. "The Chinese are coming to the table with a very different AI product mix that is going to be extremely appealing to lower-income countries that lack the computing and power infrastructure needed for large-scale implementation of OpenAI-like AI systems,' said Eric Olander of the China-Global South Project. Using technology as both carrot and calling card, Beijing's approach appears to take a page out of its earlier Digital Silk Road initiative, which put Chinese companies at the centre of telecommunications networks spanning continents. China for years has strived to define the global parameters for emerging technologies such as 5G, seeking to influence development and set the stage for its companies to win market share abroad. Huawei Technologies Co's prominent role in standard-setting groups became the subject of scrutiny of the US government when it cracked down on the use of its equipment. Global AI governance has emerged as a new battleground for the world's leading powers, both seeing the technology as critical not just for their economy but national security. President Donald Trump declared last week that his country will "do whatever it takes' to lead in AI, with his plan for actions including countering Chinese influence in international governance bodies. While there are no binding global rules for AI development, China's action plan calls for building more digital infrastructure that uses clean power and unifying computing power standards. The country also said it supports the role of businesses in creating technical standards in security, industry and ethics. Details about the Chinese body, to be headquartered in Shanghai, are scarce. In brief public remarks before media were ushered out of the room, a Chinese Foreign Ministry senior official, Ma Zhaoxu, said the organization would work to establish standards and governance frameworks. China would discuss details with those countries that are willing to join, he added. As US and Chinese companies race to develop systems that could match or even surpassed human intelligence, safety concerns have also prompted calls for guardrails. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who spoke at the Chinese event, expressed support for international bodies to collaborate on safety issues. Part of Beijing's AI strategy appears to come from its diplomatic playbook, which urges support for Global South countries to step up in international affairs. In his address to kick off the Saturday event, Li emphasised helping those nations develop AI. These countries made up most of more than 30 nations that were invited to the high-level governance talks, including Ethiopia, Cuba, Bangladesh, Russia and Pakistan. A handful of European countries including the Netherlands, France and Germany, the EU and several international organizations were also represented. No nameplate for the US was seen by Bloomberg News. The US Embassy in Beijing declined to comment on any official presence. Achmad Adhitya, special adviser to Indonesia's vice president who attended the meeting, told Bloomberg News that China's initiative is "very appreciated by the Indonesian government.' His country is preparing AI curricula to be rolled out across 400,000 schools and is training 60,000 teachers about the tech, he said. Beijing's emphasis on openness – a word used 15 times in its governance action plan – appears to ride on the success of Deepseek earlier this year. The AI upstart stunned the world not just by releasing AI models that are almost as capable as those of OpenAI but also made them freely available for anyone to download and customize for free. A succession of Chinese companies has done the same, with companies from incumbent giants like Alibaba and newcomers like Moonshot releasing cutting-edge large language models that are similarly open-weight. That accessibility may be especially important to developing countries who may not have the resources to gather vast datasets and train their own AI models from scratch, a process that would involve expensive chips made by companies such as Nvidia Corp. China also emphasises Internet sovereignty, something that may appeal to more autocratic regimes around the world. "We should respect other countries' national sovereignty and strictly abide by their laws when providing them with AI products and services,' according to the country's Global AI Governance Initiative issued in 2023. In contrast, Trump's AI plan vows that the US government will only work with engineers who "ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.' The US-China rivalry presents a familiar dilemma for countries that may feel pressured to choose a side, but Solly Malatsi, minister of communications and digital technologies of South Africa, rejects the binary choice. "It's not a case of one model over the other,' Malatsi said from the conference. "It's about an integration of the best of both worlds.' – Bloomberg
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Trump says tariffs talks with China ‘moving along well'
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that talks with China on a tariff deal were 'moving along well' and that the countries would reach a 'fair' deal on trade, without offering additional details of the agreement. 'We're moving along with China. We're doing fine with China,' Trump told reporters before leaving a bill-signing ceremony at the White House. 'I think it's going to work out very well. We're right in step ... I think we're going to have a very fair deal with China,' he added. Though reporters asked about the talks, the president did not confirm that the US and China would extend their 'pause' on tariffs that the world's two largest economies have imposed on each other's goods. On Tuesday, delegations from the countries finished a third round of high-level talks in Stockholm, Sweden, ahead of an August 12 expiration of that pause. Beijing and Washington had been expected to extend their tariff truce another three months, sources on both sides told the South China Morning Post before discussions began on Monday. At separate briefings on Tuesday in Stockholm, US and Chinese negotiators, while calling their discussions 'constructive', diverged on the timing of the fresh tariff pause. Li Chenggang, China's vice-minister of commerce, told reporters that the two sides had reached a 'consensus' concerning the pause extension, though he did not specify a date. But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that any agreement on a new pause had been reached, insisting that nothing would be agreed to until Trump was briefed. 'I notice ... that the Chinese deputy minister did say that we had agreed on a pause,' Bessent said. 'We have not. Nothing is agreed until we speak with President Trump.' 'I think our Chinese counterparts have jumped the gun a little and said that we do have an extension,' he told CNBC later. En route to the US from Scotland on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he would review the deal, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that 'we'll either approve it or not'. The Stockholm talks, led by Bessent and Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, were the third time the delegations had met in an effort to stabilise trade after both countries hiked tariffs on each other's goods to triple-digit rates in April. So far, Washington has only reached trade agreements with a handful of major partners, including Britain, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the European Union, with countries other than China facing a Friday deadline to cut deals. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. This month it noted that China's exports to the US declined by 24 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2025, with the situation 'equivalent to the first quarter of 2020 when the economy activity was stagnant' during the pandemic.
New Straits Times
2 hours ago
- New Straits Times
China's weak job market stirs boom-era nostalgia on social media
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE: Dwindling job and income prospects in China are fuelling intense social media chatter about the fashion and culture of the country's high-growth period 20 years ago, in what analysts describe as a way to express discontent about the economy without attracting censorship. The hashtag phrase "beauty in the time of economic upswings," often accompanied by early 2000s pictures of celebrities wearing bright clothes and make-up or music videos and TV ads from that period, surged in social media mentions over the summer just as 12.2 million university students graduated. They entered one of the most challenging job markets in decades – pandemic years aside – as the world's second-largest economy grapples with higher US trade tariffs, deflation, industrial overcapacity and sluggish domestic consumption. While China is growing at roughly 5 per cent this year, analysts describe it as a dual-speed economy, with manufacturing and exports running strong, while households struggle. The current pace is half of that from the 2001–2010 decade. "The economy has its cycles, but youth doesn't come twice," a social media user wrote on a widely-shared post on the topic. The State Council Information Office, which handles media queries for the government, did not respond to a comment request. China's ruling Communist Party exerts a high degree of control over domestic media and social media in the name of safeguarding social stability and preventing the spread of rumours and fake news. Reports and public discussions on what the Party considers as sensitive are routinely removed from the internet, including views critical of the economy and any veiled criticism of policymakers. On RedNote, China's version of Instagram, the hashtag has so far garnered close to 50 million views. Most posts come from millennial women recalling greater career and consumption choices in their twenties, says Yaling Jiang, founder of consultancy ApertureChina, citing platform data. But it is today's young Chinese, who face far more limited options, engaging with these posts. "Considering when it has gone viral, this is likely a response to the widespread complaints about the declining value of higher education and the increasingly tough job market for young graduates this summer," Jiang said. Xiao Qiang, the founder of US-based China Digital Times, which tracks China censorship, says the topic's popularity "poses a challenge to the authorities mainly because it uses everyday symbols, such as make-up and fashion, to subtly express dissatisfaction with economic decline and life pressure." "It creates a collective atmosphere of nostalgia and indirect criticism," Xiao said. "It can quietly erode public confidence in the official economic narrative." The content is "awkward" for censors, says Xiao, as most users share opinions over the aesthetics of China's recent past and express positive emotions. Marketing opportunity Fashion labels such as Giorgio Armani, Estée Lauder's Tom Ford and Valentino have sponsored "boom era"-themed posts on RedNote in the past 30 days, said Jiang. More than a dozen stores on Alibaba's Taobao e-commerce platform have used this tag to sell clothes. Bloggers have promoted the "Millennial Rose" shampoo by Procter & Gamble's Safeguard, or bulky Nike sneakers advertised on Taobao as "millennial classics reborn." L'Oréal-owned Maybelline, in a Weibo post promoting some of its brighter lipsticks, wrote "feel the beauty and vitality of the economic upswing." However, early-millennium looks are not prominent on Chinese streets. Jiang said marketing teams are leveraging the social media trend for brand awareness, not pushing new 2000s-inspired collections. Fashion bloggers posting under the "upswing" hashtag say styles often reflect the prevailing economic mood. This year's make-up trends, for instance, feature the more conservative, less expressive "glass skin," achieved through heavy use of moisturisers and hydrating primers or monochromatic looks where foundation, blushes or lipsticks can differ in gradient but belong to the same colour palette. The 2000s embraced futurism with metallic tones, glossy finishes and pearlescent blue or green eyeshadows. Full-eyeliner looks with smoky eyes contrasted with Barbie-pink lips for dramatic effect. "In times of economic growth, make-up is meant to look expensive and give out that glow of confidence that comes with flying careers and optimism," one beauty blogger wrote.
