分类： business

The ongoing Middle East conflict, centered on tensions that led to the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has triggered an unprecedented jet fuel supply crunch across Asia, forcing regional carriers to slash flight schedules, adopt costly fuel-carrying workarounds, and raise ticket prices to weather the unfolding crisis.

According to trade data platform Kpler, Iran’s closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne jet fuel transits daily — removed nearly one-fifth of global seaborne jet fuel supply from the market. While Iran, the United States, and Israel announced a tentative two-week ceasefire on Wednesday, uncertainties about the durability of the truce and the reopening of the strait persist. Iran has maintained it will assert full control over waterway access, impose transit fees on passing vessels, and continue its uranium enrichment program, leaving global energy markets on edge.

Unlike past oil market shocks that primarily drove up commodity prices, this crisis has created both pricing spikes and acute physical supply shortages, pushing governments, airport operators and airlines to contingency planning that includes fuel rationing. Aviation industry analysts note that Asia is far more vulnerable to the supply squeeze than other regions due to its thinner strategic fuel reserves and heavier reliance on energy exports that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Within Asia, lower-income nations that depend almost entirely on jet fuel imports, such as Vietnam, Myanmar, and Pakistan, have seen the worst disruptions so far.

Carriers have already deployed a range of emergency measures to manage limited fuel access. One of the most common workarounds is “tankering” — the practice of loading up on extra fuel at an airline’s home airport before flying to destinations with restricted fuel supplies. AirAsia X CEO Bo Lingam confirmed that the long-haul budget carrier now carries extra fuel from Malaysia for all flights to Vietnamese airports, as local fuel providers cap the volume they sell to foreign carriers. Air India has also added a mandatory refueling stop in Kolkata on its Yangon-to-Delhi route, due to persistent fuel shortages at Myanmar’s main Yangon International Airport. While tankering resolves supply uncertainty, it is an expensive solution: carrying extra weight increases the jet fuel an aircraft burns in flight, eroding carrier profit margins.

For prolonged shortages, deep capacity cuts have become the go-to response for many airlines. Vietnam’s national aviation authority confirmed that Vietnam Airlines has cut 23 domestic flights every week to conserve limited fuel stocks. Myanmar’s transport ministry reported that local carriers suspended multiple domestic services for much of March amid total fuel shortfalls, and aviation data provider Cirium shows several Myanmar airlines have continued trimming capacity through April. Batik Air Malaysia, one of the region’s largest budget carriers, has gone even further, slashing 36% of its domestic capacity to mitigate risk. CEO Chandran Rama Muthy framed the cuts as a necessary proactive step, noting that continuing full operations would expose the airline to unacceptable operational and financial volatility amid the “crisis-mode” market environment.

Industry insiders warn that the uncertainty stretching far beyond the current two-week ceasefire is adding to already crippling pressure on an industry that has not fully recovered from post-pandemic demand shifts. “In my conversations with airlines, they are very concerned about what the future looks like, because we do not know when the war will end and we don’t know when the supply chain, the feedstock, will come from the Gulf area,” said Shukor Yusof, founder of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy Endau Analytics.

Brendan Sobie, an independent aviation analyst based in Singapore, explained that fuel access restrictions have a cascading effect across the region. “Some countries are in better shape than others. Some may be limiting (fuel for) foreign airlines, which then leads to tankering. This could be proactive as some countries fear they could run out,” he said.

European carriers are now bracing for similar disruptions, as the supply crunch spreads beyond Asian markets. Since the conflict began, jet fuel prices have more than doubled, prompting airlines that have not cut capacity to raise ticket fares and add new fuel surcharges to pass higher costs on to consumers. While the ceasefire has offered a brief reprieve for markets, the unresolved standoff over the Strait of Hormuz means widespread volatility in jet fuel supply and pricing is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Australia’s $1.32 billion annual pharmaceutical export sector faces unprecedented uncertainty after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping 100 percent tariff on all imported patented pharmaceuticals, a policy designed to force global drugmakers to shift manufacturing operations to U.S. soil. Announced in late March 2026, the new levy only applies to patented medications produced outside U.S. borders, though the administration has offered a steep reduction to 20 percent for any company that relocates its production facilities to the United States.

The tariff announcement marks the latest escalation in a series of trade restrictions the Trump administration has rolled out targeting Australian goods over the past 12 months, following a 10 percent baseline tariff on most Australian imports and a 50 percent levy on Australian steel and aluminum implemented last year. In justifying the new policy, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the importation of foreign-made pharmaceuticals and active ingredients posed an unacceptable threat to U.S. national security and economic stability.

Australian officials have slammed the new measures as a betrayal of decades of mutually beneficial free trade between the two nations. Speaking to reporters on April 3, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler described the tariff as deeply disappointing and out of step with the two countries’ long-standing friendly trade relationship. “For more than 20 years, we have shared free and fair trade in pharmaceutical products that flows both ways, delivering benefits to our mutual economies and to patients on both sides of the Pacific,” Butler said. “We are now working closely with Australian pharmaceutical exporters that serve the U.S. market, and we remain deeply concerned about the potential impact on their businesses and the thousands of Australian jobs they support.”

Butler noted that one of Australia’s largest pharmaceutical exporters, biotech giant CSL, which is a leading supplier of blood plasma products to the U.S., does not expect a material impact on its operations in 2026, as the company has already invested heavily in expanding U.S.-based production capacity in recent years.

Industry groups representing Australian drugmakers have issued firm opposition to the new tariff regime. Medicines Australia, the leading trade association representing the nation’s research-driven pharmaceutical sector, released a statement reaffirming its commitment to free, fair and open global trade and rejecting the new levies on Australian patented and branded drug exports to the U.S.

Liz de Somer, chief executive officer of Medicines Australia, explained that the tariffs will disproportionately harm smaller Australian firms that are still working to break into the U.S. market, rather than large established players with existing U.S. production footprints. Data from the Australian government cited by the organization shows Australia already runs a pharmaceutical trade deficit with the U.S., exporting roughly A$1.91 billion ($1.32 billion) in pharmaceutical products annually while importing A$3.34 billion from U.S. manufacturers.

De Somer added that the new tariff is not the only policy causing alarm for the Australian sector. The U.S. has also proposed a reference pricing benchmark that could undermine Australia’s long-standing Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), a public program that lets the federal government negotiate lower drug prices for Australian patients. U.S. trade lobbyists have repeatedly criticized the PBS as an unfair trade practice, and a U.S. reference policy could pressure Australia to raise drug prices, which currently sit far lower than prices in other wealthy nations. De Somer noted that other developed nations including the United Kingdom and Japan have already entered negotiations with the Trump administration to address both the tariff and reference pricing proposals, adding that “We must now consider the consequences of not addressing these global developments.”

Economic analysts echo the concern that small and mid-sized Australian exporters face the greatest risk from the new policy. Ben Udy, lead economist at Oxford Economics Australia, told reporters that around 45 percent of all Australian pharmaceutical exports are destined for the U.S. market, with the vast majority of those shipments consisting of blood and plasma products. Udy explained that the “area of greatest uncertainty” created by the new tariffs centers on smaller exporters of patented branded medicines that do not qualify for any exemptions from the new levies. For these firms, Udy said, there are only two viable paths forward: lobbying the U.S. administration for individual tariff relief, or shifting their export focus to other alternative global markets.

In a landmark leap for China’s high-value shipbuilding sector, the country’s first 180,000-cubic-meter liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier, fully designed and constructed by domestic Chinese enterprises, was finalized for delivery on Wednesday at the China Merchants Heavy Industry Haimen Base in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, state broadcaster China Central Television has confirmed.

Measuring 298.8 meters in overall length with a molded breadth of 48 meters, the newly completed vessel incorporates a cutting-edge low-speed dual-fuel propulsion system. It is engineered to deliver standout operational performance, including an extremely low boil-off rate for stored LNG and industry-leading environmental compatibility, addressing key priorities for clean energy transportation globally.

As the largest LNG carrier ever fully built and completed in China to date, the vessel represents a critical technical breakthrough for Chinese shipbuilders in the segment of large-scale clean energy transport vessels. LNG carriers are highly specialized ships purpose-built to carry liquefied natural gas stored at an ultra-cold temperature of -163 degrees Celsius. Widely nicknamed the “crown jewel of the global shipbuilding industry”, these vessels require extraordinarily complex design and manufacturing expertise that only a small number of shipyards around the world have managed to master. Prior to this delivery, only four Chinese shipyards held the capacity to deliver completed LNG carriers; with the launch of this new vessel, China now counts five domestic shipyards with this advanced capability, expanding the country’s production capacity for high-value specialized vessels.

This milestone underscores China’s rapid advancement in moving up the global shipbuilding value chain, turning a once highly restricted niche market into a new strength for domestic manufacturing.

Beijing has laid out an ambitious yet pragmatic economic roadmap for the second half of the 2020s, announcing an average annual GDP growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent for the 2026 to 2030 period as part of its newly released 15th Five-Year Plan. Unveiled to the public on Wednesday, the blueprint projects that this growth trajectory will expand the Chinese capital’s overall economic output by more than 1 trillion yuan, equivalent to approximately $147 billion, over the five-year window.

The target builds on a strong track record of steady expansion from the previous planning cycle. Over the past five years, Beijing recorded an average annual GDP growth rate of 5.2 percent, pushing the city’s total annual GDP to 5.2 trillion yuan by the end of 2025.

Officials from the Beijing Commission of Development and Reform noted that the new growth range was formulated after a careful balancing of long-term development needs and practical economic feasibility. The target is aligned with Beijing’s overarching 2035 vision to roughly double the city’s 2020 economic output, while intentionally building flexibility into growth projections to accommodate ongoing structural economic adjustment, deepening reform efforts, and a continued shift toward higher-quality, sustainable growth rather than sheer expansion.

Of the 13 sector-focused chapters in the plan, the first five are dedicated to reinforcing Beijing’s core role as China’s national capital, with particular focus placed on strengthening its standing as a leading international exchange hub and a national center for scientific and technological innovation.

On the front of international openness, the plan sets a clear target to raise Beijing’s share of the country’s total cross-border passenger flows from 3.08 percent in 2025 to roughly 3.8 percent by 2030. City planners aim to achieve this by upgrading targeted service improvements designed to position Beijing as the preferred entry point for international travelers visiting China.

For scientific and technological advancement, Beijing plans to ramp up research and development investment to more than 6 percent of its total annual GDP. Leveraging its existing innovation ecosystem— which currently hosts 145 national key laboratories, accounting for 28 percent of all such facilities across China, alongside a dense network of top-tier research institutions and industry-leading technology companies— the city is positioned to generate a wave of new original scientific and technological breakthroughs in the coming years.

Beyond economic and innovation goals, the plan identifies expanded social support for elderly and child care as a top policy priority for the 2026-2030 period. As of 2024, Beijing was home to more than 687,000 residents aged 80 or older. To meet growing demand for elder care services, the city aims to build a fully accessible, inclusive care network that will see regional elderly care service centers cover 80 percent of all urban subdistricts and rural townships by the end of the planning period.

The comprehensive five-year blueprint also includes detailed targets and policy roadmaps for childcare provision, K-12 and higher education, public healthcare improvements, coordinated regional development across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei corridor, urban renewal projects, and public safety infrastructure upgrades.

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) has announced landmark, all-time high performance across its culture and tourism sectors in 2025, capping a year of double-digit growth that solidifies the emirate’s standing as a top-tier global cultural and travel destination. DCT Abu Dhabi’s 2025 annual report, released April 8, 2026, confirms the emirate drew 26.6 million total visitors last year, a milestone that underscores its expanding international pull and progress toward long-term, sustainable economic growth driven by cultural tourism.

Across key performance indicators, every core segment posted strong year-on-year gains. Hotel revenue surged 19.5% to hit 9.1 billion AED, while attendance at cultural and leisure events rose 20% to 4.2 million, and the number of MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions) delegates jumped 40% to 2.2 million. The emirate’s cultural attractions and libraries anchored this growth, welcoming more than 8.6 million total visitors throughout the year, with the historic Qasr Al Hosn site recording a 22% annual increase in foot traffic.

“With a strong foundation of cultural engagement and robust tourism performance, Abu Dhabi continues to grow as a world-leading destination that offers exceptional experiences,” said Saood Abdulaziz Al Hosani, Undersecretary of DCT Abu Dhabi. “Landmark attractions and the continued expansion of Saadiyat Cultural District have strengthened Abu Dhabi’s global distinctiveness, while strong hotel performance reinforces long-term sustainable economic impact. Our double-digit growth in 2025 reflects the clarity of our vision and the collective efforts of the wider tourism ecosystem. This performance underscores the strength of Abu Dhabi’s culture and tourism fundamentals and our ability to adapt, innovate and grow sustainably.”

International arrivals to the emirate rose 10% year-over-year, reaching 5.9 million hotel guests, with India leading key source markets with a dramatic 22% surge in visitor volumes compared to 2024. Gains were driven by expanded air connectivity, including three new IndiGo routes and one new Air India Express route connecting India to Abu Dhabi. By the end of 2025, India accounted for 13% of all hotel guests, totaling 436,124 visitors. Other top source markets included Russia (257,200 guests), the United Kingdom (250,906 guests), China (248,494 guests), and Saudi Arabia (200,652 guests). Chinese visitor stays saw a notable 13% annual increase, outpacing growth in many other markets.

The 2025 event calendar delivered a record 252 cultural and leisure offerings across the emirate, headlined by the multi-region MOTN Festival that drew more than 252,000 attendees. Other high-demand major events included Coldplay’s four sold-out shows at Zayed Sports City, which welcomed 193,470 concertgoers, the Abu Dhabi T10 cricket tournament with roughly 100,000 attendees, and Liwa Village, the centerpiece of the Liwa International Festival, that hosted more than 159,000 guests. Popular heritage-focused festivals including the Al Hosn Festival, Traditional Handicrafts Festival and Maritime Heritage Festival collectively drew more than 608,000 local and international visitors.

The MICE sector outpaced even leisure growth, with total events climbing 37% to 6,600 and delegate numbers rising 40% to 2.2 million. Large-scale industry gatherings such as IDEX/NAVDEX, Make it in the Emirates, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, and the inaugural Bridge Summit were the primary growth drivers, with the Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau’s Advantage Abu Dhabi programme supporting 175 events that attracted 464,000 delegates, a 28% annual increase.

Cultural development remained at the core of Abu Dhabi’s 2025 growth strategy, with major institutional milestones expanding the emirate’s global cultural footprint. The Louvre Abu Dhabi retained its status as one of the emirate’s most visited cultural sites, welcoming 1.4 million guests in 2025, while Qasr Al Hosn posted 22% growth to host more than 843,000 visitors. DCT Abu Dhabi also activated more than 20 cultural sites and libraries across Abu Dhabi’s three regions in 2025, growing the emirate’s diverse network of museums, historic landmarks, archaeological sites, and art centres. Key milestone openings and reopenings included the Al Maqta’a Museum, Al Ain Museum, the new Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, and the Zayed National Museum, the UAE’s national cultural institution that tells the story of the nation’s land and people. A total of 115 public and visitor programmes spanning heritage, performing arts, education, youth and family engagement reinforced culture’s role as both a tourism draw and a community anchor.

On the accommodation side, Abu Dhabi welcomed 5.9 million hotel guests (a 2.2% annual increase) plus an additional 338,000 guests across holiday homes and glamping sites. Overall hotel occupancy rose three percentage points to 81%, while the Average Daily Rate (ADR) climbed 19% and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) jumped 23%, translating to the 19.5% annual growth in total hotel revenue. The average length of stay across all accommodation types hit 2.9 nights, a 3% annual increase, with visitors from Russia, the UK, Germany, and Italy recording the longest average stays, at 4.3, 4.2, 4.1, and 3.4 nights respectively. Globally, inbound air seat capacity to Abu Dhabi rose 11% for the year, while load factor improved two percentage points to 89%, reflecting strong demand that has kept pace with expanded travel access.

Regional growth also accelerated across the emirate’s less urbanized areas. Al Ain Region welcomed 473,100 guests, a 9% annual increase, with hotel occupancy rising 9 percentage points driven primarily by leisure travel. Al Dhafra Region hosted 147,900 guests, a 3% increase, while hotel occupancy surged 19 percentage points, also fueled by leisure tourism. A dedicated regional growth strategy for Al Dhafra is scheduled for launch in 2026.

DCT Abu Dhabi’s 2025 results put the emirate firmly on track to meet the goals of Tourism Strategy 2030, the ambitious long-term blueprint that has guided a new era of strategic expansion and sustainable development for Abu Dhabi’s travel and cultural sectors.

A major milestone in China’s expanding high-speed rail network has captured public attention across Chinese social media, as the landmark Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway’s Yangtze River underwater tunnel hits a critical construction benchmark.

Over the weekend following the late-March breakthrough, discussions of the cross-river tunnel project dominated national social platforms, with the topic “China to launch high-speed railway under the Yangtze River” trending on China’s leading microblogging platform Weibo at the end of March. As a core national infrastructure project listed in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) outline, the full 2,000-kilometer high-speed rail corridor carries a total investment of 500 billion yuan, equal to approximately $72.8 billion.

On March 29, after 23 consecutive months of safe, steady excavation, the domestically built “Linghang” shield tunneling machine completed a record 11.18-kilometer underwater digging run, successfully passing beneath the Yangtze River’s southern embankment. The tunnel in question, stretching between Chongming district in Shanghai and Taicang city in Jiangsu province, is the longest and largest high-speed rail cross-river tunnel ever built in China, with a total planned length of 14.25 kilometers. It is a central segment of the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway, a key backbone route in China’s national “eight vertical and eight horizontal” high-speed rail network. Project estimates cited by China Central Television suggest the full corridor will generate up to 1.5 trillion yuan in added value across its entire industrial chain, delivering tangible economic benefits to more than 20 small and medium-sized cities along the route.

The Linghang machine’s single-drive excavation run marks a new global engineering achievement. The project requires a 11.325-kilometer uninterrupted single-drive digging distance, with the machine’s cutter head measuring 15.4 meters in diameter and the tunnel reaching a maximum depth of 89 meters below the riverbed. Designed to accommodate high-speed trains operating at speeds up to 350 kilometers per hour, the tunnel will allow trains to cross the Yangtze River without reducing speed, a feat that demands extraordinary engineering precision.

“At a speed of 350 km/h, the required construction precision falls within the millimeter range,” explained Wang Yi, deputy equipment manager for the project, in an interview with ThePaper.cn. Wang noted that underwater tunnel construction faces unique challenges from variable river water pressure, natural geological settlement, and other environmental factors. Even a minor alignment deviation can compromise operational safety and passenger comfort, placing extremely strict requirements on structural precision, track smoothness, and resistance to external interference.

This milestone is far more than a technical breakthrough, Wang emphasized. It cements China’s global leading position in high-speed rail underwater tunnel construction and proves the country has fully mastered core technologies for ultra-high-speed underwater tunnel projects, creating replicable, scalable expertise that can be applied to similar infrastructure projects worldwide in the future.

Shield tunneling machines, which require highly complex integrated systems and extreme manufacturing precision, are widely recognized as a key benchmark of a country’s advanced manufacturing capacity. A single Linghang-class machine is made up of more than 20,000 individual components, and its development tells a broader story of China’s decades-long progress in heavy manufacturing: from relying entirely on imported machinery 30 years ago to becoming a global industry leader.

China’s journey to domestic shield machine development began in 2002, when research and development of the technology was added to a national key scientific research program, launching the country’s localization push. Just two years later, in 2004, China’s first domestically built metro shield machine was unveiled in Shanghai and deployed successfully for soft soil excavation. Over the subsequent two decades, Chinese-developed shield tunneling machines have achieved continuous technological breakthroughs, with rising levels of independent innovation and intelligent integration. Today, Chinese-made shield machines are exported to more than 40 countries and regions around the world, holding roughly 70 percent of the global market share.

Once the full Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway is completed, it will drastically cut travel times between the Yangtze River Delta region in eastern China and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic hub in southwestern China, strengthening economic connectivity, facilitating regional integration, and driving balanced growth across the entire Yangtze River Economic Belt.