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South Korea will gradually reduce the rice planting area to cope with the decline in demand. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs of South Korea said on Thursday that South Korea will strive to gradually reduce the rice field area to solve the problem of declining demand and adopt environmentally-friendly planting methods. Due to the change of diet structure, the annual rice consumption of Koreans has decreased, and the per capita rice consumption has dropped significantly from 61 kg in 2018 to 56.4 kg in 2023. At present, the total area of rice fields in South Korea is about 698,000 hectares, and the government says it plans to reduce the area of rice fields by 80,000 hectares next year. In addition, by 2029, the planting area of environmentally friendly rice will be expanded from 35,000 hectares this year to 68,000 hectares. The government will also allocate 244 billion won (about 170 million US dollars) to subsidize farms that grow strategic crops other than rice, such as wheat, beans and barley, which is an increase from 186.5 billion won this year.Iflytek and other robot technology companies have a registered capital of 30 million yuan. According to Tianyancha App, Anhui Lingdong General Robot Technology Co., Ltd. was recently established with Hu Guoping as the legal representative and a registered capital of 30 million yuan. Its business scope includes industrial robot manufacturing, industrial robot sales, intelligent robot research and development, electrical equipment sales, computer software and hardware and auxiliary equipment retail, information system integration services, intelligent robot sales, mechanical equipment leasing, etc. According to shareholder information, the company is jointly held by Anhui Xunfei Yunchuang Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Iflytek (002230), Anhui Yanzhi Technology Co., Ltd. and Anhui Lingji Wanwu Technology Partnership (Limited Partnership).Daiwa Capital Market raised the target price of Tesla from $285 to $420.

Samsung Electronics will hold its 2025 strategy meeting next week. Yonhap News Agency quoted unnamed industry sources as saying that Samsung Electronics will hold its 2025 global strategy meeting next week. The electronic products business meeting is scheduled to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, while the semiconductor department meeting will be held on Thursday. The main agenda items include the upcoming Galaxy S25 smartphone. Lee Jae-yong, the company's executive chairman, is not expected to attend these meetings.Sino-Vietnamese communication is more convenient! The number of entry-exit personnel at Dongxing Port exceeded 8 million. With the continuous optimization of entry-exit policies, the number of entry-exit personnel at Dongxing Port, the border land port with the largest passenger flow between China and Vietnam, exceeded 8 million. According to the statistics of Dongxing Entry-Exit Frontier Inspection Station, the daily average passenger flow at Dongxing Port exceeds 20,000.The 1800th train of "Yangtze River Train" started this year and completed the annual operation task 20 days ahead of schedule. On December 11th, on the first anniversary of normal operation, the 1799th and 1800th trains of "Yangtze River Train" started from Xianglushan Station in Wuhan and Chengxiang Station in Chengdu respectively, and completed the annual operation task 20 days ahead of schedule. "Yangtze River Train" is a hot-metal combined transport train in Sichuan to solve the "dam-breaking difficulty" of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River and improve the transportation capacity of the golden waterway of the Yangtze River. It was launched on December 10, 2023 and reached the first thousand-train target after eight months of operation. Luo Sheng, director of the transportation marketing department of Shudao Railway Operation Group and general manager of Shudao Banlie Branch, said that "Changjiang Banlie" is the fastest-growing train product in Sichuan with the shortest time for over 1,000 trains.

Kuwait set the price of crude oil sold to the United States in January at a premium of $4.10 per barrel.The weighted share price index of Taiwan Stock Exchange closed 0.6% higher at 23,046.80 points.Citigroup slightly lowered South Korea's GDP growth forecast to 1.5% next year. It is expected that the Bank of Korea will cut interest rates next month. Citigroup released a report saying that considering the worse economic sentiment in South Korea this month, it slightly lowered its GDP forecast for this year and next year by 0.1 percentage point to 2.1% and 1.5% respectively. The bank slightly lowered Korea's GDP growth forecast for the last quarter of this year by 0.1 percentage point to rise by 0.3% quarterly, and raised its GDP growth forecast for the first quarter of next year by 0.1 percentage point to rise by 0.6% quarterly. Looking forward to the first quarter of next year, the bank expects South Korea to adopt a combination of expansionary policies, including the Bank of Korea's expected interest rate cut to 2.75% in mid-January, and the government's expected additional budget of 30 trillion won (equivalent to about 1.1% of GDP next year). It is expected that the Bank of Korea will cut interest rates by 25BP each in January, April, July and October next year, and the final interest rate is expected to be 2%.