The second phase of Samsung's chip plant in Shaanxi Province, with a total investment of 15 billion U.S. dollars, will start mass production in 2020, according to Samsung China Semiconductor Co. Ltd. said Tuesday. The first part of the second phase in Xi'an, with an investment of 7 billion dollars, is expected to be completed and put into operation next March. The second part is scheduled to be finished in the second half of 2021. (China Daily)

Boeing Co is temporarily halting 737 production in January for the first time in more than 20 years as the grounding of the planemaker's best-selling MAX after two fatal crashes looks set to last well into 2020. Boeing said it will not lay off any employees during the production freeze, though the move could have repercussions across its global supply chain and the US economy. (China Daily)

Fliggy, Alibaba Group's online travel arm, forged a hotel alliance on Tuesday bringing together independent budget hotels and arming them with technologies to streamline operations. In one year's time, Fliggy aims to draw the country's 40,000 independent hotels that don't belong to any proprietors and are independently run, and give them a uniform digital makeover, company executives said. (China Daily)

JD Logistics put into operation its largest integrated smart logistics center, Dongguan 'Asia No. 1.' on Wednesday. Covering an area of about half a million square meters and featuring a processing capacity of 1.6 million orders a day, Dongguan 'Asia No. 1' is JD's 25th smart logistics center in the country that can store more than 20 million medium-size items in its automated high-rise warehouse. (China Daily)

Huawei is expanding into the virtual reality (VR) sector, an industry that is expected to prosper with the coming of the 5G era. The company's VR glasses will hit the market on Thursday. (National Business Daily)

Amazon will no longer allow its third-party sellers to use FedEx's ground delivery to ship Prime packages, marking a change that could affect small businesses and pricing for consumers. The problem for FedEx and other delivery services is that the consumers who are making more online purchases expect to receive their items quicker than ever. And they're generally not willing to pay for it. (National Business Daily)

On Wednesday, the China Securities Regulatory Commission approved a securities and futures business permit for J.P. Morgan Securities China Company Limited which will allow the company to begin operations. “JPMorgan Chase is very pleased to have established our majority-owned securities company in China. We will continue to invest in and fully support our business in the country, which has become a critical market for many of our domestic and global clients,” said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase in the announcement. (National Business Daily)

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it will start to offer in China its smart manufacturing solutions, jointly provided by UK-based accounting and professional services firm Ernst& Young. This is part of the US tech giant's efforts to tap into opportunities brought by the country's industrial internet. The product is based on Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud service, and is able to gather and analyze a huge amount of IoT, or internet of things, data to further offer management solutions to companies. (National Business Daily)

Ford Motor Co. is adding 3,000 jobs at two factories in the Detroit area and investing $1.45 billion to build new pickup trucks, SUVs, and electric and autonomous vehicles. The company said Tuesday that about $750 million will go the Michigan Assembly Plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, where 2,700 jobs will be added during the next three years. (Global Times)

Bosch, a Germany-based leading global supplier of technology and services, has kicked off construction on its first hydrogen fuel cell plant in China, which is expected to facilitate the technology's application in both commercial and passenger vehicles. (Global Times)

Geely Sweden Holdings AB, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, and Denmark's Saxo Bank have agreed to establish a technological joint venture to provide financial and regulatory technology solutions in China. The new company, which will be an equal 50 percent split between Saxo Bank and Geely, will utilize technologies such as cloud-based financial services, big data and artificial intelligence to provide Chinese financial institutions with full-suite technological solutions. (Global Times)