On Thursday, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen met Mr. Lin Baifeng, President of Huawei Asia Pacific Region President, at the Peace Palace, Phnom Penh. The meeting focused on exchanged views on a broad range of topics, including advancing digital infrastructure in Cambodia, cultivation of information and telecommunication technology (ICT) talent, national digital policy etc.

During the meeting, Mr. Lin Baifeng expressed his gratitude to the Prime Minister for supporting his company for the past 23 years and giving trust to his company and allowing Huawei to participate in the development of ICT industry, cooperation in combating the spread of Covid-19 and other fields.

Mr. Lin Bai Feng said that the digital economy in Cambodia has grown very significantly. Cambodia ranks No.1 in ASEAN countries in term of mobile data usage per subscriber. Moreover, Cambodia has applied ICT in almost all sectors. Huawei is committed to contributing to Cambodia's development of ICT through the development of human resources, bringing the latest technology to Cambodia, and building the digital infrastructure to connect technologies and people in a safe and reliable manner. Mr. Lin also briefed the Prime Minister on Huawei Group's latest financial results, global 5G achievements, as well as Huawei's employment and ICT talent cultivation efforts in Cambodia.

In response, Prime Minister Hun Sen thanked Huawei and Mr. Lin Bai Feng for participating in and contributing to Cambodia's digital economy development and digital infrastructure modernization. Furthermore, Prime Minister welcomed and encouraged Mr. Lin Bai Feng to continue working with Mr. Chea Vandeth, Minister of Post and Telecommunications, to continue training human resources and to ensure that Cambodia has access to the latest technology that ensures security and sovereignty.

Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 194,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.

Our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they're at home, in the office, or on the go.

China Life Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd ("China Life Singapore") successfully held the first Agency Channel annual award ceremony on 27 January 2022. In strict compliance with COVID-19 safe management measures, the award ceremony brought together the elites of the Agency Channel, colleagues of the Agency Department, and all members of the Senior Management Team including Mr. Lin Xiangyang, the Chief Executive of China Life Singapore. The celebration reviewed the first anniversary of the establishment of the Agency Channel, affirmed the excellent achievements in 2021, and specially rewarded outstanding individuals and teams with awards such as "New Business Award" "Elite Team Award" for both individual and team. China Life Singapore Agency Channel will continue to hit the mountains and brave the wind and waves in 2022.

The Agency Channel, as the company's most attractive sales platform with great potential, plays an important role in meeting customers' needs, enhancing business value and accumulating core competitiveness. Furthermore, it is a key part of China Life Singapore's journey to start a new era of transformation and explore new business models. 2021 is a milestone for China Life Singapore that marks a year of significant growth and development. As the first South East Asia agency channel under China Life Insurance Group Company ("Group Company"), they shoulder the historical task of opening up a brand new journey. In the face of the persistent severe epidemic in 2021, the agency channel insists on making progress while maintaining stability. With a strong resilience and a progressive attitude, they significantly implement the "Six High Missions" proposed by Mr. Lin – "to form a high-efficient management team; to provide high-value product range; to cultivate a high-quality sales team; to create a high-tech service system; to serve high-net-worth clients; and to achieve high-quality development goals".

At the ceremony, Mr. Lin further encouraged all the agency channel members to be professional, motivated and diligent, and put forward expectations for team development in 2022 with both internal and external development. Mr. Lin pointed out that in 2022, China Life Singapore will accelerate the improvement of new products with the upgrade of system, and provide strong back-end support for the agency team through diversified sales platforms. According to the deployment of China Life Singapore's medium and long-term plan for agent recruitment, the company plans to achieve high growth in the number of individual agents in 2022 and aim at the target of 100 agents. China Life Singapore believe the new agency team would further enhance company's service system in Singapore market, and demonstrate advanced business model with more abundant service content.

Looking forward to 2022, under the difficult recovery of the world economy, opportunities and challenges coexist. With strong support and guidance from the company, the Agency Channel will continue to seize new opportunities for strategic development, take China Life's strong strength as the basis, take advantage of the Group Company's platform to cultivate top agents in the industry, and provide customers with the most comprehensive insurance protection plan to suit their needs.

In October 2021, the world was shocked when the hugely popular social media platforms WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram experienced an outage. Interestingly, in places where Facebook functions as the internet itself, the mass outage meant the digital economy was literally crippled.

Think of Amitansu Satpathy's situation. Amitansu lives in India. When the three popular platforms suddenly went down, Amitansu went into a sudden panic. Why? He happens to be the CEO and founder of a company known as Best Power Equipment. His company supplies backup power to institutions like hospitals, factories, offices and restaurants. Hence, Amitansu relies on Whatapp (owned by Facebook) to send quick messages to his employees; this is how he ensures the continued operation of his power equipment company.

Amitansu says: "We often have to rush quickly to any site in case of a problem." The company CEO always gets status updates from the power centre managers after every 30 minutes; of course, the updates reach him through Whatsapp. Since he couldn't afford to wait for the blackout to "resolve," Amitansu made a quick decision: He swiftly transferred all communication between the company executives to Telegram, a rival messaging service. Amitansu was lucky- throughout the blackout, his company didn't encounter any problems with the power stations. But the whole experience served as a huge wake-up call- it exposed the fact that the company was way over-reliant on the giant American social media enterprise.

The impact of Facebook on the the world economy was experienced in many places- including the US. Many people in the US even joked about how the 5-hour blackout prevented them from performing trivial tasks; they discovered they couldn't perform these without access to Instagram and Facebook.

As noted, in parts of Asia (including India), the recent blackout took a completely different trajectory. Like most Asian countries, Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp generally dominate people's digital lives in India. The platform's social messaging features sometimes function as the only instrument most people and businesses can use in daily communication.

Think of it: India alone is estimated to have more than 340 million Facebook users. The number of Whatsapp users goes to well over 500 million. Overall, Facebook alone has almost 1.3 billion users who reside in the South Pacific region. This constitutes 40% of Facebook's total users globally. Moreover, it's more than twice the combined number of Facebook users who live in the US and Europe. Further, at least 346 million people daily access Facebook's various platforms. This data shows clearly that in many places worldwide, "Facebook's ecosystem" has gradually become synonymous with the stature of the internet itself.

Mr. Ross Tapsell, who teaches at the Australia National University College of Asia and the Pacific, sums it up this way: "In most South East Asian communities, Facebook is actually the internet itself. A quick check reveals that whenever most people in these regions connect to the internet, they almost always connect to Facebook and Whatsapp.

This situation was initially fostered in the South East Asian region in the mid-2010s when the popularity of Facebook skyrocketed. Overall, "The internet infrastructure and data sophistication was less developed at this time," says Singapore National University professor of communications Jack Linchuan. On its part, the designers of Whatsapp built it to work well in low data environments. Facebook came up with a Free Basics Service to complement this. Eventually, this resulted in a Facebook-curated internet version. The version included the Facebook app. This came to dominate the internet's face in countries like Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines. Further, Facebook later partnered up with some Asian telecom companies (including KaiOS and a few other Indian Android phone makers). The companies helped to preinstall Facebook apps on new phones.

Fortunately, the unprecedented 5-hour Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp blackout happened while most people in the Asian continent were asleep. This is why it wasn't as disruptive as potentially possible. Many business executives (like Amitansu mentioned earlier) quickly got into a crisis mode to talk to customers and employees. They did this to try and keep their core operations humming. As noted, many entrepreneurs- just like Amitansu- admitted that the colossal blackout shook them out of a stupor; they confessed that their businesses unduly relied on Facebook's enormous power and that the entity wields "unhealthy influence" over the livelihoods of millions of people. They realized it's wise to seek alternatives to the hugely dominating international social network systems.

Many people in South East Asia use Facebook as a powerful business platform. For example, Supul Muhandiram, who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka relies on Facebook and Instagram to sell his merchandise. The merchandise comprises personal care and wellness products. Muhandiram discovered he didn't have any practical alternatives at his disposal. He says: "We don't have any viable alternatives in Sri Lanka. We really cannot trust any other platform whenever we want to sell and buy most products," he says.

Sri Lanka has a population of 21.9 million. Interestingly, the country has 7.6 million people who actively use Facebook. Another 1 million Sri Lankans are active Instagram users. In this island country, Facebook is virtually ubiquitous. It's not only a popular social media site that works excellently for life updates- it's an essential tool that small business owners use daily.

Mr. Muhandiram is the CEO and co-founder of Ayuya Wellness, a company that sells high-end toiletries, including hair care and lotion. The sales are primarily made through Instagram. Generally, Ayuya Company sells products around the clock; according to Muhindaram's estimates, about 25 per cent of the regular Instagram sales were lost when this platform experienced a mass blackout.

Mr. Muhindaram further says: "My herbal medicine store that relies on Facebook for daily sales did a lot better. In my estimate, the store lost only 15 per cent of its daily sales due to this outage. However, I must admit my companies could not respond to the regular customer queries that come to us through Facebook; yes, we must confess Facebook is an essential means to interact with customers. Further, due to the outage, we were forced to spend significant amounts of money on Facebook ads without the hope of making much money. Things were really beyond our control." Mr Muhindaram continues, "If an outage of this nature can affect a business like that, you are bound to feel helpless. That's when you realize it's never a great idea to completely rely on an online medium."

Mr Bhagya Iddamalgoda, the CEO and founder of Colombo's Candle House Ceylon, says: "Although alternative platforms are there- they haven't quite taken off in a country like Sri Lanka. For example, when you think of popular e-commerce sites like Shopify and Etsy- these have some limiting restrictions; in a way, the restrictions make it challenging for most business people to move their products. Hence, both the customers and business owners are required to undergo a learning curve. Mr. Iddamalgoda's company sells scented candles on both Instagram and Facebook. Considering that everyone is already familiar with Facebook and Instagram in Sri Lanka….we can say that both platforms account for more than 60% of our company's sales," Ms. Iddamalgoda says.

We all know how universal WhatsApp is. In India, most companies initially mistook the massive blackout for a local internet issue. The 62-year-old Sanjay Singhal, the founder of Kreative Impact, struggled to download India's official emblem that he received from the Washington embassy via WhatsApp. Sanjay runs the brand merchandising company that needed to prepare mementoes for a state dinner at the embassy.

Having failed in his attempt, Sanjay tried to get the urgently required image over Facebook; he was still unsuccessful. He, therefore, concluded that there was a problem with the local internet connection. In the end, Sanjay called his son, who informed him there was a global outage. Understandably Mr Sanjay was frustrated with the prevailing situation- he was receiving frequent calls regarding the order-he had to ask his clients to hold off.

The above cases illustrate that many small businesses in Asia have been using Instagram and Facebook's messaging services for many decades to sell their products. The over-reliance on these social media platforms grew even more during the Covid-19 pandemic season when constant lockdowns made it impossible to have in-person transactions. Hence, the businesses usually showcase their merchandise on Facebook and Instagram; others use WhatsApp to coordinate their sourcing and deliveries.

To illustrate, Sweta Patra, the founder and CEO at Ethnics Land, the internet-based ethnic clothes retailer, said she was completely cut off from her vendors during the big outage. Patra says: "We suddenly stopped getting messages. It took us 30 minutes to realize this was a much bigger problem than a mere local outage. We repeatedly tried to make a connection with the clients until around 1.00 o'clock in the early hours of the morning." "At that point, we gave up and just went to bed," he says.