China’s new airport to open in September, a social robot could help train employees in the near future and corporate tax avoidance. Readings from around the world on business, leadership and management.

Beijing’s new airport is set to become one of the world’s busiest

China’s new airport is located on the border of Beijing and Langfang, Hebei Province. Credit: Zaha Hadid Architects

Beijing’s second International airport, Daxing International Airport, has been completed and is set to open in September.

The new US$12.9 billion (K43.6 billion) airport was designed to take pressure off Beijing Capital International Airport. It’s been estimated that Daxing will handle about 72 million passengers by 2025 and 100 million by 2040.

According to Bloomberg News, both airports combined will be handling about 170 million fliers annually by 2025.

‘The new airport is a landmark project for China’s 70th anniversary of National Day, built to very high standards,’ told Ivan Zhou, an analyst with BOC International Holdings in Hong Kong, to Bloomberg. ‘It’ll help optimise flight schedules from Beijing to attract more passengers.’

China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines will start flying from the new airport later this year.

Is this the next HR trend?

The Swedish company Furhat Robotics has designed a social robot that speaks, listens, shows emotions and maintains eye contact.

Named Furhat, the AI-enabled robot comes with pre-built expressions and gestures, its face can be customised to make sure it has its own ‘personality’ and ‘quirks’ (pretty much like a human) and can communicate in over 30 languages.

Thanks to its in-built camera and speakers, it can interact with humans. According to Mashable, ‘it can be used for training employees in the workplace’.

Furhart Robotics has received a 2.3 million euro grant from the European Innovation Council to increase the production of these robots. Perhaps now is the time to consider getting one. Watch this video to see how it works:

Collecting corporate tax ain’t easy

Papua New Guinea is not alone in finding it difficult to collect corporate tax.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that OECD (Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development) countries may be losing US$400 billion in tax revenue each year because of profit shifting, with non-OECD countries losing a further US$200 billion.

The United Nations’ 2019 Financing for Sustainable Development Report points out that tax avoidance hits developing countries particularly hard, because their governments tend to rely more on corporate tax revenues and companies’ declared profits are more sensitive to tax rates than in developed countries.