Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday defended India as a “mother of democracy,” as protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged voter fraud are intensifying.

“A wide range of issues are debated openly, and diverse perspectives are discussed by the people,” Modi said, speaking at a Bloomberg New Economy event. His comments coincide with a severe crackdown by authorities against protestors demanding electoral reforms.  

Earlier today, key members of the viral pseudo-political movement, Cockroach Janta Party, were detained for protesting without permission.

CJP, whose leaders were detained by authorities over the weekend as well, had sought permission from Delhi Police on Monday to launch fresh protests at the Jantar Mantar grounds in the capital. However, the government then barred the use of the site for protests.

On Monday, thousands of people reportedly joined leaders of Indian opposition parties in their march to the Supreme Court in Delhi to file a petition against revisions made to the voter list by the Election Commission.

Names of 130 million people have been struck off from the voter list after the commission began conducting “special intensive revisions” (SIR) to update voter lists across the country last year, as per several local media reports.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in India, said the huge crowds were a sign that people were not going to be “intimidated” by the government.

“There are no parallel protests. It’s one protest, and it’s a protest where everybody is standing together,” Gandhi said, dismissing concerns over the absence of members of the Cockroach Janta Party who had called for protests over the weekend.

“Delhi is once again flooded with people standing up to save democracy,” Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the viral pseudo-political movement, CJP, said in a post, reacting to the crowd amassed for the march led by Gandhi.

Over the weekend, Indian security forces reportedly clamped down on protests in the capital city, detaining young people, several opposition party politicians, YouTubers, lawyers and a few journalists.

The Delhi police, which is under the control of the Indian home ministry, did not respond to an email seeking comments.

Experts told CNBC that while the scale of the protests does not pose a threat to the stability of India at present, crackdowns could broaden the unrest.

“If security forces keep taking heavy-handed approaches, this will create a more volatile environment that could make protestors angrier and galvanize even larger groups of marchers,” Michael Kugelman of the Atlantic Council told CNBC.

He added that at present the scale of the protests was not significant enough to impact “capital flow and investor behavior” but warned that “heavy-handed tactics that generate violence and volatility” by the state could change it.

The United Nations Human Rights Office on Saturday raised concerns over mass detentions and called on Indian authorities “to ensure that the right to peaceful assembly is fully respected and fulfilled.”

On Sunday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded to the UNHR’s comments, calling them “unwarranted” and claiming they constituted an “unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of India.”

The crackdown during the latest protest has been “significant and massive” compared to earlier reactions to farmers’ protests or uniform civil code protests, Arpit Chaturvedi, South Asia advisor at Teneo, told CNBC. He added that there is a higher chance that the broad-based retaliation to the police crackdown could lead to more demonstrations.

The CJP had first called for a nationwide protest on Oct. 2, seeking the removal of the election chief after an investigative report by the Indian Express showed discrepancies in the functioning of the Election Commission and reports of deletion of millions of voters.

On Sept. 26, following reports of the voter deletion, the Election Commission of India launched a special drive across India to enroll voters who have been left out of the rolls. It has downplayed discrepancies as highlighted in the Indian Express report and maintains it is “committed to ensuring that no eligible voter is left out of the voter list.”

However, Modi’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has defended the Election Commission and said the deletions were made on account of 28 million people who died, 68 million who relocated, 10 million with duplicate entries and 30 million absent or non-traceable voters.

The sweeping revisions of the electoral roll have raised serious constitutional and legal questions, Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNBC.

The core demand of the movement is for Kumar to resign and for the commission to “seriously modify the so-called ‘Special Intensive Revision’ of the electoral rolls,” he said.

Asian technology stocks fell Tuesday as a sell-off in U.S. semiconductor shares spilled into regional markets, with worries over artificial intelligence financing and intensifying competition denting sentiment.

Shares of South Korean chip giant SK Hynix, a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence applications, plunged more than 8%, while rival Samsung Electronics shed 6.7% — both hit their lowest levels since August.

In Japan, shares of tech-focused investment giant SoftBank Group sank 8.8%. The group, which has significant exposure to the global AI industry, led a broader retreat in Japanese semiconductor and electronics shares. 

Tokyo Electron, a major supplier of chipmaking equipment, dropped 6.75%, while Advantest, which makes semiconductor testing equipment, declined 5.65%. Other Japanese technology stocks also came under pressure. Lasertec fell 4.94%, Disco lost 4.69% and Renesas Electronics shed 5.64%.

The declines followed a weak session for technology stocks on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.44% on Monday. U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology slid 3.9% as investors assessed intensifying competition from China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, which reported progress on a new chip structure.

The chief executives of Intel and Broadcom have warned that access to capital could emerge as a major headwind to the artificial intelligence boom, even as demand for computing infrastructure continues to outstrip supply.

Investors are also looking ahead to a busy week of corporate earnings and U.S. inflation data, which could provide fresh clues on the outlook for interest rates.

SINGAPORE — Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong pushed back against the idea of weakening the Singapore dollar to boost competitiveness, saying the city-state must instead rely on its economic strengths even as a strong currency adds to costs for businesses.

Wong said Singapore could continue to expect a strong and stable currency if its economy performs well, emphasizing its role in containing imported inflation.

“You’re surely not suggesting that we depress our exchange rate in order to be more competitive,” Wong said in a lighthearted exchange with DBS CEO Tan Su Shan at the bank’s Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday.

His remarks came after Tan highlighted Singapore’s reputation as a safe haven, which has helped attract capital and support the local currency, while acknowledging that the city-state remains a relatively expensive place to do business.

“The MAS will exercise monetary policy independently. The Singapore dollar will reflect our economic fundamentals, and if the economy does well, then we can continue to expect a strong, stable Sing dollar that is anchored on fundamentals and will also help keep imported inflation down,” Wong said.

Unlike most major central banks, which primarily use interest rates to manage monetary conditions, the Monetary Authority of Singapore conducts policy through the exchange rate.

It manages the Singapore dollar against a basket of currencies belonging to the country’s major trading partners, allowing the exchange rate to fluctuate within an undisclosed policy band.

The approach reflects Singapore’s heavy dependence on international trade and imports, making currency movements particularly important for domestic prices.

A stronger Singapore dollar helps cushion the cost of imported goods and services, particularly during periods of elevated global inflation. But it can also make Singapore-produced goods and services more expensive for overseas buyers, adding pressure on exporters.

The Singapore dollar has strengthened almost 0.4% against the greenback since the start of the year.

Wong acknowledged those trade-offs, saying businesses would have to account for currency strength alongside Singapore’s other operating costs.

“Companies that seek to export will have to factor that into the cost of doing business, together with the other costs that they experience in Singapore, as we all know, we are certainly not the cheapest location in Southeast Asia,” he said.

Still, Wong argued that competing on price alone was not a viable strategy for Singapore, which must instead differentiate itself through its capabilities, stability and predictability.

“Companies are not looking for the cheapest locations,” he said. “They are looking for capabilities. They are looking for stability. They are looking for predictability.”

Wong also said Singapore could not compete on cost alone, and was instead developing broader industrial ecosystems linking multinational corporations, domestic suppliers, research capabilities and skilled workers.

Singapore’s competitiveness ultimately depended on the value it offered businesses rather than its relative cost advantage, he added.

“We have to again play to our strengths and compete on the basis of the value we bring to the table,” he said.

Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a snapshot of what I’m seeing and hearing from local businesses.

Buying gold every month for nearly two years is just part of China’s plan to narrow a gap with the U.S. on holdings of the precious metal. What does that do to the yuan?

China’s decades-long push for yuan internationalization is getting a lift from the buildout of Hong Kong as a gold trading center — denominated in the Chinese currency.

“As those trading volumes grow, there would be a growing volume of the physical gold trade that is denominated in RMB and not linked in USD,” said Charles Chang, managing director and Greater China country lead for corporate ratings at S&P Global Ratings.

The Chinese yuan, also known as the renminbi, accounts for a fraction of international transactions in a global financial system dominated by the U.S. dollar. Analysts I spoke with don’t expect major changes to that dynamic anytime soon, but Beijing’s gold purchases and Hong Kong trading platform are just the latest steps toward supporting greater use of the yuan globally.

“The challenge with internationalizing the RMB it’s somewhat more challenging to find places where you can use the RMB,” Chang said. “In terms of gold particularly, if the RMB that the buyer receives can be converted to gold, then it gives more channels for the spending to be done.”

Hong Kong, home to one of the world’s largest stock exchanges, last month confirmed its efforts to develop a yuan-denominated gold market.

In a major move last year, the special administrative region of China linked its gold vault with one in Shanghai, allowing physical gold delivery to international institutions in Hong Kong denominated in yuan.

Over the next three years, Hong Kong plans to expand the capacity of its Shanghai-linked gold vault from 150 tonnes to over 2,000 tonnes, S&P’s Chang pointed out.

That’s nearly as large as all the gold reserves in China, he added. “If Hong Kong is able to complete this transaction, then it would become of the largest gold trading centers in the world.”

The U.S. still has the largest gold reserves in the world at over 8,100 tonnes, according to World Gold Council figures for the second quarter. China held about one-third of that at over 2,300 tonnes.

“China’s 23-month gold buying streak reinforces the credibility of the renminbi’s internationalization drive,” said Hao Zhou, head of research and chief economist at Guotai Junan International in Hong Kong.

“By steadily increasing gold reserves, Beijing is strengthening the long-term backing of its financial system and reducing reliance on dollar-denominated reserve assets,” he said. “While gold alone will not determine the RMB’s global role, it enhances confidence in the currency and supports broader efforts to expand its use in trade, investment and official reserves.”

Gold accumulation by China and other countries’ central banks will help reduce global reliance on U.S. Treasurys and U.S. dollar reserves, said Xia Yingying, head of the precious metals and new energy research group, at Hangzhou-based Nanhua Futures. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese.

“This will suppress the U.S. dollar’s premium from being a core reserve currency, and raise the risk premium associated with the dollar regarding credit, fiscal policy and sanctions,” Xia said. “In the medium to-long-term it will gradually weaken the U.S. dollar’s monopolistic position in the global reserve system.”

China’s growing gold purchases, however, also come as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday named gold-standard supporter Judy Shelton as a senior advisor focused on China.

The Asian economy’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse benefited from the U.S. decision to abandon the gold standard more than 50 years ago. “With the delinking of the dollar and gold, and the consequent rise in the oil price, western manufacturing became less economic, and capital went to Asia in search of cheap labor and overall lower costs,” wrote the central bank research group OMFIF in 2021.

While China is the largest consumer and producer of gold, it is just one of many developing economies that has expanded its reserves since 2022, according to S&P. The World Gold Council showed Poland has increased its gold reserves by more tonnes than China.

The trend goes beyond financial transactions. Like with rare earths, Beijing’s gold ambitions start with control of some of the product.

China has acquired major gold mines across Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to S&P Global Ratings.

“China’s plans for gold and its activities in gold are comprehensive and long lasting. These trends are going to be in place for a number of years,” Chang said.

“The comprehensive nature of this,” he said, “is something that markets often miss.”

DeepSeek considers doubling latest funding round to up to $15 billion, sources say

China’s DeepSeek is considering expanding its latest funding round to as much as 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion), double its earlier target, with state-backed funds and corporate investors jostling for stakes, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. AI startup Manus raises $500 million from IDG Capital and others, indicating investors aren’t deterred by Beijing’s unprecedented order to block Meta’s short-lived $2 billion acquisition.

China and Europe agree to halve Chinese hybrid vehicle exports

European trade commissioner Maroš Sefčovič said Friday that China has agreed to halve its exports of hybrid cars to the bloc. China’s auto market is on track for its worst year since 2021, with sales down by more than 20% over roughly the first three quarters of the year, according to China Passenger Car Association data as of Sept. 27.

After a yearslong slump, China’s real estate market may be set for a turnaround

Residential real estate prices may hit a bottom in the third quarter of 2028, S&P Global Ratings said. It added that prices in China’s largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, will likely recover as soon as next year.

Oct. 14: CPI, PPI; trade data

Oct. 19: Q3 GDP, retail sales, industrial production, fixed-asset investment

Oct. 19 – 22: Financial Street Forum in Beijing; Bund Summit in Shanghai

Saudi Arabia said Monday it was dealing with more drones and missile strikes as a slew of countries warned against travel to the Kingdom due to fatal attacks on Riyadh airport by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

The Australian and New Zealand governments on Monday cautioned their citizens against traveling to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and other Saudi destinations, joining similar advisories from the U.K., U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Japan and others.

It came as the Saudi aviation authority extended the suspension of operations at the airport, which has been hit by numerous projectiles over the last week. The deadliest strike came on Saturday, when 12 people were killed and more than 300 were injured, according to officials. Another strike on Sunday killed one person and injured nearly a dozen.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attacks, which have raised questions over the robustness of Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities despite its huge military spending.

The fatalities come as the Kingdom hosts major corporate conferences, including the World ⁠Petroleum Congress, the International Energy Forum Ministerial Meeting and the Future Investment Initiative.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. “may” join Saudi Arabia in its retaliation against the Houthis.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that he had told Saudi Arabian Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud by phone that Tehran was willing to take steps to start dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where the Houthis are based.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei meanwhile said that Iran was still reviewing a U.S. response to its proposal for reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and would reply though its intermediaries, Reuters reported.

India’s headline inflation rose to 5.54% in September from 4.82% in August, adding pressure on the country’s central bank to further tighten monetary policy.

The consumer price index print was slightly above economists’ expectations of 5.40%, according to a Reuters poll. Inflation has been on the rise for 11 straight months in the world’s fastest-growing economy and has touched a 22-month high in September.

India’s food inflation climbed 7.74% in September from 5.97% the month prior, with prices rising faster in rural areas than cities, India’s Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation said in a Monday release. Transport services for goods inflation rose 14.73% while that for personal transport jumped 7.46%, as per the release.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India raised its interest rates for the first time since 2023, joining several major central banks in tightening monetary policy in a bid to arrest accelerating inflation. India’s central bank also said that in the “current conditions” further rate cuts were “off the table in the near term” and policy action could either be a rate hike or a pause.

India is among the countries most vulnerable to the supply disruptions caused by the Iran war. It imports nearly 85% of its fuel needs, and before the Iran war it heavily relied on energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices have been elevated due to the tensions in the Middle East. Experts, however, predict that prices will remain volatile in the near term amid concerns over the Middle East conflict and the impact of Hurricane Isaias.

India’s central bank expects core inflation to be at 4.4% for the financial year ending March 2027 and headline inflation at 5.2%, which is higher than the RBI’s medium-term target of 4%.

The RBI raised India’s economic growth estimate by 40 basis points to 7.1% but cautioned that protracted geopolitical tensions, trade frictions, tightening of financial conditions and elevated international commodity prices would likely weigh on economic activity.

Food prices in particular and India’s rural economy also face an added risk from the Super El Nino, with the country receiving its lowest rainfall in over a decade during June to September, a key season for its largely rain-fed farms and reservoirs.

The rainfall was the fourth lowest since 2001, and the 13th driest since 1901, according to the India Meteorological Department. Several parts of key farm states such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Haryana are facing extreme drought conditions.

HSBC said in a report on Oct. 7 that it expects another rate hike in December, a day after the RBI policy action. “This may not be a deep tightening cycle, but a tightening cycle it is,” the analysts said, adding that the September retail inflation data is likely to show a “sizeable headline pop.”

BANGKOK — Policymakers are moving from debating whether artificial intelligence will hit jobs to issuing stark warnings about AI-led disruption and recommending measures on cushioning the fallout.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned on Monday that artificial intelligence was hitting the global labor market like a “slow-moving tsunami,” with young graduates first in line to be knocked down.

“People to worry about, first and foremost, [are] young people that are coming into the labor market,” Georgieva said at a panels on Monday. “Normally, they would get into these routine, repetitive jobs and then grow up the ranks. But if they’re gone, I don’t think any young person wants to be a barista in a coffee shop as … professional future.”

Speaking on the same panel, Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who co-chairs the World Bank’s Jobs Council, called for governments to make “crisis-era” support measures a permanent tool for getting young people into work.

What governments did during the Covid-19 pandemic and, in some cases, the global financial crisis “now has to be thought of not as a crisis measure, but as part of the structural, the menu of structural policies,” he said.

That means working with the private sector, and incentivizing firms to hire fresh graduates, because “the first rung in employment, your first job upon graduation, is now seeing less demand,” Shanmugaratnam said.

The remarks show that policymakers are moving from debating whether AI will disrupt jobs to deciding how to cushion the fallout, at a time when rapidly aging populations, particularly in Asia, already threaten to shrink workforces.

World Bank President Ajay Banga, estimates 1.2 billion young people will turn 18 over the next 15 years, and the private sector, which already generates 75% to 85% of jobs in any country, will have to absorb most of them.

Governments’ role is to make that possible, he said, by building infrastructure, setting policy and “de-risking” private capital, or lowering the risks that deter investors from putting in money at scale. “It is private capital that creates jobs,” he said.

The IMF estimates that about 40% of jobs worldwide will eventually be “augmented, downgraded or eliminated.” Exposure is about 60% in advanced economies and 23% in low-income countries, she said, but poorer nations are not better off: that is “just because AI is further away.”

The squeeze is clearest in tech, Shanmugaratnam said, adding that in the U.S. “for the first time in a century, demand for graduates has gone down,” with the wage premium for a college degree also shrinking. Without action, a cohort of graduates loses more than a year of skills: “you lose trust in the future,” he said.

AI has also been the major driver propping up growth this year. AI-related investments and trade have lifted output in a handful of economies, helping keep global expansion near 3% despite an energy supply shock, Georgieva said.

“Love it, hate it, or fear it. It [AI] is here, and we are already seeing the first wave of impact,” Georgieva said, estimating AI adoption could lift growth by 0.5 percentage point to 1 percentage point in advanced Asia, and 0.2 percentage point to 0.8 percentage point in emerging Asia. At the high end, that “would more than offset the loss that comes from aging population,” said Georgieva.

Shanmugaratnam cautioned that growth alone may not necessarily deliver job creation. China, India and developing Southeast Asia are “growing quite well, but job creation is weak,” he said, and AI “is going to widen that divergence if we are too passive about it.”

AI-induced job displacement, however, will come “task by task,” he said, “and that gives us time” — provided workers can learn on the job and universities shift toward applied training.

BEIJING — European trade commissioner Maroš Sefčovič said Friday that China has agreed to halve its exports of hybrid cars to the bloc.

Europe has called on China to voluntarily reduce hybrid car exports into the continent, but authorities in Beijing had reportedly slapped down the request, according to the Financial Times.

The widening trade surplus between the EU and China has been a point of contention, with Germany and France previously having called on Brussels to develop a “last-resort” trade instrument to address imbalances.

Sefčovič said Friday that the final decision would still need Brussels’ approval. Overall, he cast the two days of talks with China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing as a positive first step, following a summer of rising tensions between China and the EU.

China’s Commerce Ministry on Friday released a list of 16 “‘consensus outcomes.”

They included licenses for rare earth and permanent magnet export licenses to the EU. Sefcovic did not elaborate on a timeline for the rare earth exports.

Earlier this year, on June 29 for the first meeting of the EU-China Trade and Investment Consultations.

The two sides agreed to next meet in March, with a video conference in January, according to the Chinese readout.

India called comments by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance about immigrants from the country “deeply offensive” in an official government statement published on Friday.

Vance said on Thursday that the Trump administration wants foreign and local companies to “employ American workers,” and that they “cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”

He was speaking as the U.S. Department of Labor announced it would suspend Microsoft, Adobe and several major Indian information technology companies from its Permanent Labor Certification program, meaning they cannot apply for permanent residency for their employees on H-1 B visas.

Around 70% of H-1B beneficiaries in 2025 were born in India, per official data.

In a statement on Friday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs accused Vance of using “terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations.”

“Such descriptions are unwarranted and ignore the fact that Indian professionals in the United States are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovation ecosystem,” the statement said.

Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a comment request from CNBC.

Vance was critical of Microsoft, accusing the company of replacing 6,000 laid-off workers with people on H-1B visas.

The Indian foreign ministry assured its citizens that measures announced by the U.S. will not affect the validity of existing H-1B visas or the status of H-1B visa holders and their dependents.

“Talent mobility adds value to both economies,” the statement said, adding that the suspensions “do not advance the shared ambitions of both countries.”

The Indian companies affected by the ban include Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL.

NASSCOM, the IT industry body, said in a statement that Indian technology companies have “significantly reduced their dependence on H-1B visas” over the last few years, and are expanding domestic hiring to their U.S. workforces.

The largest Indian IT company, Tata Consultancy Services, said its H-1B applications were in “single digits” in the last two years, and it intends to hire another 15,000 people in the U.S. over the next five years.

In June, a federal judge blocked the $100,000 H-1B visa fee U.S. President Donald Trump imposed last year.