The government should use all means at its disposal to stem the flow of high-tech investment to China, according to a report out of the National Security Bureau (
The Bureau issued an analysis of their conclusion in a top secret report titled, An Analysis on how the Chinese Communist Party Attracts Taiwanese High Tech Investment for the Suzhou Industrial Park.
According to Chinese-language media, the report implores government officials to curb high-tech investment, saying 74 Taiwan tech firms have already invested NT$20 billion (US$841 million) in the Suzhou (蘇州) Park, which sits just outside of Shanghai.
One official said the report emphasizes high-tech firms due to fears that once they are heavily invested, these firms will become political puppets of Beijing.
"The `no haste, be patient' investment policy has nothing to do with the small and medium-sized companies in Taiwan, only with big investors," said a government official on condition of anonymity.
Formosa Plastics Group Chair-man Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) is a prime example. On public television last week, he implored people in Taiwan to "calmly accept the `one China' principle," while repeating his call to lift all curbs on investment across the Strait.
The "no haste" policy stopped Wang from investing US$6 billion in 1992 to build a chemical complex in China's Fujian Province.
Laws in Taiwan currently limit single investments to only US$50 million for China-bound projects, and ban certain high-tech investments and infrastructure projects. These measures have had little effect on companies who skirt the law by setting up holding companies and transferring investment money directly from overseas accounts into China.
Last year, China's information technology production value topped US$25.5 billion, beating Taiwan for the first time, with Taiwanese firms based in China accounting for an estimated 72 percent of that figure.
"I think people are really getting too emotional about [this issue] because nobody, including the government, is sitting down to discuss this matter rationally. How much money has gone over to China? How much impact will it have on industry here? You have to go over it sector by sector, item by item and ask the businessmen who intend to go or have already gone to talk about this issue in front of the public," said Andrew Yang (
According to the National Security Bureau report, officials in Suzhou are actively developing industry "clusters" which include the entire spectrum of each industry. From downstream component makers like computer motherboard and monitor producers to PC cases and mouse makers, China has slowly won over the computer industry.
Now, Chinese officials are targeting the semiconductor industry, and have won a few victories with investments pledged by Winston Wang (
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
RSS