The Ministry of Transportation and Communications said it's studying alternatives to building a direct train line to the international airport, but lawmakers yesterday said that the stalled project is the latest example of how Taiwan is falling behind rival China.
After six years of negotiations, last week the ministry dropped a plan to have Evertransit International Development Corp (
The deal fell through after Evertransit failed to secure a syndicated loan of NT$55 billion from banks by the Dec. 31 deadline, as required by the ministry contract.
Securing the loan was the first of several steps needed to make the project a reality. The project requires NT$200 billion (US$5.75 billion) in financing and land acquisition.
Evertransit is a subsidiary of Ever Fortune Industrial Co (
But at a question-and-answer session held at the Legislative Yuan yesterday, the DDP's Chiu Yi-ying (
Both Chiu and Cheng said that the stalled project was an embarrassment to Taiwan because China is already testing the world's first commercially operated magnetic levitation or "maglev" train. The train, which links Shanghai's Putong airport and a commercial district, was built within 21 months, following a four-month feasibility study, they said.
In response, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san (
"If I were the transportation minister of China, the Shanghai maglev train would have been completed in one year," Lin said. "This is the price of democracy," he added.
Although Taiwanese are proud of their democracy, many also lament the nation's fierce political squabbling, lingering corruption and the long amount of time needed to build a consensus on major projects.
Some lawmakers said that the nation's democracy was being abused.
The minister responded by promising to come up with alternative plans to the transit project by next month.
The ministry so far has two backup plans -- to transform and extend the existing Taoyuan-Linkou train line into a transit line linking CKS airport to Taipei, or to build special lines from the airport to stations of the Taiwan high-speed railway now under construction, Lin said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to