High-tech entrepreneurs yesterday praised the local investment environment, saying that the key to maintaining the nation's competitiveness is to position itself as a hub of high-tech talent, innovative technology, investment capital and financial management in the greater China region.
"Taiwan should aim to become the Silicon Valley in the greater China market," said Stan Shih (施振榮), chairman of Acer Inc, a maker of desktop personal computers.
Shih made the comment yesterday at a seminar held by the Monte Jade Science & Technology Association of Taiwan (玉山科技協會) on inbound investments.
Other panelists attending the seminar included Robert Tsao (曹興誠), chairman of the nation's second-largest made-to-order chip maker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), and California-based Maton Venture's (美通創投) managing director Jesse Chen (陳勁初).
Shih said that although it is said that China lags behind Taiwan by approximately five years, time is running out if the nation fails to maintain its upper hand in the technological development and investment environment.
"Once China catches up, Taiwan will be doomed," Shih warned.
Chen, however, stressed the importance of the maturity in the nation's capital markets, which he said will root the country's competitive edge and keep China out of reach.
"Taiwan should serve as the springboard that attracts global capital to both Taiwan and China," Chen said.
Chen, therefore, urged the government to relax local stock regulations and to incorporate US practices so as to enable the market to absorb capital from Wall Street.
He said that the government should allow both China-based Taiwanese companies and Chinese companies to be listed on the TAIEX while adopting non-discrimination policies to recruit multinationals and global talents including Chinese to work locally as citizens.
Agreeing with Shih and Chen, Tsao said that the UMC finds that Taiwan's investment environment is still better than that in China, Singapore and other Asian countries.
Although China is offering cheap labor, abundant land and tax breaks, Taiwan wins with its political and economic stability, social security, a fair judicial system and freedom of press, Tsao said.
"To remain competitive [in the high-tech industry], Taiwan has to create cluster effects [among industries] and bring in top-tier talent," Tsao said.
Xenophobia and closed-door policies are certain to be detrimental to the nation's economic competitiveness and alienate it from the world's economic development, Tsao warned.
Nonetheless, the UMC head urged the government to handle cross-strait relations with creativity and vision and to ease tensions between Taiwan and China so as to facilitate business links soon.
Matthew Miao (苗豐強), chairman of the Mitac-Synnex Group (神通集團), a contract manufacturer of computers and other information technology products, however, raised concerns over the country's failure to retain investments and attract multinationals in recent years.
He said that direct investment in Taiwan in the year 2001, which amounted to 17.35 percent of the GDP, dropped to lag behind South Korea's 26.74 percent, Japan's 24.84 percent, Singapore's 24.09 percent and the US' 19.02 percent.
In response, Shih said that much lip-service is paid to the nation's economic solutions, but that implementation is the key that should be turned to open the door to economic prosperity.
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