Vice Legislative Speaker Chiang Ping-kun (
"The economy may not improve too strongly in the next six months, as private investment is failing to pick up," Chiang said yesterday at a press conference to launch a new book, entitled Hard-working Chiang Ping-kun's Taiwan Experience (
"Politics has an impact on economic confidence, and this can dampen the economy," Chiang said.
Using the rekindled Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
Chiang also said that the Chen administration made little headway in easing cross-strait tensions and pushing forward trade exchanges with China, whose markets he said have become the nation's second largest export destination.
"Instability in cross-strait relations will keep investors away," he said.
Chiang urged the government to put politics on the back burner and focus on the nation's economic development by relaxing restrictions on cross-strait business exchanges.
Chiang also urged President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to put aside political differences and resume cross-strait dialogue by acknowledging "the 1992 consensus" which stipulates that there is "one China, with each side having its own interpretation" (九二共識,一中各表).
He said that Chen recently toughened his stance by rejecting the "one China" principle in implementing the three links (
Last week, Chen told the Asian Wall Street Journal that Taiwan doesn't want direct links if it requires yielding to China's demands including the "one China" principle.
In Taiwan-US trade relations, Chiang yesterday also urged the government to put more effort into resuming high-ranking official talks with the US following the superpower's decision to suspend high-level trade talks on unresolved trade issues with their Taiwanese counterparts.
Washington last week confirmed that it didn't want its high-ranking trade officials to lapse into "unproductive conversations" with Taiwan as the nation has made little improvement on protecting intellectual property rights (IPR).
Chiang yesterday said that the key to resuming dialogue with the US is to effectively crack down on IPR infringement, citing his own experience in 1993 when he was economic minister. At that time the US threatened to place Taiwan on its Special 301 priority watchlist of serious IPR violators, which could have led to US$1 billion in trade sanctions.
To celebrate the publication of Chiang's new book, many political and business heavyweights including former premier Lee Huan (
They praised Chiang as the mastermind behind the KMT government's many important trade policies including the "go south" policy (
"Chiang played a very important role in the nation's economic internationalization and liberalization," Lee said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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