At an academic seminar to discuss cross-strait financial supervision yesterday, visiting Mainland Chinese finance officials snubbed their Taiwanese counterparts with a politicized gesture to uphold the so-called "one China" principle.
"The precondition of the `one China' principle should be set before facilitating any official cross-strait financial supervision," Han Mingzhi (韓明智), deputy director-general of department of international cooperation under the China Banking Regulatory Commission (中國銀監會), yesterday told the 9th cross-strait financial exchange seminar in Taipei.
Han reiterated complaints made on Thursday by the leader of the 25-member Chinese delegation Liu Tinghuan (劉廷煥), vice chairman of the People's Bank of China, that Taiwan authorities still disallow Chinese banks to set up liaison offices here in Taipei. According to Liu, seven Taiwanese banks have been approved to branch into China.
Han rejected a practical proposal allowing the private sector to resolve the thorny cross-strait issue, saying the private sector isn't capable of reaching any consensus on the "one China" principle.
Resisting China's politicized move, a Taiwanese banking regulator, Chang Ming-daw (張明道), deputy director general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs, yesterday said mutual benefits for the banking sector's development should be stressed while urging his Chinese counterparts to put aside cross-strait political differences.
Chang, moreover, stressed the importance of equality and national dignity while conducting cross-strait dialogues to iron out differences.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy