Local and foreign business groups said yesterday that they are looking forward to the liberalization of cross-strait economic policies that President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen revealed during a TV interview on Tuesday evening that he will declare new cross-strait policies when meeting with leaders of China-based Taiwanese business groups tomorrow. Chen may unveil measures to allow Taiwanese-owned businesses in China to be listed on the local stock market, to raise investment ceilings for China and to move forward on the direct transportation links issue.
"I think most foreign chambers here would like to see economic integration across the Strait," said American Chamber of Commerce executive director Richard Vuylsteke. "But we still need to see the details, with the hope that the policies are meaningful rather than symbolic."
The two major political parties have long claimed that they want to turn Taiwan into a regional operations center, but they still keep the nation isolated from the world's fastest growing market, Vuylsteke said.
"The policy is right, but the implementation is not taking place," Vuylsteke said.
George Lin (林添貴), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), said he would welcome any progress made on transportation and listing regulations, but said he doubts the policies to be announced would make any breakthrough in the standstill in cross-strait relations.
"The government has pledged to improve cross-strait ties for a long time but still has made no major improvement so far," Lin said.
In addressing the direct links implementation problem, Rock Hsu (
While welcoming more concrete cross-strait economic policies, Guy Wittich, executive officer of the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, or the ECCT, pointed out that the Chen administration in the past three years has made progress in advancing the investment environment in several areas, such as reforming the banking sector, offering various tax cuts to foreign investors, and adopting international standard product certification.
But both Vuylsteke and Wittich noted that several major issues still need to be solved, such as signing the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to open up government infrastructure projects to foreign competitors in accordance with Taiwan's commitment when it joined in the WTO in January 2002.
"It is in Taiwan's interest to stop the protectionism," Wittich said.
Speeding up the establishment of free trade ports, which is helpful to Taiwan's bid to become a regional logistics hub, is another issue Wittich addressed.
In July last year, the Legislature passed the Statute Governing the Establishment and Management of Free Trade Ports (
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