Taiwan enjoys an equal status, including most-favored nation and national treatment, with all 146 other members of the WTO except for China, Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章), the nation's permanent representative to the global trade body, said in a speech yesterday.
"Despite an improving atmosphere, a proper negotiation mechanism under the WTO framework hasn't yet been established between Taiwan and China," Yen said.
Addressing over 180 delegates from the local financial and securities sector at the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TAIEX, 證交所), Yen said the cross-strait trade relationship is still abnormal and imbalanced, as China refuses to launch bilateral talks with the nation's Geneva-based delegation.
China is the only WTO member that hasn't granted Taiwan most-favored nation status and national treatment, which prevents Taiwan from returning the same treatment.
Thanks to China's boycott, Taiwan's application to join the trade body was delayed until 2002, which fortunately gave local industries a period of grace to adjust themselves to deal with any negative impact, Yen said.
"Taiwan's entry into the WTO had a less-than-expected impact on the nation's non-agricultural industries," he said.
Yen said that Taiwan's joining the WTO played an important role to introduce foreign competition to accelerate the economy's liberation and internationalization, while providing an effective dispute-solving mechanism of which Taiwan could take advantage.
To reinforce the nation's role in the WTO, Yen yesterday vowed to rally support from new WTO members while making efforts to ink free-trade agreements (FTAs) and regional-trade agreements (RTAs) with as many WTO members as possible.
Yen, a former finance minister, assumed the post in February, 2002 and recently returned to Taipei to attend to administrative matters.
In yesterday's speech, he expressed concern that some domestic pro-China opinion leaders have been advocating closer links with China by sacrificing Taiwan's benefits, which is detrimental to both local economic development and the nation's diplomatic efforts in breaking international isolation.
Yen also refuted an argument that Taiwan's economic importance will be replaced by Hong Kong following implementation of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement between China and the former British colony.
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