No matter who wins the presidential election on Saturday, the new government should accelerate efforts to help enhance Taiwanese high-tech companies' competitiveness and ease its grip on cross-strait trade, industry representatives said yesterday.
"The government should focus on improving the investment environment, including bettering the nation's infrastructure," said Matthew Miao (
The decades-long ban on transportation links across the Taiwan Strait has already resulted in the migration of Taiwanese companies and engineers to China, because their international customers find it more convenient to meet in China, he said.
Miao made the remarks on the sidelines of the launch of a book on Taiwan's high-tech industry development, and stressed that he had no political position.
Another industry leader said Taiwan needed the China market, and labor migration to China helped boost Taiwan's competitiveness.
"China is a marketplace that has a voracious appetite for everything, including chips, and it also can offer cheap labor to help lower costs," said John Hsuan (
Hsuan refrained from talking about political issues, but he suggested that the new government should first look carefully at Taiwan's industries and then prioritize where the government's resources should go.
"We don't have much time to waste on waiting," he warned. He did not elaborate.
UMC has told investors that the company is in no hurry to build foundries in China, as the company has been keeping close ties with Chinese chipmaker He Jian Technology (Suzhou) Co (和艦科技).
To help the nation's semiconductor industry tap the expanding Chinese market, Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration announced in 2002 that the government would allow domestic chipmakers to open up to three eight-inch wafer plants in China by the end of next year, but only if they use equipment that has been phased out in Taiwan and expand investments in their domestic 12-inch plants.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC,
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last