Economists yesterday voiced concern over the ongoing post-election chaos, urging the government to resolve the dispute before it affects the recovery of Taiwan's economy.
"The worst enemy of the business community is uncertainty," Charles Kao (高希均), an economist and the publisher of the Chinese-language Commonwealth magazine, said yesterday during a luncheon held by European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT).
"The ruling Democratic Progress Party upholds the so-called `Taiwan First' policy, but the fact is the policy cannot be sustained without a robust economy ... as a result, the new government must put the economy first and put aside political ideology," Kao said.
Citing statistics such as the falling jobless rate and the rising economic growth rate from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting & Statistics, Kao said local and overseas investors are upbeat about the outlook of the nation's economy, but if the political dispute drags on much longer, Taiwan may have difficulty convincing investors to stay.
Besides calling on the new administration to restore government credibility and reconcile domestic unrest, Kao suggested improving the relationship with China is needed in view of the huge amount of trade between the two sides. The realization of direct cross-strait transportation that business groups have been pressing should certainly be put on the top agenda, Kao added.
China has outpaced Japan and the US to become Taiwan's largest importer in recent years. Last year, Taiwan exported nearly US$49.77 billion worth of goods to China, according to statistics from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Chen Tien-jy (
China is required to lift bans on foreign investment next year as part of its WTO accession agreement.
As China is speeding up its process to digitalize its broadcasting system by 2008, when it will host the Olympic Games in Beijing, Taiwanese liquid crystal display screen (LCD) makers have another huge opportunity, Chen said.
Taiwan controls critical technology for flat-panel making, and is the world's largest supplier of flat-panel screens. AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and four local LCD screen makers will account for 49 percent of global spending on LCD-making this year, overtaking South Korea as the world's largest LCD supplier, researcher DisplaySearch said earlier this month.
However, Chen said that as long as President Chen Shui-bian (
In view of the predicament, Kao suggested that the new Chen administration use business experts and industrialists such as CIER Chairman Vincent Siew (
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],”
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts