Taiwanese companies with manufacturing operations in China have been making contingency arrangements against chronic power shortages, which are expected to worsen this year, business and industrial sources said yesterday.
Taiwanese companies or individuals with trade or manufacturing operations in China -- better known as taishang (
Some Taiwanese businesspeople said that not only have electricity prices skyrocketed since the beginning of summer, increasing their overhead costs, chronic power shortages are seen to be aggravated further, from only during the summer months to the whole of the year.
According to some China-based Taiwanese businesspeople, manufacturers of electronic components and parts operating in the Dongguan, Guangdong Province area, they have been plagued with power shortages for the past two to three years, but have found that the situation is even worse this summer.
Currently, the taishang said, it is considered "normal" if the electricity is supplied three days out of five during the working week. Some areas now only get power for two days out of five, they added.
To meet the difficulties, they said, they have had to buy their own diesel generators to ensure their power supplies, but this is not sufficient to power heavy-duty machinery.
To get around the dilemma, Ji-Haw Industrial Co (
However, many of the Taiwanese companies said they have not been affected by the power shortages at all.
China Motors Co (
Yulon Motors Co (
Walsin Lihwa Group (華新麗華), whose operations are scattered around Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei and Guangdong Provinces as well as Shanghai, said none of their offshoot companies on the mainland has reported such letdowns.
Mitac International Corp (
Acer Inc said that although it maintains many business operations on the mainland, they are only offices and not manufacturing plants, so that steady supplies of electricity are not so crucial.
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last