The government is continuing to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) develop, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said yesterday at an APEC forum meeting in Taipei.
The APEC Symposium on Industrial Clustering for SMEs is being held at the Taipei International Convention Center. The conference is part of a series of prelude meetings for the 2005 APEC SME Ministerial Meeting, which will take place from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3 in Daegu, South Korea.
In a keynote speech at the symposium, Chen introduced the government's policy regarding industrial clustering and said the practice has played a key role in Taiwan's successful economic development, citing the formation of the Hsinchu Science Park.
Describing the facility in northern Taiwan as the best example of industrial clustering, Chen noted that there are currently more than 300 companies operating in the park, creating a total output value of US$25 billion last year.
Industrial clustering covers a broad range of economic activities, which, beside business gatherings, include market and technology information exchanges, Chen said, adding that this helps lower production and trading costs while ensuring more efficient resource sharing.
Chen said that industrial clustering is an important strategy for a country to boost economic development, while it also plays a key role in SME development. Because of this, the government will continue efforts to construct and develop science-based industrial parks, he said.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained