The nation's economy remains strong, and the Taiwanese people should be confident about their country, Premier Frank Hsieh (
"The figures say it all. All the statistics indicate growth in Taiwan's business activities, and foreign investments have shown no signs of flagging either," Hsieh said in his opening speech at the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.
He said that although a deluge of negative reporting has seriously damaged Taiwan's image in the run-up to the Dec. 3 local elections, foreign investments have not been interrupted.
"Foreign investors don't watch Taiwan's TV talk shows or read our newspapers, since they don't understand [the language]," he said.
"As a result, the negative media coverage of Taiwanese politics did not make them change their mind [about investing in Taiwan,] which is a good thing. Nonetheless, they actually made the right decision," Hsieh said.
He added that since people abroad generally pay no attention to local newspaper coverage or TV talk shows, they have a better perspective on what's really happening in the country.
According to Hsieh, the unemployment rate for last month dropped to a five-year low of 4.07 percent, while 29.89 percent of the nation's stocks, valued at NT$4.3 trillion (US$1288.4 billion), are owned by foreign investors.
"This is a sign that foreign investors are still confident about the economy," Hsieh said.
In addition, the number of foreign visitors has shown no signs of declining, and the premier said he believed even more foreign tourists will visit in the future.
"We just welcomed the millionth Japanese tourist [this year] a few days ago. I believe that was only the beginning," 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],”
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
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