Taiwan will lose more than NT$2.5 trillion (US$75.14 billion) in foreign income annually if the country's manufacturing industry is allowed to move overseas, a local economist warned yesterday.
Giving a speech on the challenges and future of the manufacturing industry, Taiwan Thinktank chairman Chen Po-chih (
Chen, former chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development, said he agrees that a high-income country should pay attention to research and development and marketing, but this does not mean that the manufacturing sector -- now accounting for 23 percent of Taiwan's economic production and a large share of the country's exports -- can be done away with.
Noting that manufacturing still accounts for approximately 20 percent of the economic production of most developed countries, Chen said Taiwan has no reason to give up the manufacturing industry.
According to Chen, the manufacturing industry's production lines can remain in Taiwan despite competition from countries with low labor costs as long as their products are developed using advanced expertise.
For example, he said, although China has the ability to manufacture commercial planes, the country continues to purchase aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, mainly because of those companies' expertise.
With at least one million out of the total of 2.7 million workforce in Taiwan's manufacturing industry being labor-intensive, the exodus of the industry will seriously impact local society and the economy, Chen said.
If the manufacturing industry moves out of the country, it will be difficult for those working in the sector to find other jobs, which will worsen the unemployment problem, he pointed out.
In addition, the financial, transportation and electrical power industries, which mainly serve the manufacturing industry, will shrink significantly if the manufacturing industry no longer exists, he said.
According to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the nation's trade surplus, adversely affected by industry migration overseas, is this year expected to slump to a new low of US$4.66 billion, beating the previous low of US$4.8 billion recorded in 1983.
During the first 11 months of the year, the trade surplus has declined by 32.7 percent to US$4.87 billion from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs' statistics.
Instead of adopting a laissez-faire attitude toward the manufacturing industry, Taiwan should encourage the manufacturing industry to produce distinctive products in order to enhance their competitiveness, Chen said.
In response to questions from the media, Chen added that the government should consider relaxing the ceiling limits on China-bound investments if the investing businesses are not in debt in Taiwan, if they are not involved in any capital-labor disputes and if their scales of production do not rely heavily on their operations in China.
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