The new Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (
During an interview with the CNA, Chen said that lifting the investment cap on Taiwanese companies investing in China would be "oversimplifying" the issue.
Current regulations dictate that investments in China should not exceed 40 percent of a Taiwanese company's net worth -- a restriction that businesses have long complained limits their leverage to win greater access to the market.
Real problems
"What are their real problems? Are there any alternatives to investing in China? What would be the impact on Taiwan if other alternatives were to be adopted? " he asked, adding that he was still thinking about the precise measures to be adopted.
Another concern of the business community is that quite a number of the country's world-leading products have dropped to second, third, or even lower in ranking, with critics wondering if Taiwan's competitiveness has fallen as well.
To this, Chen said that if "made by Taiwan" products were counted alongside those "made in Taiwan," the nation would still rank well in several industries.
For example, Chen noted that although many of the country's notebook computer manufacturing lines have moved to China or elsewhere, Taiwanese companies still have control over them and remain influential in this industry.
He said that "we need not make everything ourselves. If we could keep R&D and design, marketing and capital in Taiwan, we would not have to worry too much about moving manufacturing lines to other countries."
Chen suggested that Taiwanese corporations devote more human resources to enhancing competitiveness for items with high added value, since securing competitive edges for low value-added products would not be cost-effective.
Optimism
He said he was optimistic about the future of Taiwan's high-tech and service industries, particularly in combining domestic manufacturing capabilities with services or high technologies -- an area that he said Taiwan should invest in.
On the overall economy, Chen was upbeat about prospects for the second half of the year, in which he said he expected performance to be "at least as good as the first half."
He cited the export orders and export volumes of recent months, such as June's record export orders of US$24.9 billion and last month's exports of US$19.6 billion, both of which represent monthly highs.
Since export orders are a leading indicator of the trend in coming months, Taiwan's exports and industrial production should be quite impressive in the second half of this year, he said.
The only variables would be rising international oil prices and interest rates in major economies such as the US, Japan and Europe, as oil prices and interest rates will affect the domestic economy, 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
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
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],”
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