■ FSC appoints new member
Yang Ya-hwei (楊雅惠), director of the Center for Economic and Financial Strategies at the Chung Hua Institute for Economic Research, has been appointed by the Cabinet to be a member of the Financial Supervisory Commission, the commission said yesterday.
The tenure of Yang, who fills the vacancy after Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉) moves to chair the commission, will run through June 30, 2010, the financial regulator said.
Two of the commission's nine seats remained vacant after former vice chairman Lu Duang-yen (呂東英) moved to be chairman of the GRETAI Securities Market in August and Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) resigned in October after being taken into custody for suspicion of corruption.
■ AmCham elects new president
Jane Hwang (黃素貞), vice president and general manager of the State Street Bank and Trust Co, Taipei Branch, was elected president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) for next year, AmCham said in a statement yesterday.
Hwang said she would do her best to maintain AmCham's position as the "most influential voice in Taiwan for the business world," the statement said.
She expressed appreciation for the "excellent degree of access" that AmCham has enjoyed with policymakers, and said that the new Board of Governors and Supervisors was looking forward to continued constructive interaction with government officials, it said.
For the past two years Hwang has played an active role at AmCham as its first vice president and as co-chair of the Capital Markets Committee.
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