The number of Taiwanese businesspeople in China seeking land and manufacturing facilities in Taiwan has increased over the past two months amid rising labor costs across the Strait, an official at the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
China implemented a new labor law on Jan. 1, raising the severance pay and giving Chinese workers the right to refuse to work overtime.
"There were around 60 applications by Taiwanese businesspeople in China, who were planning to return at the end of last year, with an estimated investment value of NT$8.5 billion (US$261.8 million)," an official at the ministry's Department of Investment Services said by telephone.
"Among the China-based Taiwanese companies that have applied to return, the electronics manufacturing industry ranked first in terms of number, followed by machinery manufacturing and traditional industries," the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The official's remarks came in the wake of a report by the Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday saying more Taiwanese businesspeople were thinking of moving back home.
The official said that industrial parks in the north had seen the largest number of inquiries.
"Many businesspeople have asked about Taichung Industrial Park (
Ilan County's Lize Industrial Park (
Government incentives for land leasing at Lize Industrial Park have added to the location's attraction, an official at the ministry's Industrial Development Bureau said yesterday.
"The Ilan County Government provides free rent for the first two years, and 40 percent off for the third and fourth years. For the fifth and sixth years, companies will still be able to enjoy a 20 percent discount before paying the full amount the following year," Huang Chia-ling (黃佳鈴) said by telephone.
However, labor-intensive and high polluting businesses that have moved to China may find it hard to return after Taiwan's transformation and current focus on higher value-added industries, the official said.
The number of applications by Taiwanese companies to invest in China from January to November last year totaled 917, down by 66 cases, or 6.7 percent, from the same period a year ago, statistics released by the ministry's Investment Commission showed.
The investment amount during the same period totaled US$8.45 billion, an increase of US$2.05 billion, or 32 percent, from a year ago, the data showed.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)