Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said the Chinese government has proposed to allow 18 weekend cross-strait charter flights per week, which would bring in an estimated 1,000 Chinese tourists, the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會) official told reporters yesterday.
The Chinese government’s proposal differs significantly from President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) promise to launch weekend cross-strait charter flights in July and allow 3,000 Chinese tourists to enter the country per day.
“Since 18 weekend cross-strait charter flights was proposed by the Chinese government, let us make this become a reality first,” CNAIC chairman Theodore Huang (黃茂雄) told reporters after the association’s meeting with Liu yesterday.
However, the Chinese government demands all flights fly over Hong Kong’s airspace before landing in Taiwan, which will add an additional 20 minutes to the trip. But Huang said it would still enable travelers to save almost two hours by not having to transfer to a second flight.
“In order to increase convenience, our next goal is to push for direct flights between China and Taiwan and to increase the number of flights,” Huang said.
Liu said yesterday that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the government’s planned launch of weekend cross-strait charter flights in July, which he promised would be launched as scheduled.
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