In anticipation of a tougher global business environment, China-based Taiwanese companies should focus on their core businesses to stay competitive while expanding domestic demand in China to offset possible losses in their export markets, analysts said yesterday.
“Chinese markets now present the biggest opportunities to China-based Taiwanese businesses,” said Kenneth Cheng (鄭克家), head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp’s (HSBC, 匯豐銀行) commercial banking.
He made the remark at the launch of Top 1,000 Taiwanese Corporations in China 2008, which was compiled by China Credit Information Services Ltd (CCIS, 中華徵信) and sponsored by HSBC.
Cheng said firms doing businesses in China will face many challenges this year.
China’s tightening credit policy has reduced the chances that China-based Taiwanese businesses will be able to secure bank loans, while rising labor and raw material costs and a cut in tax rebates from 13 percent to 5 percent threatens their survival.
“The large reduction in the tax rebates is the main reason behind the failure of some Taiwanese businesses there,” he said.
Cheng said firms should reduce capital spending by liquidating idle assets while making their China-based subsidiaries financially transparent to earn the trust of Taiwanese banks.
CCIS editor-in-chief Liu Jen (劉任) said export-oriented businesses in China should look for ways to tap China’s domestic markets. But he voiced concern about China’s ability to sustain its economic growth after the Olympics, although the company expects China to deliver an 8 percent GDP this year.
Meanwhile, CCIS general manager David Chang (張大為) praised the government’s decision to relax the cap on Taiwanese companies China-bound capital from 40 percent of their net value to 60 percent.
“Businesses know where to go and what is best for them,” Chang told a luncheon organized by the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT).
ECCT chairman Philippe Pellegrin said the chamber was very pleased to see such policies, adding that “it was in the right direction.”
As a strategy against inflation, James Huang (黃維祝), chairman of Roma & United International Group (羅馬磁磚), said yesterday that his tile company focuses on high-end customers, allowing sales to continue to grow despite the economic slowdown.
Roma, which entered the Chinese market 15 years ago, was one of the top 1,000 Taiwanese corporations in China last year, the CCIS’ annual survey showed.
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