The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday said that the government’s planned signing a of memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China will differ from the cross-strait financial cooperation agreement — one of the three accords signed during the third round of cross-strait negotiations in April that took effect automatically yesterday.
“I promise everyone here that no MOU was signed today [yesterday],” FSC vice chairwoman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) told a press conference.
Lee made the comment in response to media and market speculation that the government will soon sign an MOU on cross-strait supervisory cooperation and reach agreement on market access with China.
“There’s no definite timetable as details regarding venues and schedules for discussions about the MOU with China are yet to be finalized by the Mainland Affairs Council,” Lee said.
She reiterated that the MOU should be addressed before discussions begin on the cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA).
These are preliminarily set to begin at the end of the year at the earliest.
FSC chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) expressed the hope that three MOUs on the banking, securities and insurance sectors would be signed at the same time.
But they require consent from China, Lee said.
Once the MOUs are signed, local financial institutions will be granted the status of foreign investors and allowed to enter Chinese markets, Lee said.
Lee also said the commission was striving for complex preferential treatments for local financial institutions, some of which would require post-MOU discussions, with others to be included in the ECFA to be signed later.
For example, China would violate its WTO commitments if it allowed Taiwanese insurance companies a majority stake in their one-to-one joint ventures with Chinese partners.
However, during further post-MOU discussions, Taiwan may be able to persuade China to agree to multiply partners from both parties by revising its internal regulation.
This would provide more flexibility to potential expansion of such ventures, Lee 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
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained