Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-largest PC maker, will comply with a Chinese government order for all computers sold in the country to include anti-pornography software, spokesman Henry Wang (汪島雄) said.
“The company has noted the regulations and we will meet them,” Wang said by phone yesterday.
He declined to say if the Taipei-based company had already installed the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” software on its products in China.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
All personal computers sold in China from today were to have to include the software as part of government efforts to curb access to pornographic content on the Internet, a May 19 statement by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.
However, later yesterday China’s Xinhua new agency reported that the implementation of the controversial policy would be delayed.
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), the world’s largest PC maker, is seeking additional information and watching developments on the requirements, spokeswoman Pamela Bonney said on Monday.
Dell Inc, the second largest, will “continue to monitor” the situation, spokesman Jess Blackburn said.
Both declined to say whether their companies would adopt the software.
Meanwhile, a California company that says its software was illegally used in Beijing’s new Internet filter threatened unspecified legal action.
Solid Oak Software Inc of Santa Barbara said it had written to Dell, HP and other producers advising them not to install the software on the grounds that it contained illegally obtained intellectual property.
Solid Oak said it was appointing lawyers to represent it in China and would be “moving forward legally” today, company spokeswoman Jenna DiPasquale said in an e-mail.
“I cannot say at this time what specific legal action we plan to take,” DiPasquale said.
US trade officials, industry and free-speech groups have appealed to Beijing to revoke its order, which requires suppliers to pre-install the software or include it on a disk with each PC made for sale in China.
Washington said the order, issued abruptly in May, might violate Beijing’s WTO free-trade pledges. American officials have cited warnings by computer experts that the software could cause security problems for users.
The US embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to requests for information on the status of talks with Chinese officials.
Industry groups have received no response to a letter sent last week by 22 US, European and Japanese groups to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), appealing to him to scrap the order, said one of the signers, Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.
“We hope we receive feedback,” Wuttke said. “We also hope this decision can be postponed, because there are so many uncertainties in connection with the software.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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