Amid intensifying political opposition at home, the government plans to release a cross-strait free-trade study by Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中經院) in the middle of this month, Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said yesterday.
Yiin said that when the ministry publicizes the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) study, “the two sides will be ready to engage in meaningful academic dialogue to discuss cross-strait collaboration both through official as well as unofficial channels.”
Yiin did not reveal a timetable for the signing of the trade pact.
But Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) told the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club yesterday that Taiwan and China were in informal talks at an “academic level” on preparing the ECFA.
“We hope that we can start the formal process as soon as possible,” Deng said at the briefing. “We are ready, it’s Beijing; if they want to talk, we can talk.”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in May he hoped to sign an ECFA with China to ease restrictions on trade. The agreement may be similar to an accord China has with Hong Kong, which waives tariffs and gives preferential market access to its financial industry.
“There are informal exchanges of views on the academic level,” Deng said.
While Taiwan has requested formal talks, the timing has not been decided, he said.
Since Ma took office in May last year, the issue of signing an ECFA as well as Ma’s pro-China policies have been a subject of contention between the ruling and opposition parties.
On Tuesday, the ministry said it would open 100 sectors in the manufacturing industry, service industry and public infrastructure to Chinese investment.
To block the progress of the government’s proposed trade pact with China, as well as to jump- start its preparations for the year-end elections, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) plans to host more than 500 grassroots tea parties throughout the nation starting this month, ,the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday.
Taiwan will hold elections for country and city government heads and councilors before the end of year, presenting a crucial opportunity for the DPP to regain power.
The newspaper said the DPP had collected more than 136,000 signatures calling for a public referendum on ECFA. The party said it would continue to build opposition momentum by exposing the negative impacts an ECFA would have on employment opporturnities and the local business sector.
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