China Merchants Bank Co (招商銀行) is among at least five Chinese banks applying to open branches in Taiwan as relations between the two governments improve, said Ma Weihua (馬蔚華), chief executive officer of China’s fifth-biggest lender by market value.
“We’re not the only one applying,” Ma said in an interview in London last week before the opening ceremony for the lender’s first unit in the British capital. “There are five or six.”
China Merchants has “participated in the discussion” of a financial-services agreement between China and Taiwan, he said.
China and Taiwan are working on an agreement to allow cross-strait investment between financial firms, after five decades of restricted access. Bank of China Ltd (中國銀行), the nation’s largest foreign-exchange lender with over 800 outlets overseas, said on April 27 it wants to be the first Chinese bank to set up a branch in Taiwan.
‘GENERALLY AGREED’
A memorandum of understanding between China and Taiwan is “generally agreed,” with “only some divergence in details such as the entry requirement,” Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said on July 9 after she returned from an official visit to Beijing with a delegation of Taiwanese bankers, Central News Agency reported.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (中國工商銀行), the world’s largest lender by market value, and Bank of Communications Ltd (交通銀行) have also said they plan to set up branches in Taiwan after an agreement is reached.
Beijing-based Bank of China is the only Chinese bank allowed to conduct foreign-currency exchange with Taiwan dollars.
Closer ties with China, Taiwan’s biggest trading partner, could help Taiwan speed up recovery from its first recession since the technology bubble burst in 2001. The economy shrank a record 10.2 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.
ACCORDS
China on April 29 said it would end a ban on investments in Taiwan from May 1 after accords signed on April 26 allowed cross-strait operations by financial-services companies, expanded direct flights and established cooperation in fighting crime.
Taiwan the same day said it would begin accepting applications from Chinese institutional investors to buy Taiwan’s securities.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of