A US trade group has suggested that Taiwan leverage its strengths in high-tech manufacturing to position itself as a regional technology hub because more businesses would be willing to consider it as such when regular direct cross-strait flights commence.
“Numerous analysts say Taiwan’s best bet would be to leverage its existing strengths in high-tech manufacturing to position itself as a regional hub for technology-intensive industries such as ICT [information and communications technology] and biotech, though they caution that Taiwan has a window of about 10 years to accomplish this before cities in China start catching up,” the Taipei-based American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) said in the cover story of its business publication, Topics.
Many Taiwan-based ICT companies are already playing important regional and even global roles, the report says, adding that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), for instance, is the world’s largest contract chip maker and that companies with head offices in Taiwan account for 80 percent of the world’s notebook computer production.
“In Taiwan, you have ready access to the electronic manufacturing chain and also access to distribution channels in China,” Peter Kurz, head of Taiwan research for Citi Investment Research, was quoted as saying.
“It’ll be the tech companies that draw foreign companies here, whether Japanese or Western,” he added.
Tristan Liu (呂曜志), an economist with the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台經院), reached the same conclusion about Taiwan’s prospects for serving as a regional center.
He views such a hub as encompassing tech-related downstream activity, such as chip packaging, venture capital firms and other financial services aimed specifically at technology companies, and other services such as recruiting and training.
Wang Jiann-chyuan (王健全), an economist with the Chung-Hwa Institution for Economic Research (中經院), estimates that 5 percent to 10 percent of Taiwanese companies based overseas intend to relocate more operations here because of the improvements in cross-strait ties and new, more stringent labor regulations that have been adopted in China.
Lim Tay Her (林泰禾), an analyst with Asia’s leading brokerage CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, notes that if 30 percent of the more than 1 million Taiwanese working in China return, added consumption would have a dramatic impact on the economy since most are highly paid professionals.
Besides technology expertise, Taiwan is also more attractive than Chinese locations in terms of living conditions, protection of intellectual property rights and employee loyalty — and, surprisingly, for costs in many cases. But it still needs to reduce government red tape to be competitive.
“We’ve found that the cost of running a business in Taiwan is actually slightly better than running the same business in other [Asian] locations — including things like cost of living, the cost of expatriate rent, office costs and manufacturing costs,” said Alan Eusden, chairman of AmCham and president of Corning Display Technologies Taiwan Co, a leading maker of glass substrate for liquid-crystal-display panels.
However, the report warns that inadequate infrastructure and the proliferation of red tape might be the two most daunting obstacles standing in the way of Taiwan becoming a regional operations hub.
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