At least 10 more purchase missions from China are expected to visit Taiwan by the end of the year, following earlier visits by four such delegations, which have already agreed to buy billions of US dollars of merchandise, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman Wang Chih-kang (王志剛) said in Beijing yesterday.
Wang said the first delegation organized by China’s Association of Economy and Trade Across the Taiwan Straits (AETATS) arrived in Taiwan in May and had agreed to buy more than US$2 billion in consumer electronics, with US$700 million in orders already received.
A mission composed mainly of Chinese TV makers arrived in June and made plans to purchase US$5 billion in flat panels. Orders for US$1.5 billion of the amount have been received, he said.
Another AETATS-organized delegation composed mostly of Chinese department store representatives that arrived last month plans to buy US$760 million in processed food, with US$160 million in orders already placed, Wang said.
On Aug. 19, another AETATS-organized delegation is expected to purchase up to US$1.2 billion in goods, he said.
Wang made the remarks in a news conference held in Beijing to promote the Taiwan Trade Fair in Nanjing, which is scheduled for Sept. 17 through Sept. 20 at the Nanjing International Expo Center.
The show will gather 620 Taiwanese businesses and display more than 30,000 Taiwanese products, with the exhibition area to cover 38,000m², TAITRA 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
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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
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